Oh, someone built a MIDI interface for an orchestron or band organ. Doing that for player pianos is not unusual. There are retrofit kits.[1]
An orchestron is basically a player piano with extra instruments attached. Retrofitting for MIDI makes a lot of sense. Regular piano rolls are available for player pianos. Orchestrons were not standardized, so there's not much content available.
In the SF bay area, the carousel at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk has a 1894/1911 Ruth and Sohn band organ. Recent videos show that it's had a major overhaul and now runs on MIDI.[2] So they can modernize the playlist. It's amazing that thing is still running, next to the Pacific Ocean for well over a century.
If you're looking at the "how" specifically:
This would play MIDI files, not MP3s. Midi files are the digital version of that book with the punched holes, it's a sequence of note events over time.
The physical book with holes forms a series of air valves. So what you do to convert it is attach a bunch of pneumatic solenoid valves instead. Then there is some interface board that lets you control a bunch of solenoids from a laptop. It's not really that complicated but you need one valve for each note, so you need a lot of them, and you have to physically plumb in each one to the organ.
Have a look at Look Mum No Computer, he does this kind of stuff: https://www.lookmumnocomputer.com/projects#/joans-church-org...
Very cool, this is exactly what I was looking for to answer the how question.
These projects look awesome, if I'm ever in the UK I'll checkout their museum.
Great link!
The Youtube Algorithm must be recommending similar videos to the both of us as I started getting the same kind of content a few weeks ago. I'm pretty partial to the Ace of Base "I saw the sign" cover that it's been recommending.[0]
I did a little bit of digging and found this guys website: https://www.mechanicalmusicman.com/
It would be neat to see a humanoid robot feed the tape into the machine and press play and then have the camera zoom out to a bunch of robots dancing together.
Something about robots dancing to music that's produced by a mechanical MIDI machine feels right. Like a prelude to the impending replacement of humanity.
I actually wrote the post so thank you! I hadn't found that guys website and will check it out.
There's a really interesting history of automata at Disney too, someone made a very good video about it here if you haven't seen it!