Siegfried Fulfilled His Music Box Dream with the Muro Box Team: From a Maker to a Backer (Belgium)
Siegfried
Siegfried Fulfilled His Music Box Dream with the Muro Box Team: From a Maker to a Backer (Belgium)
Siegfried
Best greetings from Belgium,
Dr. Feng and Dr. Tsai asked me to write my maker story to include it on their website. After a long and hard think I decided to make the jump although I feel it is a little bit too much honor:
- I am not a professional musician (to my deep regret).
- I am not a professor in sound acoustics.
- I do not hold a degree in designing or machine engineering.
- I am not a music box dealer.
- I am not a music box historian.
(I see I am beginning to depress myself a little bit here) …
So, before my Ego decides it is time to commit suicide, it is time to begin to explain who in fact I AM (and my own small “HERO” journey in the process) 😉.
1. My Call to Adventure
My hobbies include playing the mouth harmonica. I thought of it as a solitary amusement but that was without considering my cats Bigodie and Cartouche. They simply love the sounds that I create and have become my biggest fans.
I am not so sure what that tells me about the quality of my endeavors… But again, for my Ego’s sake we will not dive further into that topic. Long story short, my cats made me dream of a real-life human audience!!!
2. The Refusal of the Call
Unfortunately, I am not gifted with perfect hearing. With a music sheet I am a great pretender, but without one I am completely lost! Jamming or improvising on the spot is just not possible for me and that is a big disadvantage. It is the reason why I can never join a music-ensemble or a professional band.
So I decided to accept my fate and be happy with my 2 Cat Fans. Life could be worse…
3. The Threshold Guardian (Beginning of Transformation)
As fate would have it 😉, I felt myself drawn to a musical instrument’s museum. And in a bright, shining light I saw for the very first time A MUSIC BOX.
A music box that did not only have metal things, but also bells and a built-in harmonica!
(You can see this special music box here: https://www.littledayout.com/the-singapore-musical-box-museum-pause-and-listen/)
This made me think…. If not one real musician wants to play with me… Why not create a musician that does not have a choice (* Evil laughter *)?
What if I could create a music box that I can program myself? Around this time I bought this Kalliope disc music box. It seemed to be a good inspiration point.
4. Challenge, Ordeal and Death
So I embarked on a (mostly digital) journey to collect as much information as I could about the design of a good music box. Over the years, I learned a lot about its history and evolution. How and why they progressed from a cylinder to a disc music box. The ideal dimensions, choice of wood, … What sound actually is, what the timbre of a musical instrument makes. Each bit of information I thought I could use was stored on my computer.
To me this was the first step. I knew how to make a good sound box. Now all that was left to do was learning how to automatise and program it. So during the COVID crisis, I enrolled myself on an online Arduino course.
Alass, The Arduino-dragon proved to powerfull me. It huffed, puffed and threw a flaming ball of incomprehensible bits and bytes at me that left me with some serious digital third degree burns. For three weeks I was on life support… I needed to come to terms with the fact that this was a dragon I could not slay…
5. Atonement
Quite by accident, I discovered the old Muro Box-N20 campaign page on Indiegogo. It was a Hallelujah moment for me.😊 Someone else was making a digital music box and willing to sell it!!! I had no doubt in my heart and quickly subscribed to their N40 Email update list.
When they asked for input, suggestion and feedback on their ideas, I wondered if my “Failed Quest”-experiences could be of interest to them… So I imparted with them all the “wisdom” I had learned about the design of a music box and the theory behind it.
Since they are great people they were very happy with my Emails and asked if I wanted to share them with the entire Muro Box community. I saw no reason why not. But be warned! This document is a lot more difficult to read than this story. It explains quite a lot of musical theory…
6. The Return (Gift of the Muro God and Goddess)
As you can see, my hero journey is not yet complete. Just like many of you I am waiting for the release of the Muro N40, so that I can finally start my way back to the ordinary world 😉.
This document is my feedback for the Muro Box Team’s latest update about the new resonance box design. Feel free to let me know how other backers think about my suggestions.
Muro Box: The Take-Away form Siegfried’s Feedback in Our N40 Design
We are very grateful to Siegfried for sharing a substantial number of references to help us design the current Muro Box-N40. The following are what we have adapted from his suggestions:
- The sound production principle of “Sublime Harmony” was first proposed by Siegfried, and we had the opportunity to implement it.
- Wooden Box Design:
Siegfried provided documents for calculating the optimal size of a wooden box. Although the calculated optimal size for the wooden box is one meter wide, which we couldn’t practically execute, the documents included parameters, such as a thickness of 6mm for the wooden boards and design details like wood grain direction. We incorporated these details into the wooden box design for N40. Siegfried’s greatest contribution was not just enabling us to create a flawless music box, but allowing us to make better design decisions within the constraints of real-world conditions, based on the experience and theory of designing musical instruments. - Our original circle-shaped sound port on the resonance box was proven to be less than optimal. Thanks to Siegfried’s references, we will propose a new resonance box design in accordance with the conclusions of the papers.
Once again, we want to express our gratitude to Siegfried for his support. If any of you have any design suggestions, please be sure to let us know by email/replying to the feedback form as Siegfried did!
