Musical Clock from 1750 and Porter Music Box from 1978

Welcome to Music Machine Mondays. In this episode we're going to take a look at two instruments. We're going to see the porter music box and we're going to see the Alan Walker musical table clock. So right now we are standing next to this beautiful table clock that was made in 1750 by Alan Walker. And Alan Walker himself, he came from England but he had his road trip in Netherlands. And this is actually one of the first self-playing instruments that was suitable for your house. Okay. And you could say that is some kind of a radio because you could choose between the songs as well. So you can see a cylinder. I will open the door so it might be a little bit easier to see. Yeah. So we have a cylinder over here and it turns around once and it's the length of one melody. But actually they used the space between the hammers to put on even more melodies. So you can change the cylinder in this direction and have another song. Yeah you can move it lateral but you wouldn't change the cylinder like this. I will show you. We have to move this clock a little bit. And this is actually something that not a lot of people know that this clock can do this. So we have the dial and on top of the dial you can see actually all of the songs it can play. So what you wanted to do you can just open the door here and with this hand you can change the melody on it. Which is actually kind of cool. So if you got tired of the melody at some point listening to it for every hour there was a possibility to change it. This musical table clock is built in 1750 by Ellen Walker in Amsterdam. Ellen Walker was one of many English clockmakers working in Amsterdam and the English clockmakers were attracted to Amsterdam partly by the flourishing clockmaking trade but also by the tolerant atmosphere compared to London at the time. London had a strong horological guild that imposed all sorts of rules on the clockmakers. In Amsterdam there was no guild which was seen as a plus and Alan could build the clocks the way he wanted them. So you go Alan. I would also go into Amsterdam if some horological guild told me what to do. So this clock has 17 bells. It starts with a c2 all the way up to a3 and it actually has f sharp and b flat and g sharp as well. So they could play a lot of melodies. You can play like c major f major and a major almost. Yeah so that's really nice. Not all the clocks have that kind of notes. Most of the clocks they would work with the diatonic scale. Okay so of course I'm going to play it. I'm going to play it with the door closed because that way it just sounds a little bit better. Oh and I almost forgot to tell you something. You can see that the clock door is made of glass so you can see through it and that's for a reason. Clocks like this they would stand on marble shelves like above the fireplace. So it was a real centerpiece in the room actually. It was a real eye-catcher and it was standing in front of a mirror so the people could see what time it was at this side and through the mirror they could see also the beautiful mechanism on the inside. That's really cool. That's really smart. If I would build something like this I would also have a glass in front of it so it wouldn't be hidden away. That's why they also have put these beautiful decorations on the brass as well because it just had to look as pretty in the back as on the front. So I'm going to close the door. I'm going to play and we're going to listen to a French song which is a very old song. I'm extra interested in the fact that some bells have two hammers. Yes that's correct and some bells have two hammers. Actually only the notes that were used quite a lot in melodies have two hammers so they could play the same note faster after each other because the hammer needs time to be lifted to the back and fall back against the bell. And if they wanted to play two notes two of the same notes short period of time they could just like repeat a little bit faster. Because that's exactly my new plan for Marble Machine 8. Because we're going to double up the channels. I've been talking about that a lot. We're going to have two places where we can drop two marbles on one note. And I see this clock has that exact idea. This bell has only one. Yes. Maybe that's some kind of D flat or something like that. It probably isn't a D flat. I think it's just a D. But yeah so the notes which are used quite a lot in the melodies they have two for that reason. So there are also two tracks for that note as well. That's really cool. So they can play. Exactly. Yeah. The Porter Music Box is built in 1978 by Porter in Vermont United States. This is a disc changer or a musical disc player. This was invented in 1885 to replace the cylinders that they used before that. Now the problem with the cylinder is that you can't copy it. You can't press a cylinder because it's round. Yeah. And you've got pins sticking out and well those will break if you would press it for instance and take it off again. This is just a flat disc with pins on the bottom and those pins move alongside a musical comb. So it's actually not the hole who plays the tone. No no yeah. They rolled up the metal a little bit. So it's the little bump who plays the tone. Yeah they pushed it together in a way and then filed it off nicely. And that's that's what you hear. You've got these stars here and you've got a nice name for it. The star wheel. Star wheel yeah. And those hit the musical comb. You've got two combs just like you also said that you really liked. Yeah because on this music box every note has two metal things. So every hole will play two metal things at the same time right. Yeah. Which makes it the sound very lush because you can't tune them identically. And it's also like on the Nintendo Entertainment 8-bit system. Like a lot of lead sounds on the NES 8-bit system is two sounds detuned from each other. Yeah. So I think that's what makes these new music boxes sound very special. Yeah they use the same system in orchestras. They always have to have more than one violin player. Yeah. To get it nicely out of tune. Yeah. And also in the organs the first sound that we hear in a Marble Machine song is the Celeste register. Yeah. Which is also the same sound. You've got two detuned organ pipes. So they use that a lot and they need to thicken up the sound. Yeah. And in this case it's really nice. It's got another sound in it. Usually these music boxes have something like bells for instance. In this case it's got like these big glass pipes that also produce the low bass sounds. And it sounds really watery in a way. It's a really nice music box. So there's glass pipes in this. I would have to check. That's okay. Let's hear it. In Dutch we call it buisklokken. But I don't know the English name right now. Okay. Bass clocks. Bass clocks. No that's probably not it. So you can see that it only makes one turn. Yeah. And then it's done. So it's not like a like a gramophone that it has a spiral movement inwards. No. It's just the keyboard is really this. And it makes one turn and then it's done. Really? They would always have the same length. They could have different tempos. But they always have the same length. Yeah. 360 degrees music. Yeah. 360 degrees music. And as you pointed out yesterday the resolution is different on different spots. Yeah. Because they have to put the bass notes in the middle of the circle. Yeah. And the more advanced things on this faster outside of the circle. Yeah. You can see that here it goes very fast. And here you couldn't do that because it would take too much space. Because all the pins or all the holes have the same size as you can see. So that's pretty cool because you need of course metal to push out to make it to a pin again. Yeah. Yeah. Very nice. Cool. In the next episode we're taking a look at another mechanical masterpiece. Thanks to our friends at Speelklok Museum and thanks to you for watching.