[ Project 02 · gnration · Laboratórios de Verão 2017 ]

Digital Music Box⁠.
Turn the crank⁠.

An antique drinks cabinet — one of those old red-velvet home bars, found in an antique shop — cleaned out and rebuilt around the same synth engine we ship as software. Turn the crank, play the keys, and a fully-working DRC answers from inside.

[ The story ]

A music box is one of the oldest ways to sequence music: crank a handle, a pinned cylinder turns, and a melody plays itself. We wanted to keep that gesture but change everything behind it. So we found an old wooden cabinet — a home bar lined in red velvet⁠ — in an antique shop, cleaned it out, and moved a synthesizer in. Super-sized, retro-futurist, and tuned so anyone can play it — no training, just curiosity.

The Digital Music Box, an ornate cream cabinet on wheeled legs, lit alone in the gnration installation space with its lid open.
FIG. 01On show at gnration. The cabinet kept its patina; everything that makes a sound was built in behind the original facade.
[ 02 / How it works ]

A crank you turn, a synth that answers.

Crank · Keyboard · DRC
  1. 01 · Cabinet

    An antique cabinet, cleaned not restored.

    A wooden drinks cabinet — an old home bar lined in red velvet — rescued from an antique shop. We kept the carved frame, the brass detailing and the wheeled feet, and emptied the inside to make room for the electronics.

  2. 02 · Crank

    The crank sets the tempo⁠.

    The one gesture we kept from a real music box. Turning the handle drives the clock — faster or slower, the music follows your hand. Stop turning and it waits.

  3. 03 · Keyboard + knobs

    Play the keys, shape the sound.

    A keyboard under the lid triggers the notes; a row of front-panel knobs shapes the voice live — filter, delay, reverb. Everything happens in front of you, nothing hidden in a menu.

  4. 04 · Brain

    A small computer, running DRC⁠.

    The same synth engine that ships in our DRC app, running on a Raspberry Pi with a Pisound audio card by Blokas. Whatever DRC can synthesise, the box can play.

  5. 05 · Sound system

    A full sound system, inside the furniture.

    Amplifier, subwoofer and drivers built into the case, so the cabinet carries real weight in the open air — enough bass to crank out anything from Mozart to Metallica.

[ 03 / The cabinet ]

From drinks cabinet to instrument⁠.

Salvaged · Cleaned · Rewired
The original drinks cabinet with its doors open against a red-velvet backdrop, showing the bare red-velvet interior before the electronics went in.
FIG. 03The red-velvet interior, kept from the original bar.
Inside the cabinet: two speakers, an amplifier board, a Raspberry Pi with a Pisound card and coloured wiring.
FIG. 04The brain — Raspberry Pi + Pisound, amp and drivers.
The perforated metal grille and speaker cut-outs above the keyboard.
FIG. 05One panel, two drivers, the keys underneath.

"We kept the gesture of a music box — you still turn a crank — and changed everything behind it. The furniture does the rest."

— Nuno Santos · Imaginando
[ 04 / How it sounds ]

The furniture is part of the sound⁠.

Crank-driven · Polyphonic · Resonant

The voice is DRC, but the cabinet colours it. The old wood, the panels, the open lid — the whole case joins in, the way it was built to when it held bottles instead of a synth.

That is the point of putting a synthesizer inside furniture. It stops being a screen and becomes an object you walk up to and play⁠ — no musical training required, just a hand on the crank.

[ 05 / Built in public ]

The build, episode by episode⁠.

// 12-part build diary · the finale is below
Episode 01

Introduction

Episode 02

The Box

Episode 03

The Doors

Episode 04

The Sub

Episode 05

The Crank

Episode 06

The Keyboard

Episode 07

The Timing Clock

Episode 08

The Pisound

Episode 09

The Sound System

Episode 10

The Front Panel

Episode 11

The Back Door

Episode 12

Everything In Its Right Place

Full build series on YouTube →
[ 06 / The premiere ]

The Premiere⁠.

Braga · downtown
FILMThe Premiere — the finale of the build series, shot the night the Digital Music Box went out into downtown Braga.
Families gathered around the Digital Music Box in a Braga square at golden hour, children taking turns at the crank.
FIG. 06Kids queued up to turn the crank.
A man in a floral shirt stops at the Digital Music Box on a Braga street at golden hour, one hand resting on the raised "imaginando" lid.
FIG. 07A passer-by stops to try it.
Two boys in white at the Digital Music Box in a Braga square — one playing the keyboard, the other cheering with a fist raised.
FIG. 08Tuned so a child could never hit a wrong note.
The Digital Music Box outside the gnration building, in front of a wall reading "jul – set 2017".
FIG. 09Home base — gnration, summer 2017.
  • 13Build episodes
  • ~2Months to build
  • 2017Noite Branca premiere
[ 07 / What it taught us ]

The lessons went back into the apps⁠.

Three things we kept
01

An interface can be an object⁠.

Sitting at a piece of furniture makes you play differently than clicking a window. Software gets a face when you can put your hands on it.

02

Good defaults set you free⁠.

Tuned so a stranger or a child could never hit a wrong note. That idea — a smart default that stays out of your way — runs through everything we've shipped since.

03

Build in public⁠.

Documenting the whole thing as thirteen episodes was a step outside our comfort zone — and the best way we've found to share how a thing is actually made.

[ Credits ]

Built between regular work⁠.

Concept · Build
Nuno Santos · Imaginando
Residency
gnration · Laboratórios de Verão 2017
Cabinet origin
Antique shop find
Software voice
DRC engine
Hardware
Raspberry Pi + Pisound (Blokas)
Premiere
Noite Branca 2017 · Braga
[ Previous project · 01 ]

Harpa Laser⁠.

Eight green laser beams tuned to a minor scale, one iron A-frame harp. Built with Rui Antunes for gnration's Laboratórios de Verão, then on tour to Noite Branca, BMW 100 and Casa da Música.

Open →