Five years ago in 2011, Paweł Zadrożniak, a university student in Poland, hooked up two floppy disk drives and began making music. Now, he’s assembled a full symphony, which he calls the “Floppotron,” a large assembly that includes 64 floppy drives and eight 8-channel controllers with envelope stimulation. The device was shown in a video on his posted to his blog. showing off the improvement made from the original two-drive setup over the course of five years.
According to Zadrożniak’s blog, he’s able to create the sound by using the motors on scanners and the floppy drives and then test the speed and voltage amounts necessary to create sound. He explains that “the higher the frequency, the greater the pitch.” You can go over to his YouTube channel and listen to the Floppotron play the opening theme from the original Star Wars, the “Imperial March,” and even Nirvana’s “Smells like Teen Spirit.” If you have any requests, maybe let him know…