An Electro-Acoustic Instrument Made Out of an Old Singer Sewing Machine
Gabriel Bonnin, aka Singer Sound System, plays an electro-acoustic hurdy-gurdy that’s driven by an old Singer sewing machine pedal.
My instrument is an electro-acoustic hurdy-gurdy. I just removed the crank and use a Singer machine to drive it :-) It is equipped with four integrated microphones that allow me to process the sound live, especially in Ableton Live.
Some of his most popular recent covers include the Doctor Who theme1:
And Enter Sandman by Metallica:
Oh and Daft Punk!
You can find his stuff on YouTube and Instagram.
- One commenter on Instagram remarked: “This sounds more like the Dr Who theme than the Dr who theme does”.โฉ




Comments 2
Pure genius!
But I cannot just accept the mere existence of these videos. How did you build this thing, man? What is going on with the device?
I cannot find anything about its construction or its internals, and I would watch a multi-year series (a la marble machine x) about it.
It seems that this instrument was purpose-built to perform the theme song from the 80's TV show "Knight Rider".
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