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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:

Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train:

The X-Files theme:

And Enter Sandman by Metallica:

Oh and Daft Punk!

You can find his stuff on YouTube and Instagram.

  1. One commenter on Instagram remarked: “This sounds more like the Dr Who theme than the Dr who theme does”.

Comments  2

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J
Joshua Gooden

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.

L
Lorem Ipsum

It seems that this instrument was purpose-built to perform the theme song from the 80's TV show "Knight Rider".

This thread is closed for new comments & replies. Thanks to everyone for participating!