Whiskey Workshop

With a tightly packed suitcase me and Biff head to the Pixel-Lab HQ in Darley Abbey where Biffs recording studio is located. A longer than brief stop off in the Abbey to fuel our creative mind cogs, an informative taxi ride and several noticings later and we arrive at the Mill.

I’ve decided to use an early piano recording Biff did for the project and cut a simple introductory edit for Twinklebox. Biff explains that the piece was recorded at the wrong speed and that it’s in a different key to what he had originally wrote it and how this might complicate writing a complimentary part on the music box. He then discovers that the music box only has white notes, with no flats, and this might prove awkward to write with due to the original piano chords being in B flat. Nevertheless, we both like the original recording of the piano and Biffs decides that with a little musical magicery he can write something to work with it.

Biffs explanation:

For the melody to be in tune with the piano it has to be in B flat, but the music box only plays white notes, so in order to make it possible for the box to play it, I’ve transposed it up to E. Now the only problem is that the music box is pitched at concert A flat.

Anyway, we watched a couple of reference videos and worked out an appropriate tempo the tune must be to achieve a sense that the tune is in fact being played by the music box and not just part of an accompanying track. Due to Twinklebox’s music cylinder being his driving wheel, his speed of motion is directly linked to the tempo of his music. If the tempo is too slow he will literally look motionless, if he moves too fast the melody of his tune would be lost completely. There’s a certain amount of flexibility between these values before the connection between the music box and the music is lost.