What is it? The Musical typewriter is a functioning antique manual typewriter that has been modified so that each time a key is pressed music is made.
Type stories, songs, and poems while creating music at the same time!
How did it come to be? The Musical Typewriter emerged from a pandemic discussion between Los Angeles and Edinburgh between Andrew McGregor and Peter Black about the possibility of creating a typewriter as a musical instrument. Leroy Anderson’s ‘The Typewriter’ symphony piece existed but was there the possibility for something else? What came about was the idea to combine McGregor’s practice of typewriter busking and creating original poems for people on request yet on a typewriter with a musical capability itself!
As the discussion evolved the challenge of getting typewriter keys to register as musical notes became apparent. Black suggested that someone somewhere must have solved some of the problems in implementing this and after some searching McGregor discovered that indeed indeed someone had for a USB typewriter kit had been created. The next steps were to acquire a kit and get it working on a typewriter and then to translate the keys to musical notes.
Music producer Jed Smith subsequently appeared to create the software solution pegging keystrokes to MIDI and VOILA! The Musical Typewriter was born!