[sdiy] OT: The dirt poor spirit

[Robert Kent]

On Tue, 5 Nov 2002 media.nai at rcn.com wrote:
> Actually, last year, someone did do a piece using a nothing but a computer
> and bunch of printers.  It sounded like the speed of the carriage returns
> determined the pitch of the notes.  I'm guessing longer lines, higher notes
> (it has to return faster).

This is from a few years ago, but check out:

http://www.sat.qc.ca/the_user/dotmatrix/en/intro.html

"Each of the printers plays from a different 'part' comprised
 of rhythms and pitches made up of letters of the alphabet,
 punctuation marks and other characters."

Sounds like pitch is a result of the number of pins employed for
each character, with the carriage travelling at a consistent rate.
Sort of like mechanical pulse-width modulation.

-- 
Robert Kent
hanuman at ccsi.com