Nirvana‘s Smells Like Teen Spirit is one of the most covered tracks in rock history, and now the song has seen yet another unique cover after a “computer hardware orchestra” dropped its own binary-friendly version.
YouTuber Paweł Zadrożniak has created a device he calls ‘The Floppotron’, which uses 64 floppy drives, eight hard disk drives and two scanners to make digital music which sounds so nerdy that he’s decided to call his cover of the Nirvana classic, appropriately, Smells Like Nerd Spirit.
The ‘Floppotron’ version of Nirvana’s 1991 mega-hit (below) is super impressive, and looks like it was super time-consuming to put together. With its distinct melodic and percussive elements, it’s almost as brilliant as that time a shovel covered Smells Like Teen Spirit. Almost.
‘The Floppotron’ has also performed a version of The Imperial March from Star Wars, and the Hawaii Five-O theme song, which you can catch below alongside its performance of Smells Like Nerd Spirit.
Here’s how Zadrożniak explains the inner workings of ‘The Floppotron’:
“Every device with an electric motor is able to generate a sound. Scanners and floppy drives use stepper motors to move the head with sensors which scans the image or performs read/write operations on a magnetic disk.
“The sound generated by a motor depends on driving speed. The higher the frequency, the greater the pitch.
“Hard disks use a magnet and a coil to tilt the head. When voltage is supplied for long enough, the head speeds up and hits the bound making the ‘drum hit’ sound. The disk head coil can also be used as a speaker to play tones or even music, but… that would be too easy and too obvious.”
Zadrożniak has already put out the call for song suggestions for his next ‘Floppotron’ video, and some of his fans’ latest ideas include the Game Of Thrones theme song and the ridiculously complicated Dragonforce track Through The Fire And Flames, which we’d love to see happen.
For more information on ‘The Floppotron’, head to Zadrożniak’s website.
Watch: The Floppotron: Smells Like Nerd Spirit
Watch: The Floppotron: The Imperial March (Star Wars)
Watch: The Floppotron: Hawaii Five-O
