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Tips
General
- If you notice your music box is quiet, put it on a wooden surface! Notice how the box will become much louder. Music boxes need a material to resonate through. Consider building a sound chamber for your music box! A hollow wooden box is a great start.
- Don't try and force the paper back through, once it's in you have to play it out! Otherwise, you can risk hurting the gears.
Composing
- When composing, I like to use MuseScore and set it to two glockenspiels, manually constricting their range to match that of a 15 note music box. This helps me quickly arrange music!
- A lot of people like to use music box specific notation editors, such as (my personal favorite) Music Box Fun. These will give you an interface that looks exactly like the paper strip you'll be punching. You can also find pieces other users have made, if you don't want or know how to make your own arragements!
- Remember that music boxes are mechanical devices and have physical limitations. Most importantly, repeated eight notes are note possible. You can get away with a bit larger intervals, however, so use that to your advantage.
Punching
- If you're worried about making mistakes, don't be! Luckily, there's an easy fix. Simply tape over the hole on the back of the strip, and the error is fixed! Plus, you can still punch through the tape!
- Still making mistakes too often? Try penciling in the hole marks before you punch! This becomes especially important when using a 30 note music box!!
- This mainly applies to 30 note boxes, but cut the end of a junk music strip off, that way you have a guide for where the notes are. You can move the guide along with you as you pencil in notes.
- You can print your own paper to punch, just make sure to use cardstock or anything on the heavier side. I don't recommend this however, as you'll have a lot of splicing to do.
- I recommend buying a large roll of paper (a 10m roll is plenty for a beginner), that way you dont't have to make any splices and have ample tape in case you mess up beyond repair.
Buying
- When choosing a music box, don't worry too much about brand. They seem to all have nearly the same quality, and I found that my off brand box even sounds better than my on brand Kikkerland 15.
- If you want a high quality box, the Wingostore 30 note with copper gears is the way to go, it sounds amazing and the copper gears means you can expect it to last a long time!
- 20 note music boxes are hard to find, before you buy one make sure you can easily find the paper for it as well.
General
- If you notice your music box is quiet, put it on a wooden surface! Notice how the box will become much louder. Music boxes need a material to resonate through. Consider building a sound chamber for your music box! A hollow wooden box is a great start.
- Don't try and force the paper back through, once it's in you have to play it out! Otherwise, you can risk hurting the gears.
Composing
- When composing, I like to use MuseScore and set it to two glockenspiels, manually constricting their range to match that of a 15 note music box. This helps me quickly arrange music!
- A lot of people like to use music box specific notation editors, such as (my personal favorite) Music Box Fun. These will give you an interface that looks exactly like the paper strip you'll be punching. You can also find pieces other users have made, if you don't want or know how to make your own arragements!
- Remember that music boxes are mechanical devices and have physical limitations. Most importantly, repeated eight notes are note possible. You can get away with a bit larger intervals, however, so use that to your advantage.
Punching
- If you're worried about making mistakes, don't be! Luckily, there's an easy fix. Simply tape over the hole on the back of the strip, and the error is fixed! Plus, you can still punch through the tape!
- Still making mistakes too often? Try penciling in the hole marks before you punch! This becomes especially important when using a 30 note music box!!
- This mainly applies to 30 note boxes, but cut the end of a junk music strip off, that way you have a guide for where the notes are. You can move the guide along with you as you pencil in notes.
- You can print your own paper to punch, just make sure to use cardstock or anything on the heavier side. I don't recommend this however, as you'll have a lot of splicing to do.
- I recommend buying a large roll of paper (a 10m roll is plenty for a beginner), that way you dont't have to make any splices and have ample tape in case you mess up beyond repair.
Buying
- When choosing a music box, don't worry too much about brand. They seem to all have nearly the same quality, and I found that my off brand box even sounds better than my on brand Kikkerland 15.
- If you want a high quality box, the Wingostore 30 note with copper gears is the way to go, it sounds amazing and the copper gears means you can expect it to last a long time!
- 20 note music boxes are hard to find, before you buy one make sure you can easily find the paper for it as well.