Street Organs
I love street organs and other music automatons! They're a very early use of binary code and a predecessor to modern animatronics, some even include simple figures that we'd recognize as automatons today.
Decap Robot Band
The Decap dance organ Robot Bands were made in the 1950's and 60's, reportedly only 10 exist. These consist of 7 92 key instruments and 3 105 keys. Most of the stages have three robot musicians: a drummer, a saxophone player, and an accordion player, but there issome varriation. One of the stages has a piano player, and the largest stage features two accordions on the wall of the organ itself, and the accordion playing robot replaced with a smaller horn.
If a catalogue of the different sizes, locations, and makeup of these organs exists, it isn't searchable on the English internet, since these organs were created in Belgium. I don't know much about them yet, but I hope to sit down and take some time to figure out the location and unique characteristics of each band.
- Dr. Ted's Musical Marvels - Decap
- Decap in general, no mention of the Robot Band
- American Treasure Tour - frer decap dance organ
- Decap in general, no mention of the Robot Band
- Decap website
- Decap in general, no mention of the Robot Band
- The Musical Box Society - Decap Robot Orchestra
- Mechanical Music Digest Archives - Decap Robot Bands in the United Kingdom
- Fairground Follies - GEBR. Decap 105 Key Robots Orchestra
- iMOD - The Free and Independent Mechanical Organ Discussion Forum
- AC Pilmer Automatic Music Ltd - Gebroeders Decap Robot Organs
- Restoration of a 105 key Robot Band now in a private collection in the Netherlands
- They also restored the “Blue Angel” 105 key Robot Band in the Krughoff collection
- Musical Box Society of Great Britain - The Music Box journal archive
- the index lacks searchable terms for Robot Band, Decap, or Krughoff, but these are still wonderful reads and will likley have more information hiding
- YouTube playlist - DECAP ROBOT BAND＆DECAP ORGAN SERIES
