It’s been said that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time would eventually type the complete works of William Shakespeare.
But what if what if you used synths instead?
Monkeys + Synthesizers is a project where 6 different spieces of monkeys (and some others) were given different synthesizers. The project is a promo for Voltfestivalen, a Swedish electronic music festival.
Details on both the monkeys and synths below.
Dwarf Monkey (Callithrix pygmaea)
Habitat: The Upper Amazonas. Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, north Bolivia and west Brazil.
Length: 13 cm, tail 19 cm.
Weight: 120 — 150 g
Age: 5-10 years.
Diet: Tree gum, fruit, insects and spiders.
World’s smallest monkey
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Bleeptronic 5000 (Thinkgeek.com)
64 LED button matrix synthesizer.
Origin: USA
Weight: 400 g
Dimensions: 15 x 15 cm.
Production year: 2010
Lion tamarin (Leontopithecus rosalia rosalia)
Habitat: Close to river Sao Joao and in the Poco d´Anta nature reserve, south west of Rio de Janeiro.
Length: 34-40 cm, tail 26-38 cm
Weight: 630-710 g
Age: Up to 20 years
Diet: Fruit, flowers, insects, frogs, lizards and bird’s eggs.
One of world’s most rare monkeys.
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TR-909 (Roland Corporation)
Analog, partially sample based drum machine
Origin: Japan
Dimensions: 48 x 10 x 30 cm
Weight: 4500 g
Production year: 1984
Hamadryas Baboon (Papio Hamadryas)
Habitat: North east Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.
Length: Max 76 cm, tail max 61 cm
Weight: Female 10-13 kg, male 17-25 kg.
Age: Up to 35 years
Diet: Grass, roots, fruit, seeds, insects, lizards and sometimes small mammals
Their red ass make them look sexy and also serves as a pillow
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Casiotone CT-360 (Casio)
Incredibly crappy digital synthesizer
Origin: Japan
Dimensions: 59 x 24 x 9 cm
Weight: 4.2 kg
Production year: 1987
Ring Tailed Lemur (Lemur Catta)
Habitat: South west Madagaskar.
Length: 50 cm
Weight:
Age: 25-30 years
Diet: 70% fruit, 30% leafs
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Yamaha DX7 (Yamaha)
16 voice FM Digital Synthesizer
Origin: Japan
Dimensions: 101 x 10 x 33 cm
Weight: 14500 g
Production year: 1983
6 sine wave operators per voice, 32 Algorithms
Suricate (Suricata suricatta)
Habitat: Semi-deserts in southern Africa.
Length: 25 cm.
Weight: 900 g
Age: 10-15 years.
Diet: Insects, lizards, scorpions, small birds, eggs, rodents and other small mammals.
Suricates can survive bites from poisonous scorpions and snakes that would kill a human.
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Mirage EPS16 (Ensonic)
Sampler Workstation
Origin: USA
Dimensions: 102 x 11 x 31 cm
Weight: 13000 g
Production year: 1988
8 note polyphonic, 8 bit, 32 khz sample rate, analog filters
Two-toed Sloth (Choloepus hoffmanni)
Habitat: Central America from Nicaragua and south to Venezuela, north east Brazil and nothern Peru.
Length: 58-70 cm.
Weight: 4-12 kg.
Age: 12 years, (up to 30 years in zoo).
Diet: Leaves, sprouts and fruit.
Sloths have the lowest and most varied body temperature of all mammals. It varies between 24° and 33°.
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Yamaha SHS-10 (Yamaha)
Keytar FM synthesizer
Origin: Japan
Dimensions: 67 x 28 x 6 cm
Weight: 3.4 kg
Production year: 1987
A sloth is not a monkey … just sayin’.
At 0:15 it says “monkeys and related”, so sloths are OK. 🙂
Nor is a Meerkat, but who cares. It was hilarious.
Better than some of the “bent circuit jams” I’ve seen on youtube.
Awesome! I liked the track they made at the end quite a bit.
that was amusing…. i liked when the one monkey flipped the casio over and it bounced. lol
Obviously the internet has not ruined the music business for monkeys.
I was into monkeys playing synthesizers before it was cool. The best stuff came out on vinyl 10 years ago.
Monkeys can’t dance.
Birds, however, can move to the beat:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/26/health/mental-health/music-brain-science/
As expected – you give a monkey a synthesizer, you get hip-hop (or drum and bass).
nice to know racism is alive and well.
WTF? I came here to see a CHIMPANZEE play a DX7.
So glad the baboon didn’t get the 909…