Swedish engineer creates playable accordion from 2 Commodore 64 computers

Linus kesson, a software engineer from Sweden, created an accordion out of two vintage Commodore 64 computers and floppy disks. A demo of the hack was released in an 11-minute video on the internet.

The Commodordion can be played in real time by kesson. He plays a melody with his right hand on the C64 keyboard, and controls the rhythm and bass line loop with his left hand on the other keyboard.

A lot of custom software engineering and hardware hackery went into making the Commodordion possible. Qwertuoso is a program that allows live playing of the C64's famous SID and the Sixtyforgan is a C64 with spring reverb.

The Commodordion works how it is supposed to. When kesson flips the unit on, both Commodore 64 machines boot without a display. He loads music software from a Commodore board into the machines.

A custom mixer circuit board brings together the audio signals from the two units to control the volume of the sound output. When squeezed, the bellows emit air through a hole. A microphone mounted just outside the holetranslates the noise it hears into an audio envelope that matches the sound output. The Commodordion doesn't have speakers, but it does have a jack.

kesson says that the Commodordion has a huge flaw. The unit puts strain on his left wrist, arm, and shoulder due to the position of the keys on the left-hand side of the instrument. The potential for the Commodordion to be a viable musical instrument is undermined by this.

For a one-of-a-kind homemade hack, the resulting music sounds like the perfect soundtrack to a 1980's computer game. It's a love letter to a past time.