Simon and Garfunkel's 'Sound of Silence' played on noisy floppy disk drives is surprisingly melodic

YouTube/Arganalth

Simon and Garfunkel's 'Sound of Silence' played on noisy floppy disk drives is surprisingly melodic
(Image credit: YouTube/Arganalth)

If you want to know how this sausage was made, a YouTube user calling himself Arganalth specially tuned a variety of disk drives — mostly old floppy drives but also some hard disks — to play specific notes, then programmed his digital octet to perform Simon and Garfunkel's hit "The Sound of Silence," using a Raspberry Pi microcomputer unit as conductor. Apparently making music from floppy disk drives is a thing — here's a tutorial.

If you're not interested in how Arganalth performs his unexpectedly listenable magic, just watch below. And if you're not impressed, he has come a long way from when he was programming songs like Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" with his drives and a PC. In fact, Arganalth has quite a few songs up in his YouTube collection, and he promises more every few months. Thanks to Digg for highlighting the new video. --Peter Weber

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Peter Weber

Peter Weber is a senior editor at TheWeek.com, and has handled the editorial night shift since the website launched in 2008. A graduate of Northwestern University, Peter has worked at Facts on File and The New York Times Magazine. He speaks Spanish and Italian and plays bass and rhythm cello in an Austin rock band. Follow him on Twitter.