Toy Piano Demo Song: 'Jingle Bells' (HQ)

This arrangement of the Song "Jingle Bells" was used on many toy pianos in the 1990s and early 2000s. Some of the Brands were "Music Fan" or "Euro Play" I extracted all of the piano's sounds and re-arranged the song in stereo. The Software used to visualize the notes is called Synthesia. Have fun!

[drewo.]

I GREW UP WITH THIS RENDITION FROM AN OLD TOY KEYBOARD THAT WAS RED ON THE TOP WITH BLUE AND GREEN BUTTONS, MAJORITY OF THE BOTTOM, SIDES AND BACK WERE BLUE, HAD BIG GREEN CIRCULAR BUTTONS FOR BEATS ON THE LEFT OF THE KEYS, AND A BIG YELLOW SPEAKER ABOVE THOSE GREEN BUTTONS! (ALSO HAD GREEN HANDLES ON THE TOP AND SIDE, AS WELL AS A GREEN ON/OFF SWITCH WITH A GREEN LIGHT!) I REMEMBER I WAS OBSESSED WITH THAT PIANO AND THIS SPECIFIC RENDITION OF JINGLE BELLS THAT IT WOULD PLAY! THANK YOU SO MUCH! SORRY FOR ALL CAPS, I’M JUST SO HAPPY!!!💖💖💖💖

[MeenolikieWTF]

Takes me all the way back to grade school in Cuba. I'm 31 now.
This is awesome

[MixelsFan]

"What's not to understand? Eh! Steve!'s mouth exploded the universe, and that blond guy did a tiny, tiny dance." - Homestar Runner (2004)

[nickirafiei]

my song maker keyboard was different. it had black sides and back, with 2 yellow speakers, but it had all the same songs, animal sounds, and keyboard voices. thanks for the video.

[clawsoft-official]

Eh! Steve, get your sassy-frass out my berled holiday cabbage!

[AidanNicholasCollins]

holy crap how did he get the samples???

[BydysawdBaroque]

Wow! This is an amazing video! I owned three different variations of this thing over time: the first one was one of those pretend grand pianos with a stool and microphone, the second one was a small blue keyboard I believe was bought from a charity shop and the last one is a red version of the keyboard shown in the video (called "My Music Center" according to the box). This is also the keyboard which introduced me to The Beatles' song "Let It Be" years ago. There have been variations of the CPU across different models, e.g. one replaces "mandolin" with "banjo" (same waveform but without amplitude modulation) and music box with "flute" (same waveform but envelope is sustained), and there's of course different songs.


What sets this particular keyboard apart from other toy keyboards is that it uses one-cycled waveforms similar in vein to 80's digital wavetable synthesizers such as the PPG Wave and the Korg DW-8000. It also has a rather unusual detuning technique: Unlike conventional synthesizers where both oscillators are equally tracked across the keyboard, meaning the differentiating frequencies of the two oscillators beat faster as you move up the keyboard and slower as you move down the keyboard, this thing uses a technique where the sub-oscillator is tuned at a constant frequency rate in relative to the frequency of the main oscillator, producing a fixed beating "rhythm" (similar in effect to that of a LFO): as you move up the keyboard the sub-oscillator moves closer in tune with the main oscillator, although never actually phase locking, whereas moving down the keyboard drifts the two oscillators further and further out of tune of each other! Cool, eh? I do wish there was a way to knock off the chorusing effect so that you can play with the full 4 notes of polyphony. It's also worth mentioning that any button on the keyboard counts as a held note; not just the keys.


I also have a theory where the samples of the eight presets originated from:


Piano - Appears to be a short-looped waveform of the Roland JV-1080's stock piano sound.
Organ - An inverse sawtooth waveform.
Violin - Appears to be mixture of a square waveform and a sawtooth waveform. (?)
Trumpet - A symmetrical pulse waveform (same effect if you mix a pulse waveform at 12% and another one at 88%.
Mandolin - Appears to be short-looped waveform of the banjo sound from Roland's SoundCanvas series of modules.
Bell - Sounds like two sine waves stacked two octaves apart, or it could be the tail end of a vibraphone sample.
Music Box - Just a simple sine waveform. :)
Guitar - A lo-fi version of the sitar sound from Roland's SoundCanvas series of modules (Go figure!).


You mentioned in the description that you extracted the sounds from keyboard. How did you accomplish this? I've wanted to do this myself for a long time, but didn't know where to begin. Did you add a headphone jack and record it that way or did you manage to find a way to hack into the CPU and dump all of its contents? I believe this thing uses a COB (chip-on-board) module to store its data.


Thank you!


P.S. Sorry for rambling on. ;)

[michaelsher]

I still have that keyboard at my grandmas house. I've had that thing since 1995 and I'm only drain the batteries on it once. That keyboard also I discovered has let it be by The Beatles is one of the time it sounds I still have that keyboard at my grandmas house. I've had that thing since 1995 and I'm only drain the batteries on it once. That keyboard also I discovered has let it be by The Beatles is one of the demo tunes

[saxman]

Oh my gosh, this sounds amazing! I remember one of my friends back in grade school had a keyboard with these same sounds and would love to play on it especially for the demos! Would LOVE if I could somehow get my hands on the soundfont you made for it as well as for the other demo songs!

[Power-Hunnid]

Hope this gets turned into a MIDI File.

[yellowcuteflo]

MIDI File for the song? I have Sythenisa on my Windows 10 laptop

[karolinapuchaczewska]

Kwiatek solarny
Jesteście gotowi

Wszyscy
Tak jest solarny

[loganwyatt]

Are used to have a keyboard that sounded like that but it used to belong to my sister. I remember it used to glitch out 24 seven.

[pmd]

Did you extract the sounds by recording the toy's audio signal? Or did you extract directly from the ROM? The samples sound really clear here. Would love a SoundFont of it!

[fukkatsu]

Could you give me a list of all the demo songs from the toy piano please?

[christophercruz]

Can you get the songs from Fisher-price's classical chorus Gym and make it stereo?

[vincenzostefanelli]

I still have this keyboard. But when i was child I had a Keyboard called "High Frequency" with the same sounds but with different demo songs. Do you know this model, could you tell me if I can find the songs of that model?