What Throwback music is enjoyable to listen to, organic, and beneficial for the environment? You receive the prize if you correctly identified wooden recordings. While lasers and the development of the CD largely destroyed the vinyl record, a resourceful software programmer named Amanda Ghassaei has used a laser cutter and wood to bring the lowly album back to life.
The outcome is a rather lovely platter with the recognisable form and circular ridges seen on vinyl records. The disc is elevated to an object of art by the wood’s grain, which imparts an organic aspect.
The ridges of the wooden album are almost twice as large as those on a typical vinyl album because cutting into wood, even with a high tech laser cutter, is less exact than cutting into vinyl – at least with the equipment utilised by the engineer.
Ghassaei initially experimented with several musical instruments using a 3D printer before realising that most people lack access to pricey 3D printers. CNC laser cutters, on the other hand, are simpler to use. Ghassaei began by extracting audio information from a WAV file and processing it using a script she created specifically for the task.
The laser-cut wooden record can play music just like its vinyl counterparts, but the sound is subpar. You can see and hear the record in all of its grandeur thanks to a Vimeo video that features it in action. The distorted sound is believed to be caused by the wide ridges. Nevertheless, making your own wooden records has appeal despite the poor sound quality. This concept is not only original and entertaining, but it also gets music back to its roots and off the radio. Ghassaei has published her step-by-step instructions for using a laser cutter to build your own wooden albums online.
You can use Ghassaei’s script, which is accessible on her website as a downloadable PDF vector file, as a blueprint if you want to utilise a laser cutter to create a wooden record. The script can be changed to handle various materials, sizes, turntable speeds, and laser cutters. The laser cutter uses the vector file as a pattern to cut the grooves after you’ve downloaded, altered, and sourced your materials and laser cutter.
Ghassaei’s wooden albums are a homage to a simpler time, while being unreliable and low-tech. a period when friends would congregate to listen to an album. There once was a tactile component to music listening that might improve or degrade the sound. Those who treated their LPs with the utmost care enjoyed a flawless listening experience, while those who didn’t experienced skips and scratches. Ghassaei has restored the tangible nature of music by physically cutting it onto a wooden disc instead of streaming it through 4G networks or the radio. She has made it feasible for everyone who yearns for a simpler period to make their own wooden albums by sharing her process and writing. You might or might not be able to regain your youth, but you’ll undoubtedly have a topic of conversation.
