In a traditional hand-crank music box, a rotating cylinder is dotted with pins. The pattern of pins, little protrusions on the cylinder, pluck a stationary comb as the crank turns the cylinder. The subsequent vibrations create the sound. Think about placing a metal ruler overhanging a table, when you flick it, you’ll hear the vibration. Alone, the sound is pretty quiet because these combs are so small—which is where the box comes in. The housing plays just as vital of a role as the components making the sound, the vibrations of the comb combine with the box (a hollow vessel) that it sits in and on, creating a resonance, amplifying the sound.
There’s a simple, modern version of the music box that doesn’t use the metal cylinder with pins, instead it takes paper, paper with holes corresponding to notes. Instead of a protruded point that raises a tooth on the comb, a resting tooth gets pulled when a hole comes through and hooks a gear that pulls the tooth. It’s the opposite way to achieve the same thing.
The music box is an object of nostalgia. As with many such objects, it seems hard to pin down whether this is specific to this moment in history, the accelerated automation of things due to the advancement of technology, or if it’s a result of our age, the sensation of growing up and feeling nostalgic.
As a kid, there was a sense of wonder to the music box. That’s gone now. The music box: an analog, mechanical process has been declared obsolete by the forces that are in charge, capitalists that can not and will not understand the relationship to the fine details of the object, only the profits that can be extracted from the product. But also, the sense of wonder: conditioned out of us when we grow up in a society that deprioritizes play, exploration, and wonderment.
What we lost the capacity to experience whimsy? Has it been robbed from us?
The soft, simple, and charming sounds of a music box make it the ideal format to be paired with Hiroshi Yoshimura’s minimalism. The melodic sequence of notes—that repeat with overlaps—mimic gentle waves, like coming into consciousness after waking on a lazy weekend morning. Unlike a blaring alarm clock or waking just to get to work, the ideal morning is one in which a hazy subconscious can transition into a clear awake-ness—the clarity coming at its own pace, and for its own sake. Perhaps that’s why Soft Wave seems to tap into something child-like, where leisure time was not only more available, but able to be experienced with less adult-responsibility guilt. The sound of a music box, already a vessel for nostalgia, becomes a mind massage reminding us to wake in our own time.