Welcome to Broken Orchestra Typewriter

Hi there. Please start typing…

This is the Broken Orchestra Typewriter - a living composition made up of hundreds of musical ideas that composes music as you compose letters and words. Try typing the same word a few times and see what happens...

The sounds you are hearing come from recordings of broken instruments, and are part of a project that has inspired people to ‘adopt’ hundreds of badly damaged instruments and raise funds to repair and return them to the public schools.

As you type, hundreds of musical ideas are being ordered, processed, layered, filtered, and repeated according to the words you choose and how you type them. Each time you hit the spacebar you re-calibrate the system and deepen the algorithm that composes along with you.

You can use the Controls to adjust, playback, save and share your composition. Thanks and have fun!

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Headphones recommended. Turn up the volume!

Enter you email and we will send you a link to your piece that you can share:

Your privacy is important to us. We will never share your email address.
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Broken Orchestra

In early 2017, Found Sound Nation catalogued and recorded the sounds of over 800 broken instruments from the Philadelphia public school system. These recordings were part of an effort, led by Temple Contemporary, to create a Symphony for a Broken Orchestra and inspire the public to ‘adopt’ hundreds of school-owned broken instruments and raise funds to repair and restore them to the schools. As of Fall 2018 roughly 1,000 previously broken instruments were ‘adopted’, repaired and returned to the Philadelphia public school district. If you would like to make a donation please visit The Fund for the School District of Philadelphia. We hope this portal can inspire continued interest in this project and our collective reinvestment in music in schools. It features:

Broken Orchestra Typewriter - a living composition made up of hundreds of musical ideas played by broken instruments that reveals and deepens itself as you type; Symphony for Broken Instruments + Suites - a live recording of the symphony by David Lang for over 400 student, amateur and professional musicians; and Suites for a Broken Orchestra, new works by renowned producers reimagining the broken orchestra; Broken Instruments Sample Pack - a free download of our sample library

Symphony for a Broken Orchestra was commissioned by Temple Contemporary at The Tyler School of Art. Major support is provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with additional support from the Barra Foundation.

Symphony For Broken Instruments

“Last year I got an amazing phone call, out of the blue, from Robert Blackson, who runs the contemporary art gallery at Temple University. He told me that he had somehow – miraculously – gotten access to all the broken instruments in the Philadelphia public school system, and he asked if I had any interest in writing something for them. In fact, I did! Robert didn’t know it, but my first thought about these instruments was autobiographical. I am only a musician because there were robust music programs in the public schools that I attended as a child – a public school music education is why I am here today. My first thought was that 1500 broken musical instruments meant 1500 missed opportunities to change school children's’ lives, the way my life had been changed.

What I hoped to do in these pieces was to give untrained and lesser trained performers the chance to do what our most trained and sophisticated performers do all the time – to work really hard together, to solve a tough musical problem together, to make something beautiful together. Our ensemble has a range of everyone in the city – from school children just learning how to play to amateurs to future professionals to members of the Philadelphia Orchestra. People from all across the city, coming together, making music. It is a beautiful sight. Of course, in this piece, one of the problems these musicians have come together to solve is that their instruments don’t work as they are expected to. Some are barely changed, some are just more complicated to play, and some are now incapable of doing what they were designed for. Part of each player’s job is learning what each instrument can and cannot do, and then adapting himself or herself to it. These instruments, like the people who play them, are unique, extraordinary. It has been a joy to work with them.”

David Lang, Introduction to Symphony for Broken Instruments
Recorded live on December 3rd, 2017 at the 23rd Street Armory, Philadelphia
Engineered & Mixed by Devin Greenwood & Arun Pandian

Press

"Parents are used to hearing that school budgets are putting the squeeze on activities like music and sports. But rarely has a solution to such a problem been as elaborate and artistic as the “Symphony for a Broken Orchestra.”

Ted Loos, The New York Times
November 6, 2017

“The piece repurchases the dreams that these instruments represent for children, whether it’s performing Mozart with a chamber ensemble or wailing on a tenor sax. Making new art is the best redemption imaginable for a broken instrument.”

Kristen Capps, The Atlantic
December 4, 2017

“Has a symphony ever been so noble, yet so whacked? Even before its premiere on Sunday at the 23rd Street Armory, the Symphony for a Broken Orchestra had fulfilled its larger function in the musical ecosystem: By simply writing a major work for 400 broken school instruments, the much-awarded composer David Lang had called attention to the need for more functional musical instruments for the betterment of the educational system and the community at large.”

David Patrick Stearns, The Philadelphia Inquirer
December 3rd, 2017

Suites for a Broken Orchestra

In early 2017 Found Sound Nation catalogued and recorded the sounds of over 800 broken instruments from the Philadelphia public school system. As these recordings became the raw material for David Lang's new orchestral work Symphony for Broken Instruments, we quickly realized that we were in the process of archiving a unique collection of sounds - a trove of singular, never-to-be-played-again instruments. We invited a larger community of producers to creatively reimagine these broken instrument samples, generating new works in any style and by any means they wished.

With over 120 submissions from around the world, Suites from a Broken Orchestra presents our favorite submissions from the Remix Contest, alongside a selection of commissioned tracks by acclaimed producers and musicians including Daedelus, Julia Holter, Ian Chang (Son Lux), Miho Hatori, Half Waif and Angelica Negron. The Symphony was part of a larger effort, led by Temple Contemporary, to inspire the public to ‘adopt’ these instruments and raise the funds needed to repair and restore these instruments to schools.

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Broken Orchestra Remix Contest:

From December 2017 to February 2018 the Broken Orchestra Remix Contest invited musicians and producers from around the world to remix the Broken Instrument sample pack. The single criteria was to use only the sound library as the raw material for creation and embrace the instruments’ brokenness.

Remix Contest Winners: Diego Abelardo, Pablo Mirete, Krunal Kumpavat & Saskia Teles Peter
Executive Produced by: Kyla Rose Smith Mastered by: Luisa Puterman

Special thanks to the incredible musicians and students in Philadelphia who recorded the sounds of over 800 broken instruments with us: Adam Abramson, Aiden, Alex Vogelsong, Alyssa Almeida, Andy Thierauf, Ardath Belzer, Ben Mulholland, Carlos Santiago, Colleen Law, Connor Przybyszewski, Dan Blacksberg, Daniel Nosheny, David Fishkin, Elena Moon Park, Elliott Levin, Emily Schuman, Emma Method, Eric Derr, Erica Corbo, Jay Krush, Jeffrey Ferguson, Jeremy Thal, Jesse Kudler, Joshua Machiz, Joshua Neale, Julie Lipson, Justin Walcroft, Katelyn Cyril, Kevin Vu, Koofreh Umoren, Laura Neuman, Martin Ventura, Matthew Engle, Mel Gervasio, Mick Ricereto, Patrick Oberstaedt, Pete Angevine, Steve Davit,Tessa Harrison, Tom Kraines, Tracy Nguyen, Tyler Illis, Veronica Jurkiewicz, Wilson Shook, Zachary McKenna, Zephyr Kremer, Zubin Hensler

Broken Instruments Sample Pack

The Broken Instruments Sample Pack is a free download of Found Sound Nation's favorite sounds from the Symphony for a Broken Orchestra Project. To receive the sample packs please complete the form and we will send you download links to both the Full (2.3GB) and Selects (800 MB) Broken Instruments sample banks. Feel free to email us at brokenorchestra@foundsoundnation.org if you have additional questions or ideas:

Request Sample Pack Download

Conditions of Use for Symphony For A Broken Orchestra Sample Pack

These recordings are being made available free of charge with the intention of fostering and inspiring creativity in the field.

What can you do with it?
You can use these samples in your own creative projects, including commercial projects such as an album that you will sell. As long as you’re using them in the context of something new you are creating you are granted non-exclusive rights.

What can't you do with it?
You can't repost, repackage or redistribute the samples as a whole or as part of another sample library or collection of audio tracks or presets, even if you're not charging for it.

What are my responsibilities?
You must include the following attribution and credit for any usage of the samples. However, you must not indicate Found Sound Nation or the Broken Orchestra project’s endorsement or involvement in your creative output beyond providing the samples when you include the credit language.

Audio samples provided by Found Sound Nation and Symphony For A Broken Orchestra. Symphony for a Broken Orchestra was commissioned by Temple Contemporary at The Tyler School of Art. Major support is provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with additional support from the Barra Foundation.

Download the full terms of use

Your privacy is important to us. We will never share your email address.

All samples were recorded by Found Sound Nation at Temple Contemporary in Philadelphia from November, 2016 - January 2017. Special thanks to the incredible musicians and students in Philadelphia who recorded with us: Adam Abramson, Aiden, Alex Vogelsong, Alyssa Almeida, Andy Thierauf, Ardath Belzer, Ben Mulholland, Carlos Santiago, Colleen Law, Connor Przybyszewski, Dan Blacksberg, Daniel Nosheny, David Fishkin, Elena Moon Park, Elliott Levin, Emily Schuman, Emma Method, Eric Derr, Erica Corbo, Jay Krush, Jeffrey Ferguson, Jeremy Thal, Jesse Kudler, Joshua Machiz, Joshua Neale, Julie Lipson, Justin Walcroft, Katelyn Cyril, Kevin Vu, Koofreh Umoren, Laura Neuman, Martin Ventura, Matthew Engle, Mel Gervasio, Mick Ricereto, Patrick Oberstaedt, Pete Angevine, Steve Davit,Tessa Harrison, Tom Kraines, Tracy Nguyen, Tyler Illis, Veronica Jurkiewicz, Wilson Shook, Zachary McKenna, Zephyr Kremer, Zubin Hensler

Broken Orchestra Typewriter

The Broken Orchestra typewriter can turn your words, poems, conversations, nonsense, or anything you type into music. Made up of hundreds of musical ideas played by broken instruments, the typewriter is a living composition that reveals and deepens itself as you type. The typewriter’s algorithm draws on Zipf’s law - a statistical phenomenon that, while frequently observed, remains somewhat of a mystery. The typewriter was created by Christopher Marianetti and Pete Wise and is inspired by the Symphony for a Broken Orchestra project which collected, catalogued and repaired over a thousand broken musical instruments for the Philadelphia public school system in 2018.


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The Typewriter features samples of Broken Orchestra Remixes by:

Alex Chumak, Alexandre Moreno, Ana Lopez Reyes, Andy Li, Angelica Negron, Apenino, Arthur Decloedt, Ben Brody, Daedelus, Daniel Ortiz, David Crowell, David Donaldson, Diego Abelardo, Dima Kay, Dj Carlos, Elijah Jamal, Elyse Tabet, Enrico de Trizio, Eric Hogg, Gabriel Francisco Lemos, Gavin Brivik, 6zm, Half Waif, Hugh Sheehan, Ian Chang, Jett Ilagan, John Boswell, John Darling, Josh James Lim, Julia Holter, Justin Jaramillo, Keith Sweaty, Kevin Brezolin, King Shi, Krunal Kumpavat, Max Bonifacio, Michael Kim-Sheng, Miho Hatori, Mitya, Mustelide, Pablo Mirete, Robert Trusko, Stephen Adams, Sunitram and Thiago Pospichil Marques.

Privacy Policy

Your privacy is critically important to us.

It is Found Sound Nation’s policy to respect your privacy regarding any information we may collect while operating our website. This Privacy Policy applies to foundsoundnation.org (hereinafter, "us", "we", or "foundsoundnation.org"). We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting personally identifiable information you may provide us through the Website. We have adopted this privacy policy ("Privacy Policy") to explain what information may be collected on our Website, how we use this information, and under what circumstances we may disclose the information to third parties. This Privacy Policy applies only to information we collect through the Website and does not apply to our collection of information from other sources. This Privacy Policy, together with the Terms and conditions posted on our Website, set forth the general rules and policies governing your use of our Website. Depending on your activities when visiting our Website, you may be required to agree to additional terms and conditions.

Website Visitors

Like most website operators, Found Sound Nation collects non-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. Found Sound Nation’s purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to better understand how Found Sound Nation’s visitors use its website. From time to time, Found Sound Nation may release non-personally-identifying information in the aggregate, e.g., by publishing a report on trends in the usage of its website. Found Sound Nation also collects potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for logged in users and for users leaving comments on http://foundsoundnation.org blog posts. Found Sound Nation only discloses logged in user and commenter IP addresses under the same circumstances that it uses and discloses personally-identifying information as described below.

Gathering of Personally-Identifying Information

Certain visitors to Found Sound Nation’s websites choose to interact with Found Sound Nation in ways that require Found Sound Nation to gather personally-identifying information. The amount and type of information that Found Sound Nation gathers depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, we ask visitors who sign up for our newsletter or those who wish to have access to the Symphony For A Broken Orchestra sample pack at http://foundsoundnation.org to provide a username and email address.

Security

The security of your Personal Information is important to us, but remember that no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your Personal Information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

Protection of Certain Personally-Identifying Information

Found Sound Nation discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only to those of its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations that (i) need to know that information in order to process it on Found Sound Nation’s behalf or to provide services available at Found Sound Nation’s website, and (ii) that have agreed not to disclose it to others. Some of those employees, contractors and affiliated organizations may be located outside of your home country; by using Found Sound Nation’s website, you consent to the transfer of such information to them. Found Sound Nation will not rent or sell potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information to anyone. Other than to its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations, as described above, Found Sound Nation discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only in response to a subpoena, court order or other governmental request, or when Found Sound Nation believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Found Sound Nation, third parties or the public at large.

If you are a registered user of http://foundsoundnation.org and have supplied your email address, Found Sound Nation may occasionally send you an email to tell you about new features, solicit your feedback, or just keep you up to date with what’s going on with Found Sound Nation and our products. We primarily use our blog to communicate this type of information, so we expect to keep this type of email to a minimum. If you send us a request (for example via a support email or via one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish it in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users. Found Sound Nation takes all measures reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorized access, use, alteration or destruction of potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information.

Aggregated Statistics

Found Sound Nation may collect statistics about the behavior of visitors to its website. Found Sound Nation may display this information publicly or provide it to others. However, Found Sound Nation does not disclose your personally-identifying information.

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To enrich and perfect your online experience, Found Sound Nation uses "Cookies", similar technologies and services provided by others to display personalized content, appropriate advertising and store your preferences on your computer. A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Found Sound Nation uses cookies to help Found Sound Nation identify and track visitors, their usage of http://foundsoundnation.org, and their website access preferences. Found Sound Nation visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using Found Sound Nation’s websites, with the drawback that certain features of Found Sound Nation’s websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies. By continuing to navigate our website without changing your cookie settings, you hereby acknowledge and agree to Found Sound Nation's use of cookies.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Found Sound Nation may change its Privacy Policy from time to time, and in Found Sound Nation’s sole discretion. Found Sound Nation encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us.