The surprising electro-mechanical sound machines

Mattia Gardenal built hand crank mechanical wooden toys for his children, and later, using cheap and unsophisticated electric parts, he found out how to capture the noise the mechanisms make once set in motion and transform it into sound, notes and rhythm. In a word: music!
Hence the project’s name, Beat Engine. Engines producing sequences of sounds.

Mattia’s machines are in fact sequencers made of wood, a material so versatile that humans have lived in symbiosis with it since ancient times. Wood and his imagination were enough to turn those toys into fun musical instruments that will teach you rhythmic sequences and mathematical logic.