The Mammoth Beat Organ is a modular, mechanical music contraption designed and built by Graham Dunning and I. Designed as a two-player, semi-autonomous musical instrument, it plays unusual, sometimes erratic compositions drawing on drone music, minimalist repetition and fairground organ techniques.
At its core is a driveshaft that all main units run off. Acoustic sound making devices are built into or onto the main units, providing me and Graham with an ever growing list of things to design and build. As such, it is always On The Bench.
Currently in development for the Mammoth Beat Organ are an updated bellows system and a replacement Intonarumori Hurdy Gurdy.
We mostly document our work on this through our YouTube channel. The video below provides a good introduction to it.
For an in-depth description of it and two modules we recently created, here’s what we presented at NIME 2020.