Diego Stocco records a stapler, creates entire track

A blue stapler
A blue stapler

Not content with burning pianos for Spectrasonic's Omnisphere virtual synth or converting a noisy old typewriter into an even noisier old typewriter in the name of 'music', Diego Stocco has been at it again. This time it's: Music From A Stapler.

As the title suggests, the sound designer-extraordinaire has made a piece of music using nothing more than the sounds created by a stapler.

Stocco gently opened and closed the piece of stationary, recording the twangs and creaks made by the spring-loaded mechanism. Then he hit the studio for a spot of sound mangling/composing, as he explains to Retro Thing: "what you can do now was just impossible in the past without a full studio with expensive stuff."

"The kind of sound design I did for this is pretty intense; there's granular, subtractive, and resampling synthesis involved, it's a lot of work," he continued.

Tubular bells?

You can watch a short video of the recording process and hear the finished article here. Surprisingly, it sounds a bit like tubular bells…

Tom Porter worked on MusicRadar from its mid-2007 launch date to 2011, covering a range of music and music making topics, across features, gear news, reviews, interviews and more. A regular NAMM-goer back in the day, Tom now resides permanently in Los Angeles, where he's doing rather well at the Internet Movie Database (IMDB).