Commodore 64 Accordion, “The Commodordion” Wows Viewers

Last Updated on June 3, 2023

A man has turned two Commodore 64s into a digital accordion. Yes, you read that right.

The Commodordion is essentially “A fully functional 8-bit accordion with bellows made out of floppy disks.”

When I first saw this video listed on YouTube I thought to myself something along the lines of “That man is insane! You shouldn’t do that to a Commodore 64.” Stupidly, I initially ignored it.

Of course you can’t judge a book or a tune by its cover so so when the video popped up in my news feed later I decided to click it – and my word, this is an amazing project.

So, first things first: it isn’t as bad as it looks for the Commodore 64s involved. However, when you learn that the bellows between the two computers is constructed from old 5.2-inch floppy disks, things suddenly take a depressing turn. Fortunately thanks to an on-screen caption it turns out that no good floppy disks were damaged in the creation of the video.

Created by Linus Akesson, the Comodordion is is a bit of an electronics whizbang marvel. As with any accordion the bellows controls the volume. A C64 on one side plays the melody, while the other plays chords and can also record loops and beats.

The end result is remarkable… the noises coming out of the machine (or those machines, depending how you want to look at it) are stunning. They have everything that you would want to hear from an 8-bit computer with the famous SID sound chip, and and all in all armour gritting doubting is protect in the first place – it is absolutely superb.

Watch the full video to learn more about how the Commodordian was constructed, or head to the Linus’ website. You can also fund his future “electro-musical contraptions” should you wish to.