The Siren Board

IHaveAName wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 11, 2022 4:10 pm

DangerousNoodle wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 09, 2022 9:22 pm

I just read this whole thread! This is very interesting, but I have one question. Would it be possible to actually play the siren with that keyboard? Or is it just for composing? (I am a piano enthusiast and playing a siren sounds so cool!)

If you're talking about this keyboard, yes. The keyboard was used to manually operate the dampers, live. This was especially used every day for the Marumitsu Department Store in downtown Sendai during the 9PM blast of 'This Road'.

Jonas Clark wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 07, 2022 11:40 pm

It was said that these were on the Marumitsu store, nothing was known about the difference in the seeming two different units pictured, and it was said "the sound of Sendai" was gone forever.

The reference of "the sound of sendai" relates to the Marumitsu Department Store's music siren in downtown Sendai City in Miyagi prefecture. At some point, Marumitsu merged with some other stores and formed Sakurano department store. In 2017, the Sendai store was shut down due to low funds, but it still stands today.

Wow, that's really cool! I wish I could pay one lol.

Evan, thank you for the fantastic writeup and links!

This is one of the coolest things I've seen in a while, I had no idea.

It's saddens me that these are being left to rot or getting scrapped. The world today seems to have no interest in preserving the engineering marvels of the past.

I'd love to see a museum in Japan restore one of these systems and put it on display - perhaps with a daily demonstration .

From recent videos, it appears that the Iga siren has failed to play the last note of Banjo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KsgRb2qmDE

The Wikipedia page of the music sirens (https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ミュージックサイレン) was updated by a fellow researcher on twitter recently. Many locations have just been added, as well as some more information on the current music sirens located.

IHaveAName wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 12, 2022 1:41 pm

From recent videos, it appears that the Iga siren has failed to play the last note of Banjo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KsgRb2qmDE

The music drum needs to be looked at.
The A4 note also seems to be "bouncing" more after each shutter close.

I had an idea... using historical satellite imagery to look for now-removed Music Sirens!

Jake_7367 wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:38 am

I had an idea... using historical satellite imagery to look for now-removed Music Sirens!

Never thought of that before! If your device can go back to at least the 1970s, you could possibly find where the music sirens on the Daiwa Department Stores were!

By the way, the YAMAHA logo on Tenri's 2nd generation music siren doesn't mean anything. The larger unit was installed in 1988, while the slimmer unit was installed in 1990. The 2nd generation music siren at the Yamagata Miyama City Hall was installed in 1994, also with the YAMAHA logo. Okayama was installed in 1991, with no logo. This probably means the YAMAHA logo was optional, and means nothing significant to the install date.

The current loudspeakers at the Ojiyama park appear to be a replacement for a YAMAHA music siren.

While in the first picture, a music siren does not seem to be present, it's likely it was removed before the picture was taken. The soft, electronic chimes of the loudspeakers probably seemed like a better option due to less maintenance, and also being used as an actual warning siren.

This thought abruptly came into my head: if the Uwajima music siren was deactivated in 2013, how come the planks have only come down a few months ago? Why was a side of the music siren opened in late August? Is the music siren about to be removed?

A new article about the Marumitsu music siren was found by a user on twitter this morning!
Unfortunately, it covers the music siren's removal, but fortunately, it also shows the first picture ever found of the siren!
The headline translates to something like 'Sendai losing the songs of "Moon over the Ruined Castle" and "This Road"'
The image caption possibly translates to 'The music siren mounted atop Marumitsu has failed after 34 years of service.'

Along with the article mentioned above, another person bought discs of the music siren atop Marumitsu:
"This Road":
https://twitter.com/i/status/1514907206646648833
"Moon over the Ruined Castle":
https://twitter.com/i/status/1514909487895027713
If you're wondering what all of the background sounds are, Marumitsu (along with a bunch of other department stores at the time) installed parks atop their rooves. That's why there was also a train whistle during the 2016 sounding of 'This Road'. I will be downloading the audios in case the original one is lost.