Sensible Erection | F1 engine plays 'When The Saints Come Marching In'

Saturday, 21 December 2002

F1 engine plays 'When The Saints Come Marching In'

quote [ Load the link and press play. First you'll hear a 10-cylinder, 750 horsepower Asiatech F1 engine being warmed up. Then it performs a rousing version of "When The Saints Come Marching In", to the delight of assembled pit staff and journalists. ]

Here's how the magic was achieved (technical/musical details via F1 Racing magazine):

As we all know, a V10 engine produces five combustions per revolution at a frequency per second of 60/(5 x revs per minute), which equals 12/rpm. Therefore, to work out the revs you need to hit a particular musical note, you multiply the note's frequency by 12.
To play a 440Hz "A", for example, you need 5,280rpm. For "C", use 3,139rpm, for "F" 4,191rpm, and so on. Asiatech's French technicians (the engine, despite its name, is derived from a Peugeot design) simply programmed their engine to run through the various rev/note ranges in the correct sequence

[by randall@3:00pmGMT] [+9]

Comments

johnX2 said @ 3:09pm GMT on 21st Dec
ummm, I had a band in which my bass player was able to play something very similar to which that sounds. If u ask me I dont beleive that a car can rev THAT fast to accomplish that. but if you were to listen to the song "Anesthesia, Pulling Teeth" from Metallica's Hit The Lights album, you will hear a very same likeness.......personally i think they are full of BS and used a bass on distortion to do that...........just my veiw

randall said @ 3:17pm GMT on 21st Dec
We're talking about an engine that can rev to 17,000rpm. Of COURSE it can rev fast enough to do that. The throttle is controlled by a computer. We're not talking about a Chevy with pushrods here, we're talking about a Forumula 1 engine.

ChewyStick said @ 4:46am GMT on 22nd Dec
And while 17,000 rpm is a pretty amazing number, I like to think about it this way: 17,000 rpm equals 283.3 revolutions per second. That's even more impressive.

captainstubing said @ 8:08pm GMT on 23rd Dec
...and the then current spec of the BMW engine for the Williams team revved to 19 050 rpm during qualifying for the G.P. at Monza. And this is real, btw...the Asiatech thing...and the BMW thing.

nookieman said @ 5:31pm GMT on 21st Dec
http://www.grandprix.com/race/r697racereport.html tells the story.... It's at the bottom of the page. Real enough.

randall said @ 7:50pm GMT on 21st Dec
Thank you for finding that and posting it!

DG24karat said @ 3:14pm GMT on 21st Dec
I think that was amazing...and i know for a fact that an F1 car can reach those rpms.

johnX2 said @ 3:16pm GMT on 21st Dec
or else edited it in a music editing prog......either way, i just dont think a car can rev quickly enuff to produce a meledy such as that with such pitch variables, i still find it interesting though.

qwezxc said @ 7:00pm GMT on 21st Dec
The F1 engines can, they do have very light rotating mass, and are very very responsive. If you have to downshift into a chicane and upshift back once you are out, and do so twice in a fraction of a second, you need to be this responsive and even more. It is not like Nascar, you know.

I can certainly believe this.

Rage Optics said @ 3:21pm GMT on 21st Dec
Irritating and stupid.

jlpicard said @ 5:45pm GMT on 21st Dec
Wow! You've made my day, thanks!

fhufi said @ 9:09pm GMT on 17th Sep
Link's dead. :( Could someone put it up again?

randall said @ 1:40pm GMT on 19th Sep
I googled for the filename and found http://w1.361.telia.com/~u36118651/Chauffe2.mp3

Give that a try.

fhufi said @ 5:44pm GMT on 19th Sep
thx