Copyright-safe songs for your drone — public-domain melodies that actually slap
Worried about posting a video of your quad playing a movie theme? Here are the public-domain classics that sound great on motors — and why "old" doesn't mean "boring".
Blog
Tips, deep-dives, and field reports from the FPV motor-music project. New posts every few weeks.
From sheet music to a motor melody — a full walkthrough
You found a song you love but there's no MIDI for it — just sheet music or a tab. Here's how to get from notation to a flashable motor melody, start to finish.
Field-testing your tune — signal-to-noise tips
Your song sounds great in the workshop. At the field, with wind and ambient chatter, it might not. A few last-minute tweaks make the difference.
Motor music and flight safety — do it responsibly
Spinning motors to make sound is harmless. Doing it with props on, or in the wrong place, is not. A practical safety rundown for anyone playing with motor melodies.
Adapting chiptune originals (NES, Game Boy) to motor music
Chiptune was already four-voice polyphony on tiny speakers. It maps onto motor music almost perfectly — but there are a few translation tricks worth knowing.
Understanding Bluejay's 128-byte melody budget
Where does the "62 notes" figure come from? A look at how Bluejay actually stores a melody, why the limit exists, and how to spend those bytes wisely.
BLHeli_32 vs AM32 — startup melody support compared
Running 32-bit ESCs, so Bluejay isn't an option? Both BLHeli_32 and AM32 can play custom startup melodies. How to set them up, what the limits are, and which one to pick going forward.
My quad won't play its melody — a troubleshooting checklist
Flashed everything, wrote the melody, plugged in the battery — and nothing? Work through this list top to bottom. The cause is almost always one of these eight things.
Common RTTTL syntax mistakes (and how to fix them)
If you hand-edit RTTTL strings, you'll trip on the same quirks over and over. Here are the seven most common mistakes I see in user submissions, and what they should look like instead.
10 songs that always get a reaction at the field
After a year of arming quads in front of other pilots, these are the ten tunes that reliably make people stop and grin. With notes on why each one works.