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Unfortunately, my favorite uncle just passed away. He's the one that taught me all about puzzling, and supposedly found Davey Jones' treasure in his youth. I miss him very much, however, I just received a package from his Attorney, containing this message from him.

Nephew dearest I leave to you: One Music Box so that you may always remember your beginnings and what I taught you, notes are your friends, only they can lead you where you wish to go. Go gently into the world, recalling always that; "As you keep your home to the left, may trouble always sail over you."

It came with this box, which... isn't exactly melodious.

Music Box

This all feels a little out of character for him, so I think he set me a challenge. Can you help me figure out what he was trying to say?

After a few hours of pondering, as I'm running my fingers idly over the inside of the lid, I notice that there are the better part of a thousand tiny buttons worked into the wood, Each of which can be individually pushed to toggle between the depressed and original states.

Big hint:

Hidden in the message are partial instructions on how to parse the music. A few lines represent clue position, and after splitting on punctuation, the beginnings become the rules.

Sconibulus
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  • ^vote with a note: Any chance of sharing the note sequence in another form? List of note names/numbers? Midi file (looks like normal enough music to make me wonder how it sounds)?? – humn Dec 17 '16 at 03:54
  • @humn This is the site I used to create it, which can also play it. It's my first time using it, so I hope it can't be edited without losing the save that exists. https://flat.io/score/5854256275e32f3ab4f911b1-puzzle – Sconibulus Dec 17 '16 at 05:49
  • Superduper, Sconibulus, thank you for sharing the workbench itself! I'll be very careful (also looks like there is a way to export a backup). – humn Dec 17 '16 at 05:55
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    Peer pressure told me to remove the answer and put a pastebin link with the transcribed notes instead. – Mithical Dec 18 '16 at 20:04
  • That was a painful listen :). Hopefully there's more to it :) – LeppyR64 Dec 19 '16 at 04:40
  • @Mithrandir I can't access that link. Can you make a Community Wiki post for the notes please? – LeppyR64 Dec 19 '16 at 16:16
  • [tag:imgur-maze]? Seems suspicious... also watch out for [tag:steganography]. – EKons Dec 19 '16 at 18:15
  • I’m no expert in music, or even music notation, but I believe that I’ve spotted a couple of discrepancies. I’ve marked four notes in the score and the transcription (note #4 is the same as #3; I included it just because they’re connected), and four pairs of notes. Notes #1 and #3 appear to be identical — they are both straddling the middle line — while #2 is different (below the middle line). But #1 and #2 are transcribed as a, while #3 is transcribed as b. … (Cont’d) – Peregrine Rook Dec 20 '16 at 20:52
  • (Cont’d) …  Also, note pair #6 and #8 appear to be identical — they both show a descending sequence.  But #6 is transcribed as g-e, while #8 is transcribed as e-g.  Compare to pairs #5 and #7, which are identical to each other (both ascending; different from  #6 and #8) and which are both transcribed as e-g. Can anybody resolve these issues? (And check for more? I caught these in a quick glance; I haven’t done a careful search.) – Peregrine Rook Dec 20 '16 at 20:53
  • I have a feeling there's an element of brain**** – bleh Dec 20 '16 at 23:04
  • i think i have found out what you have to do for the first two steps of this puzzle, but it requires some work. i hope i have enough time tomorrow... – supinf Dec 24 '16 at 01:56
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    Are you sure all the notes are correct? When I do what I think is the correct step, I get 3 more blocks in the rows than the columns. – Volatility Dec 24 '16 at 06:47
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    @Volatility, sorry, there were three errors I made in the sheet music that slipped through my testing. I was able to correct them with the help of Leppy's second-eyes transcription. – Sconibulus Dec 27 '16 at 15:09
  • A new image has been updated with the correct notes – Sconibulus Dec 27 '16 at 15:11

2 Answers2

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Step 1: The Music Box

The music transcribes to a NONOGRAM. The first letters after each punctuation mark in uncles letter combined produce it.

Transcription:

Your "trouble" is the treble clef and is the numbers on the horizontal axis. Your "home" or base (bass clef) is on your left, for the vertical axis.

The hard part is how to convert the notes into the numbers. Each bar is a column and row in the puzzle, so it will be a 30x30 (900 cells, the better part of 1000 as the hint produces)

Transcribed Values: (using @supinf method) 

BASS CLEF (ROWS):
7 1 2 3 7
1 1 2 2 2 1 1 
1 3 1 3 1 1 2 1 3 1
1 3 1 2 1 1 1 1 3 1
1 3 1 1 4 3 1 3 1
1 1 1 1 5 1 1 
7 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 7
2 1 1
5 5 1 2 1 2 1 1 1
2 1 1 1 1 9 1
2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1
4 1 3 1 1 1 3 1
1 1 2 1 1 2 1 1 2
1 2 1 2 3 9 1
2 2 2 3 1 2 1 2
1 2 2 2 1 2 1 1 1 
8 1 3 1 2
2 2 1 2 1 6 1 1
1 1 1 2 1 2 3 1
1 3 3 1 1 1 1 2 1
1 3 4 1 6 3
1 3 2 1 5
7 1 1 3 3 1 3
1 1 1 2 2 3 1 1
1 3 1 1 1 2 5 2
1 3 1 3 2 1 1 4
1 3 1 1 2 1 3 4
1 1 1 2 2 1 1 4 1
7 1 2 2 1 2 1 


TREBLE CLEF (Columns)
Columns
7 3 2 5 7
1 1 3 3 1 1
1 3 1 1 4 1 1 1 3 1
1 3 1 2 1 2 2 1 1 3 1
1 3 1 1 2 3 2 1 3 1
1 1 1 2 3 1 1 1
7 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 7
4 1 2 1
1 1 2 1 1 5 5
4 8 1 2 1
1 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 2
3 3 3 3
1 1 3 1 1 2 1 1 2 1
2 1 3 3
1 3 1 1 2 1 1 2 1 1
1 2 1 1 3 1 6
1 1 3 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1
1 3 2 3 1 2 1
2 1 1 1 2 1 3 1
1 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1
1 1 1 8 8 2
3 2 2 1 3 1
7 1 1 1 4 1 1 3
1 1 2 4 2 2 1 1 
1 3 1 3 1 1 1 5 2
1 3 1 1 2 1 1 2 3
1 3 1 1 1 3 3 3 1
1 1 1 1 1 3 4
7 1 1 1 2 1 1

Completed:

I wasn't able to entirely solve the nonogram, but since it's a QR code, I was able to solve enough of it for the error correction to solve it.
enter image description here
This converts to this QR Code: enter image description here It's points to ...

STEP 2: The Lockers

enter image description here
This is another QR code with missing data. The numbers indicate the number of cells in an adjacent flood fill of each cell. The flood flows to the same colour and the opposite colour is a wall. Filling it in following the rules yields this grid:
Grid
This is the QR Code that follows:
enter image description here
Leading to...

Finale

We have found the pot of gold!
enter image description here

LeppyR64
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5

another PARTIAL ANSWER, in the hope that posting this brings us closer to the solution:

Step 1:

Using the big hint, i took the first letter after each punctuation in the message. This results in "Nonogram", which is a type of puzzle (google it!) that i fortunately already knew. The notes in the music sheet represent the numbers for the nonogram. Studying the rhythms in each bar, i noticed that the rythm only depends on the number of notes, so the rhythm is irrelevant. Since there are many notes on the lowest line ("e" and "g"), and nonogram usually have lots of "1", i suspected that the notes and numbers are in a natural order (treble: e->1, f->2, g->3, ... bass: g->1, a->2, b->3, etc.). Either treble corresponds to the columns or to the rows (and bass to the other one), but this is not important, since we can just flip the image in order to get the other combination.

Partial Step 2:

obviously, solving the nonogram :). due to its size, it is not easy in my opinion, even though i have seen a (smaller) nonogram before. Note that "the better part of a thousand" refers to the 29^2=841 pixels that you can toggle. If you start solving this, you notice pretty fast, that the result will be a QR code. Unfortunately, i probably made a mistake in my solution of the nonogram, as there seems to be a contradiction between rows and columns (see column 14). Here is my partial result:

enter image description here

what step 3 will be about:

obviously, scan the QR code. Depending on the results, there will be more steps.

supinf
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    There were three errors in the sheet music that have now been corrected. Great work so far – Sconibulus Dec 27 '16 at 15:16
  • thank you, it seems that the changes luckily do not invalidate the previous work i did, and resolve the conflict i had in column 14. i hope i can make some progress today – supinf Dec 27 '16 at 16:55