Sidingsound

Technology old and new

For my sixth birthday (1978, if you must know), my main present from my parents was a Stylophone—a tiny monophonic electronic organ played by touching the tip of a stylus on a metal "keyboard". I had a white model, which may have been a bit rarer than the usual black-with-fake-wood-trim ones I've seen elsewhere—I ended up buying one of the latter from a jumble sale some years ago, and it's still around the house somewhere. Sadly, the white one succumbed to battery leakage in the end, but at least I still have the black one (if I can find it).

Around 2000, when I had rather more spare time than I do now, I built a Stylophone SoundFont (sampled sound bank) by sampling and looping every note on my Stylo, both via the built-in line output and by miking up the speaker. I then recreated the Stylo's vibrato in the SoundFont editor, and created a couple of patches with chorus effects. I still have the SoundFont somewhere, and might release it on this site some time if anyone is interested.

I mention this because at the time I made this SoundFont, I really wanted to make another one, this time of the Stylophone 350S. This was the "deluxe" Stylo, with a wider range of voices (organ, clarinet, etc.) and a higher price tag to match; I really wanted this instead of the model I actually got, but of course all these years later, I realise Mum and Dad would have been crazy to have bought such an expensive piece of kit for a six-year-old!

My wish to make a 350S SoundFont was understandably stymied by the difficulty of actually finding one—fully-working models are not common now, and those you do find are quite pricey—and I doubt I would find the time to sample it and produce the SoundFont these days. Just as well, then, that I no longer have to, as Precisionsound now offer a Stylophone 350S sampled "instrument".

Something else for my pocket money to go on sometime :-)

Labels: instruments, music

posted by Tim @ 10:50 2 Comments Links to this post

Sticks and carrots

One of my more unusual musical activities of late (at least, compared with the rest of my musical 'career') is that I've been taking some drum lessons on Saturdays with a friend of mine.

It's something that I've wanted to do for some time, not least because drums is the one instrument in the conventional rock band lineup that I don't have at least some measure of ability with. I've been playing guitar to what I'd call a reasonable standard, for twenty years now; I can handle bass guitar competently enough; my keyboard skills are at what I'd call "John Lennon" level (i.e. I just about know where the notes are!); and I'd say I can pick up a few other instruments (e.g. mandolin, ukulele, recorder) and get acceptable results out of them.

This has meant that I've been able to record multitrack demos over the years, playing most if not all the instrumental parts myself. However, when it has come to drum parts, I have either had to program them into a MIDI sequencer, use sampled drum loops or basic drum machine patterns, play other kinds of percussion parts, or just do without them altogether.

My hope is that I will soon be in a position where I can 'play' drums on my recordings, if the need arises. I'd really like to buy a Roland HD1 "V-Drums Lite" electronic drum kit in the future, which would allow me to play drum parts into my MIDI sequencer, or record the actual sounds from the kit onto my audio multitrack, whichever was the best approach.

Although I doubt I'll end up drumming for a live band, I just thought that being able to play kit drums would be a useful skill to have. I don't know which direction this will take me in, but it should be fun finding out.

(Oh, and in case you were wondering where the 'carrots' part of the title came from... well, I did roast some vegetables for dinner last night, but that's about as far as it goes!)

Labels: drums, instruments, music

posted by Tim @ 20:33 0 Comments Links to this post