Retro Thing

Pee Wee Harmonica: A Mini Mouth Harp For Big Wheezes

I love miniatures, especially when they still have all the functions of their big brothers (within reason, of course). We've written articles about the tiny film camera that was the top lure of my local grocer's gumball machine, and also an impossibly small AM radio from the 60s. Here's a mini gadget that's even older; the Pee Wee Harmonica. The box tells us that this was manufactured in occupied Japan, so this little mouth harp and its box go way back. My guess is that the Pee Wee was "inspired" by Hohner Instruments' similar mini harmonica "the Little Lady".

Hohner is a harmonica brand that goes back 150 years, though I don't know how long they've been producing keychain-sized harmonicas like the Pee Wee (which I should add was small enough to be the first musical instrument to go into space), but it's definitely been around long enough for mouth harp fans to learn how to get the most of its little eight note range. Here are a couple videos - one from some 70s TV show (that I really want to see now) that features the Harmonitones (a band comprised entirely of guys described as "my one weird uncle") doing a version of "the Can Can" with the teeny tiny harmonica taking the lead.

The second video is much more modern - a slightly uncomfortable closeup of a man's lips whoofing into his webcam with a mini harmonica. He offers online lessons so that you too can play Star Wars, The Cock O' The North (I don't make this stuff up...), and Old Suzanna on the tiny harmonica that you will be keeping in your pocket at all times from now on.


Help Out Retro Thing When You Pick Up A "Little Lady" Harmonica on Amazon

 

Roland SH-101: A Keytar Ready To Hit The Slopes

I got my first keytar a while back, and pretty much everyone thought (thinks) I was (am) the biggest dork. Even other keyboard guys. I'm not saying that I haven't earned that title many times over (this existence of Retro Thing is testimony of that!), but over a keytar? When I got mine, it was a decidedly out thing... and it didn't help my case any that the instrument was large (full size keys, go figure.), blazing white, and had "Casio" written on it in a huge font.

We seem to be in a place now where there are new models of keytar every week. So when I wanted to hot dog on some blazin' keyboard solos I was weird, but when some smug ironic hipster straps into a keytar he's "totally meta"? Sorry dude - you're just a dork with moustache wax.

Maybe it's the wanna-be guitar shape of most keytars that cemented their role in the annals of music history as a peculiarity. Except for showboating, there's little real need for a keytar. You can only play one handed with your left mitt just swinging around whatever passes for a guitar-style neck. I'll bet the synth history books would tell a different story if we were all rocking the Roland SH-101.

First of all, you're talking about an excellent analog synth. Monophonic, I grant you... but that's perfect for soloing. All the knobs and tweaks are right there. It's small and square, so no phallic posturing here. An SH-101 player is clearly comfortable with himself as a person. Available in cheerful read, blue and silver. You can even bolt on a tiny guitar-ish handle for pitch & mod wheels, or just to more fully bring the rock. And of course it's the 80s you can be dressed like you're ready to go skiing at pretty much any time.

The first time I saw one of these in action was on a TV interview with John Tesh. The internet was there and remembered to put a tape in the VCR.

Tesh was struggling to get out from under the stone of his mid-afternoon Hollywood gossip show to prove that he was a serious musician too. True, his albums were mostly of the New Age variety, but on an appearance with Dweezil & Ahmet Zappa he produced his SH-101 and wowed the crowd with Black Sabbath's rock classic "The Wizard" (the harmonica sure can get kinda dark). Ahmet did his incomprehensible dance, Tesh nearly lost his specs (right at 1:42), and I was out of my chair! I was dancing along with John Tesh! I was jammin' along with Ahmet Zappa! And the Roland SH-101!

Oh wait. I'm a dork again.

A First Look At KORG's MS-20 Synthesizer Reissue

We first mentioned KORG's new mini version of the classic MS-20 synthesizer last month. Here's a hands-on look by Peter Kirn at Create Digital Music.

Peter comes away impressed; KORG has managed to cram the essence of the 1978 original into a somewhat modernized package. It still only plays one note at a time, there are no patch memories and you can only control notes via MIDI -- don't expect to tweak knob settings from the comfort of your computer desktop.

That said, this little synth is a great value for $599, although public response has been polarized. Some electronic musicians absolutely love it, while others question the need for yet another standalone analog monosynth with limited MIDI capability. Personally, I'm sold.

Explore the MS-20 in more depth at Create Digital Music

Stylophone S2 - Worthy To Inherit The Throne Of The Original Plastic Classic?

[photo by Pea Hicks]

We're fans of the Stylophone, an oddball British instrument from the 60s. it strikes a dear bleepy chord within many hearts since for many it was their first ever electronic instrument, or even their first musical instrument! Monophonic, buzzy, and played with a little plastic stylus seems like an unlikely combination of ideas to become a cherished object, but for decades the Stylophone has stood the test of time by remaining resolutely true to its 60s origins.

A few years ago the Stylophone re-entered production by the same outfit who put out the original. they added such luxuries as a volume control and an output jack, but it was the same analog bleepiness as ever. More recently, the Stylophone Beatbox morphed the shape into a circle, and triggered a whole mess of samples, and even had a sequencer of sorts built in. We had the first Stylophone Beatbox in the USA, and have since wondered what was next for the proto analog synth.

Now we know. The NAMM show rolled out the newest member of the Stylophone family, the S2.  it's a larger road-worth successor to the original Stylophone, with some surprisingly advanced tweaks built in. The keyboard is much larger and can be played either with stylus or fingertip. The sound is also tweakable and filterable, all built in. You can even patch external sounds through it and apply analog filtering through the S2 itself. There's more to it, but even this short list is an amazing start.

The past few years have seen a resurgence in interest in analog synth technology, and the original Stylophone represents one of the simplest and earliest expressions of electronic sound. A huge part of the fun of the original stylophone is how cheap and odd it is. For example, the 60s version didn't have a volume - the manual helpfully suggests that you cup your hand over the built in speaker! This new version seems like it has tremendous potential to combine the oddball likability of the old instrument, with the sorts of new features that a modern synth freak might look for. We'll have to keep our eyes on YouTube for the first squeaky tunes to come out of the thing.

Until then, ostensibly famous synth duo "The Bret Domino Trio" have cut a demo song with the S2. It's a Justin Bieber song, so I'm very very sorry. Just do your best to listen solely to the cool Stylophone bits.

KORG Re-Releases a Classic Monosynth

Thirty five years after its initial unveiling, the MS-20 synthesizer is back. This time around, it comes with a USB port and MIDI IN.

The new MS-20 Mini is reduced to 86% the size of the original, with 1/8" plug jacks instead of the original 1/4" phone plugs. The same engineers who worked on the original have reworked it for the 21st century using modern components.It includes a classic 2VCO / 2VCA / 2VCF / 2EG / 1LFO design, along with a self-oscillating high/low pass filter, a highly flexible patching system and a complete reproduction of the original analog circuit.

We're expecting the instrument to retail for around $595, although we'll have to wait for official word from KORG at this week's massive NAMM show in Anaheim, California.

Moog: A film by Hans Fjellestad

Each generation, there are only a few lucky/brilliant/sufficiently eccentric people who manage to dramatically inspire the world. Dr. Bob Moog was one such character. He wasn't the first to build electronic instruments, nor was he the most successful. However, no one can deny that a classic early 1970s Minimoog Model D has a personality and unique sound unlike anything else. 

Although Bob passed away in 2005, his namesake company continues to release successful new instruments from their factory in Ashville, North Carolina. In many ways, Moog Music is the Harley-Davidson of the electronic music industry. Their devices are distinctly analog, encased in metal and wood, with knobs and switches taking precedence over digital displays and blinking LEDs.

Hans Fjellestad released this 70 minute documentary in 2004. It highlights Moog's obsession with sound and artistic creation, drawing from his wisdom with commentary from the likes of Rick Wakeman, Keith Emerson and Herb Deutsch. If you're a synthesizer aficionado, it is definitely worth watching.

Moog: A film by Hans Fjellestad [official site]

Rocking Out On A 1926 Fotoplayer

Stop reading this post. Watch the video first. You'll feel giddy, glowy, and laugh out loud happy. I guarantee it. Watched it? Good. It's a fake.

The 1926 Fotoplayer is a real instrument, and Joe Rinaudo really plays it with the vim you see. YouTube user "adnmusic" added the very credible sounding cacophony that could have backed an old timey version of "Sweet Child O' Mine". The Fotoplayer uses perforated rolls like a player piano, but with tons of extra (wait for it...) bells and whistles.

Movie theaters of the silent era installed Fotoplayers so that a non-musician (remember the piano rolls provided the main music "track") with a minimum of four hands could accompany the mute movies of the times. When I used to teach film history, I thought it was important to make clear that silent movies were never really silent movies. There was always some kind of accompaniment (sometimes live, sometimes on records) to liven up the flickers. It is only in an academic atmosphere like film school that we watch these movies in clinical silence.

Rinaudo painstakingly restored his Fotoplayer, taking thousands of hours to repair and fine tune the many, many moving parts. You can glimpse the drums, xylophone, and the many pull-cord sound effects in action with Joe's real performance in the genuine video below. Fewer than 50 Fotoplayers survive today, with only 12 in working condition. It's a privilege to see one in action, and it can still bring a smile to the face... even if it's not playing Guns N' Roses.

[thanks, Pea!]

Joe Rinaudo's Reproductions Fotoplayer page

eBay: Canine Music Synth From The USSR

I have no idea why this vintage Russian toy synthesizer features French cartoon character "Pif le chien," but I suspect it has something to do with his adorably socialist outlook on life. Or perhaps it is to disguise the fact that the front panel of this little analog synth is embarrassingly sparse.

It features a built-in speaker and line out. No MIDI, no programs, no display, and a mere 24 keys. It runs off 9VDC. How does it sound, you ask? Awful [mp3], but in a very cool way.

eBay: VINTAGE SOVIET ANALOG SYNTHESIZER "PIF" [Thanks for the heads up, William!]

"What Is Love" - Bare Floppy Drives Make Beautiful Music

What used to be the chattering racket of floppy drive data access is now music you can dance to. Mr Solid Snake has put the whirr of the floppy drive's stepper motors to good use in recreating that SNL standard "What Is Love" by Haddaway. You can check out his YouTube page for more floppy drive performances of the theme from Star Trek (actually quite amazing), Superman, and the inevitable cover of music from Zelda.

The only thing I'd change is to get some more microphones in there to really hear the nitty gritty of the eight musical motors. There's a lot going on in these arrangements that I'd want to capture.

Prefer your 90s clubskank themes in a more solid state mode? Okay, here's the same song as it might have looked and sounded on an old 8 bit NES.

Kraftwerk Retrospective - All 8 Albums Performed Live

In early April, New York's Museum of Modern Art will host eight consecutive nights of Kraftwerk performing all 8 of their original albums. Live. My God.

In these days of so many long-in-the-tooth musicians cashing in on their back catalog, this event promises to be a fresh look at the pivotal synth artists' entire repertoire in a series called "Kraftwerk - Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8" They promise that these eight performances will not only feature their sublime and seminal synth music, but each evening will feature 3D visualizations tailored to MOMA's Marron Atrium. Another break with contemporary music industry convention is that these once-in-a-lifetime performances are quite reasonably priced at $25.

If you're a New Yorker, or if like me you're trying to figure out a way to take two weeks off to fly to NY for this staggeringly cool sounding event, you can find more details at MOMA's website. The group did a similar residency in Munich in 2011. Is it possible that if this US exhbition goes well, Kraftwerk would consider doing similarly affordable "installations" in other cities around the globe? Pretty please?

link:

MOMA website with dates and details

Murky Depeche Mode Classics Covered By Chirpy Children

It is really, really rare that I laugh till I get tears in the corners of my eyes, but these videos have done it.

I'm a longtime fan of the unrelenting gloominess and early synth work of Depeche Mode. In the 80s I'd never heard sounds and beats like that before, and it opened up a whole world of electronic music to me. The band did a lot to introduce and popularize entirely synthesized music (to more than just me, of course). Their radio and music video hit "Everything Counts" made a huge impact on ears that had never heard such an extraordinary collection of noises, which makes it even more hysterical when children do a pretty authentic cover of it with stuff from around the toy room.

Clearly this family knows how to make good use of Quality Time. My God, they even do "Strangelove"...

I know I'm courting controversy here, but I haven't been nearly as enthusiastic about DM since they moved away from their signature synth sound to a more rock band oriented thing in the 90s. I know plenty of people who (and I'll never understand this) got into the band precisely for that epic rock sound and not the crucial synth stuff that came before. I like to joke that DM has been around long enough to have fans of just their much crappier career phase.

I'm being dramatic, of course. There's plenty to like of their recent work (they have a recent live DVD that's pretty amazing), but those early unrelentingly electronic albums will always be very special in my heart. Those are very hardy songs that can even survive being covered by the mewling of adorable little moppets. Maybe we're down to projects like these to keep those early days of musical Depeche melancholia alive.

links:

One more DM cover from the Schrader family... this time it's "Shake The Disease"
The live Depeche Mode DVD I mentioned is on Amazon

Alesis MMT-8 MIDI Sequencer - Bringing The Beats Since '87

I found this sequencer among some of my older music gear in storage (i.e. the closet of broken dreams). The Alesis MMT-8 was born in 1987,when it's features and low price combined to make it a wildly popular piece of gear. Surprisingly, this is a piece of retro gear that still gets interest. Even with all of today's cool laptop music, there's still room in the studio for the old MMT-8.
The spec sheet may not exactly impress today. The unit can hold 100 songs - as long as you don't go over 10,000 notes. There's internal storage in the form of a built-in battery. You can also export data either via MIDI or by recording sequence data out to audio cassette (and I can tell you firsthand what a hateful and tense way that was to save your precious songs.)

One aspect keeping interest in the MMT-8 alive is that this unit is an interesting link between MIDI and older devices that came before - you can use the "click out" jack to drive ancient drum machines. Despite these limitations, the MMT-8 still fascinates musicians and retains a cult following, more than 20 years after its release - there's even an online fansite at MMT8.com.

The MMT-8 has an interesting pedigree. It was designed by Marcus Ryle (of Line 6 fame) of Fast Forward Design (who also did the even more famous Alesis HR-16 drum machine) around an Intel 80C31 microcontoller. Up 'til that point, Alesis had mostly been an effects company, and the success of this slope-faced pair paved the way for widely diversifying what they offered musicians. Ryle went on to design Alesis' Quadrasynth and their famous ADAT digital recording system.

I have to sheepishly admit that I really never used this. I have much more time logged in as a digital drummer with the HR-16 drum machine mentioned earlier. I kept it around in hopes of messing with its novel approach to creating music (Especially after digging up lots of info online about the sequencer). I guess I'll just leave that up to Orbital, Moby, Jimmy Edgar, Higher Intelligence Agency, Autechre, and Carl Craig who all still use the MMT-8 for live performance.

Build An Organ - Radio Shack Style

It's interesting when you thumb through a family's photos from the 60's and 70's, and find an inordinate number depicting the folks gathered around the organ. That's outside my own family experience, but I've seen it often enough that it's not an uncommon image. I guess before there was a TV in every room, you might spend an evening around the electronic organ having a sing-along.

I'm surprised at how long the organ store stayed open in my local mall. I remember a vast shag carpeted showroom that steadfastly sold organs into the early 80s. Who was buying these relics back then? Of course when much more versatile synthesizers and low-priced Casio type keyboards hit the market, there just wasn't a place anymore for the ol' Kimball Swingster, was there? Maybe that's where the family sing-along went too...

If you want to recapture that retro organ spirit, but don't want to give up the floor space or your back muscles, maybe you can find one of these old Radio Shack Electronic Organ Kits. It's from their Science Fair Line from the 70s or so, so this organ is a sort of cousin to the 150-in-1 kits so many of us grew up with. Sharp eyed Retro Thingers may notice that the "keys" in this kit are the same morse code levers that Radio Shack has been packing into kits since forever. A dedicated evening of squinting at instructions and looping some wiring will get you a weedy sounding monophonic organ with built-in speaker.

I hope you're not interested in playing any sharps or flats - unless you're a Radio Shack Science Fair modder! I also hope you don't expect much more than a vague buzzing sound - though with all the circuitry right there out in the open, maybe you can add in a few bits and bobs of your own to get the much favored Hammond B3 sound. Uh huh... Or get really crazy and add MIDI - use it as a controller for your MeeBLIP synth! Don't forget that the kit builds into a nice wooden case that you can stain and finish to add that classy touch. Imagine this organ kit as the centerpiece of your living room when your family crowds around the little guy to sing hits like "Camptown Races" and "On Top Of Old Smokey" from the included booklet.

related:
Those 60's living rooms had chord organs too
An organ made of clear Lucite
Another Radio Shack classic - the Minimus speaker

It Goes To 11... And Beyond...

It’s 11/11/11, and like so many other quasi-journalists, I’ve found it irresistible to think about the classic film Spinal Tap today. I was never part of that rock scene, but the earnest wrongheadedness of what constantly happens to the band is something we can all identify with. It’s still a comedy staple decades later with innumerable quotable moments, but is any part of the film more "celebrated" than Nigel Tuffnel’s amp that goes to 11?

Shortly after the movie came out, I saw other rockers chasing the dream by scrawling “11” onto their amp’s volume controls too, but it didn’t stop there. This “goes to 11” thing has been a meme for such a long time, it’s easy to gloss over mainstream appearances of the gag. Here are a few examples off the top of my head: the amazing MeeBlip synthesizer’s volume goes up to 11, the BBC’s online video player goes to 11, Guitar Hero’s sound effects settings top off at 11, in Doctor Who we see the sonic screwdriver used to crank a church organ “up to 11”… Though the best might be from the early 90’s. Marshall released an amp featuring a photo of Nigel pointing to the volume knob saying “now it goes to 20!” 

You don’t have to be a musician to join in the fun. There’s a special release of the movie on Blu-Ray in the UK that includes a mini replica Marshall amplifier stack. You can use it with your iPod, and yes… the volume does go there. If you haven’t seen the film in a while, it’s still awesome. I’ve got a DVD release of the film that includes more than an hour of improvised material that didn’t make it into the movie. It’s fun if you’re a fan, but it’s also easy to see why the material was left on the cutting room floor.

The many artists in the film have gone on to make more mockumentary style films, but I haven’t liked any of them a fraction as much as Spinal Tap. I think that Tap really was a singular comedy moment whith everyone's talent was cranked up to just the right level. It remains one of the few comedy movies that I love watching again and again – turned up to 11 of course.

Links:

Help out Retro Thing when you pick up Spinal Tap on Blu-Ray
The Criterion DVD has some exclusive features not on the Blu-Ray

Atari Punk Console - VCS Tribute Edition

Oddly enough, the Atari Punk Console (APC) isn't a video game system. It's actually an electronic noisemaking circuit from Forrest Mims' Engineer's Notebook: Integrated Circuit Applications (Radio Shack, 1980).

Originally known as the Stepped Tone Generator, this quirky little circuit gained notoriety after being renamed by Kaustic Machines. And, yes, its output is reminiscent of the sound an Atari VCS might make while slam-dancing with an army of angry Roman Centurions.

Most Atari Punk Consoles are a rats nest of wires and circuitry, but this version by Jim Harris is a thing of beauty. He explains:

"The work featured here is a DIY build of an Atari Punk Console inspired analogue synthesiser known as the Dub-Step-Arcade designed by Matthew Newlove. As a tribute to it's origins in the dusty circuits of the 1980s, the build is housed in a heavily modified Atari VCS enclosure.

Materials used include hand machined matte black acrylic control panel and Atari VCS enclosure, laser engraved gloss black acrylic fascia, salvaged mains power supply, reconditioned stock Atari VCS DPDT switches, stock arcade machine parts and miscellaneous fixtures, fittings and electronic components."

Atari Punk Console - VCS Tribute