I haven't had internet access since Christmas eve, so this is a late Christmas post. I hope you all had happy holidays and also downloaded the new Gorillaz album that was released on Christmas.
I'd like to tell you about some new music-making gadgets I got...
Behringer Reverb Machine RV600
I've wanted this guitar pedal ever since I used the one my cousin Patrick has. I love the "Space" setting.
Now meet my new pocket-sized synthesizers, which I have named Flynn and Floyd.
Korg Monotron - "User Flynn"
Flynn was obviously named after Jeff Bridges' character in the movie Tron. I love the filter on the Monotron, and it's ridiculously fun to play with. Speaking of that new Gorillaz album I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, I noticed on the site that the Korg Monotron is one of the instruments they listed as being used on the album.
Stylophone - "Uncle Floyd"
The Stylophone, which is played with a stylus, is probably best known for being used by David Bowie for his hit song "Space Oddity". I thought about naming my Stylophone Major Tom after that song, but I thought more about it and decided I actually don't love the Stylophone playing in the song. I do, however, love the Stylophone part at the end of his song "Slip Away", and so I named it after Uncle Floyd, one of the subjects of the song. I also like the alliteration in Flynn and Floyd. To show you just how much better this Stylophone part is, here's a video of a beautiful live performance of "Slip Away" where Bowie plays the Stylophone at the end of the song:
I wonder if the Stylophone will be one of the objects in David Bowie's new book. Anyway, I know I'll be getting a lot of use out of my new music-making gadgets.
I went for a Christmas season mall trip yesterday with my sister and Patrick. On the way there we listened to the Low Christmas album. You should listen to one of the songs from the album while you read this blog entry. It's a cover of the traditional Christmas song "The Little Drummer Boy". I love how it is noisy and distorted, yet beautiful.
Speaking of noisy and distorted, we first went to Toys "Я" Us, where I bought a First Act distortion pedal for my guitar. I don't have much guitar pedal experience, and before I bought this one, the only pedal I had was a First Act analog delay pedal, which I love. I think First Act is a really underrated company, and their analog delay pedal sounds so much better than any digital delay pedal I've heard from any other company. It has so much character to it, which is something I really love when it comes to music equipment. Seeing as how so many people use all the same stuff from Line 6, I think it's cool to have something a little different, to stand out a little from the crowd.
I found the Series 3 collectible LEGO minifigures at Toys "Я" Us too, which I was very happy about.
Before I got the Series 2 figures from Borders on Black Friday, I was beginning to think my search for these was a lost cause. I brought my "cheat sheets" that I printed out on Black Friday just in case I found any of the minifigures, but they didn't really help me any this time. My sister and I sat on the floor with a box of the minifigures and my cheat sheet and tried to match the new bumpy codes on the packages up to the dots on the sheet, but we realized most of them didn't match up. I know I printed out the American codes, but they didn't match. A lot of the packages had an extra bump, making it just about impossible to match them to the dots on the sheet. When we were picking out my Series 2 figures on Black Friday, I attempted to feel the figures through the bag, but that was much more difficult than I thought it would be, and I went back to just trying to match up the barcodes. This time since the codes weren't any help, we went back to trying to feel what each of the figures were. It took us over an hour to pick out all the ones I wanted. An hour of sitting on the floor groping little plastic bags of toys while customers and employees walking by gave us very confused looks. I got all of the figures I wanted though!
My favorite from Series 3 is the cyborg space villain, because he's an awesome minifigure and he reminds me so much of Lord Dread.
He's just missing his purple cape and cutlass, which are things I have in my LEGO collection. Old friends of mine in the internet LEGO community might remember that many years ago I made some LEGO Captain Power stuff.
So I'm doing quite well at catching up with the LEGO company on the release of these figures. Now I just need to get the ones I want from Series 1, and Series 4 still won't be out for a while.
Besides that, I bought some shirts. One from a store called Around The World which had a section of shirts made from artists in Thailand I believe. I also bought some really nice quality blank shirts from H&M to work on the prototypes for my Jacob's Shadow t-shirts. I'm excited about finally getting around to doing that, and looking through the shirts in Around The World was inspiring.
Since depending on how fast you can read, "The Little Drummer Boy" might be over now, listen to this other song from Low's Christmas album, called "Just Like Christmas". Now since you won't be reading, you can really pay attention to the lyrics of this one, which I think are clever and cute.
The Stylophone, which is played with a stylus, is probably best known for being used by David Bowie for his hit song "Space Oddity". I thought about naming my Stylophone Major Tom after that song, but I thought more about it and decided I actually don't love the Stylophone playing in the song. I do, however, love the Stylophone part at the end of his song "Slip Away", and so I named it after Uncle Floyd, one of the subjects of the song. I also like the alliteration in Flynn and Floyd. To show you just how much better this Stylophone part is, here's a video of a beautiful live performance of "Slip Away" where Bowie plays the Stylophone at the end of the song:
