Saturday, January 23, 2016

Vibrandoneon - The Most Expensive Melodica in the World

Today we would talk about a premium melodica - Vibrandoneon.

First of all, Vibrandoneon was invented BEFORE melodica, it is only that both instruments have very similar mechanism. Vibrandoneon was invented in Italy in 19th century, where melodica was invented around 1950's in Germany, then the Japanese put the piano keyboard design on melodica. The main difference is that Vibrandoneon has double reed for each note on the instrument, and you can turn both reed on, or one of them on, just like an accordion; where the melodica has only single reed for each note. More importantly, Vibrandoneon is crafted by premium wood. Hence Vibrandoneon has richer, rounder sound than melodica.

But of course, Vibrandoneon is MUCH more expensive than melodica. It costs around US$3000 as I know. Actually for such high quality instrument, the price is not too bad, even I once thought about getting one. However, the reason I did not buy it is that it cannot be played by two hands, which would highly limit the style of playing. To me, I would make way better use of a good melodica like Mylodica or Hammond 44, than a Vibrandoneon, and they only costs US$300 and US$385 respectively. (In my case, since the pickup of my Hammond 44 somehow does not work, I asked the seller to give me US$130 discount, so I ended up paying US$255 for such wonderful instrument LOL).

Anyway, here is how Vibrandoneon looks and sounds. You can definitely tell it is a FXXKING good sounding instrument.

Saturday, January 2, 2016

Dragon Ball Z Gohan VS Team Bojack: Father's Legacy

First of all, Happy new year, and hope everything is better in 2016!!

Today I would talk about one of the most memorable moment in Dragon Ball Z, which is the scene of Gohan VS Team Bojack.

When you think of Dragon Ball Z, most of the time you would think of Super Saiyan, Kamehameha, bad ass fighting scenes, etc. This particular scene of course there are still Super Saiyan and Kamehameha, but it is much more than that.

In this part of the story, it is after defeating Cell, so Goku sacrificed already. One day Team Bojack came to the Earth, and trying to conquer the world. Gohan and other Z warriors stood up the game, but Team Bojack was too strong that even Gohan was in the verge of defeat. At the last critical moment, Goku's spirit rescued Gohan, and told Gohan that "Stop being a pampered baby, it is now YOUR turn to protect the Earth." Then Gohan realized his mission, unlock his hidden power and defeat Team Bojack.

This scene is a very meaningful and touching scene: it talks about the end of the journey of the Father, the Father has already passed all his power to the Son; while the Son, received the Father's power, is time to use this power to continue the journey. The music from this scene captures this message very well, and I arranged a version for melodica solo. This song has very beautiful legato line, and it builds up gradually from the beginning to the end. Technically it is not too hard, but to capture the soul of this song is not easy. I hope I can do this song justice on my melodica playing :)

Hope you guys like the song and see you next week!!