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.

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!!

Chopin Nocturne Opus 9 No. 1 on Melodica (Demo)

First of all, I was sick hence I did not update the blog last week, sorry about that.

This time I would talk a bit about playing and arranging some classical pieces on melodica.
It is always a challenge to arrange classical pieces for melodica, since the melodica has not been invented when those classical composers wrote their pieces. Therefore, arranging classical pieces for melodica really takes a lot of musicianship, and understanding the "language" of the pieces from different composers is very important. If you arrange the pieces for melodica solo, you may even have to change the style of the original pieces, but not to the point that it would lose the original "melody line". So far I have arranged some parts of these classical pieces for melodica solo:

Bach:
1. Toccata in D Minor; 2. Minuet in G.
Beethoven:
1. Sonata Pathetique; 2. Fur Elise
Chopin:
1. Nocturne Opus 9 No. 1; 2. Nocturne Opus. 20 in C# Minor
Debussy:
Clair de Lune

Anyway, here I would post my demo of Chopin Nocturne Opus 9 No. 1 on melodica. I only arranged the first several bars, and I changed the key from Bb Minor to C Minor for easier playing. I would say my arrangement capture the color of this piece pretty well, even though I changed some part of it. And I definitely could arrange the whole piece if I really go for it :)

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

This time I would talk about something other than melodica. As you may remember, baritone ukulele is also one of the other instruments that I play. Last week I went to an ukulele meetup group, we played the song "White Christmas" over there. I jammed with the other guy where I played the melody chords and he played the rhythm chords on low G ukulele and standard ukulele respectively. People commented the performance as "oh I felt like I wanna cry". You can imagine how beautiful the song came out :)

Hence I arranged another version for baritone ukulele solo. The lower register part is actually the same as the one I played in the meetup group, only this time I added another verse and made some twist on the upper register. Normally you rarely hear the very high notes of the baritone ukuelel, but this arrangement makes use almost the whole range of it. The only thing I think it can be better is that I probably should use less strumming on the upper register part, as the song itself does not fit that lousy arrangement that well. But yeah you never really know how it sounds before you actually record the whole song. Anyway enjoy and Merry Christmas!!

PSY's newest song "DADDY" for Melodica -- How to play continuous, fast notes

FINALLY, I got Suzuki Hammond 44 melodica!!
This melodica is a very nice instrument. First of all, it has 44 keys instead of regular 37 keys melodica, which gives me more freedom of music arrangements. The sound of it is great, but very different from the Wood Mylodica, another great sounding melodica. The Hammond 44 sounds like some brass instrument, while the Wood Mylodica has a more mellow, gentle sound like woodwind.

As you may know, PSY, the original singer of the world famous song "Gangnam Style", has a new song released called "DADDY" about a week ago. This time I would use this song to test the Hammond 44. The result is very nice, and it's funny that this song sounds very much like horse racing tunes when it is played on this melodica. The whole arrangement to me sounds like it is played by a brass ensemble :)

This song is actually a very hard song for melodica. As you may notice, this song is very fast, a lot of continous notes, and almost no place to sneak in breath. In order to play fast continuous notes in melodica nicely, normally you DON'T keep repeating pressing the keys on the melody part like how you do on piano. If the continous notes are not too fast, you can use breath to blow several times to get the continous notes. If they are too fast, then you need to use your tongue to get the fast notes. I would say I am quite good with using breath, but I still need to work more on the tongue technique.

Anyway, enjoy and see you next week!!

Japanese Opera

Well today I would talk about something other than melodica :)
As I mentioned before and you may know, my primary instrument is actually vocal, and I am a classically trained baritone singer.
You may also remember that I went to Japan for vacation in July. I noticed that the prices of the melodicas were surprisingly cheap that I wanted to buy one right the way. But one thing I did not mention was that, due to the fact that Japan IS such a nice place, I decided that I HAVE TO master their language, no matter how long it takes. This is also a promise to myself that nothing can stop me if I really want something.

Here is the first step of achieving my goal: to sing Japanese Opera.
The "Japanese Opera" I said is not something traditional thing like Chinese Opera, it is the European Opera singing but in the language of Japanese. Japanese is the 8th language I learn how to sing, of course I still made some mistakes in pronouciation, but I gotta say my progress is pretty good, especially in the case of self-learning.

Actually the song I am going to show you today is not really from an "Opera", but it is a song written in that kind of music style. The name of the song is called 美しき光の翼 (Beautiful Wings of Light). It is a song in the anime "GaoGaiGar", and it is a theme song of a character in the anime called "King J-Der". You can also hear the instrumental of this song in the video game "super robot wars". It is a REAL bad ass song. I remember I read a youtuber comment about this song:

"When the character is awesome, they bring rock music; when the character is beyond awesome, they bring opera singer."

Here is the audio of some parts of this song. Sorry I don't have a full track of this song, and my recording devices/audio mixing technique are not good, so the quality of the audio is not that great. But you probably can tell how BAD ASS this song is.

Thinking of getting Suzuki Hammond 44 :)

Today, we would talk a little bit about one of the top tier melodica -- Suzuki Hammond 44.

I remember when I first decided to upgrade my melodica, I was thinking about getting the Wood Mylodica, or Suzuki Hammond 44. I ended up choosing Wood Mylodica because I like the sound of the Wood Mylodica better. But in reality, Suzuki Hammond 44 has some advantages that you won't find in ANY melodicas out there:

1. It is the only melodica that has 44 keys (Mylodica has 37 keys).
2. It is the only melodica that has strap buttons.
3. It is the only melodica that has built-in pick up.

Plus the sound is the best out of all melodicas there besides Wood Mylodica.

I love my Wood Mylodica a lot, but right now it starts to get out of tune, I probably have to change the reed board to fix it because the problem is quite serious. But the reed board is only available in the US, and I am out of country right now. Hence I am thinking of getting a Suzuki Hammond 44 for substitution, and I would fix the Mylodica once I get back to the US. Then I would have TWO top tier melodicas HAHAHA :) Suzuki Hammond 44 also has one advantage over Wood Mylodica is that it has a much better moisture removal system (hence it is much harder to get out of tune).

Anyway, here attached a video of how the Suzuki Hammond 44 sounds. You can compare it to my video of playing the Wood Mylodica to hear the difference, then YOU will be the judge to decide which one sounds better for YOU!!

P.S. This is a famous Russian folk song called "Dark Eyes", and you probably can tell this player is BEYOND AWESOME!!!!

Happy Birthday to Me (featuring Bass Melodica)

Hi all!!
As the title said, today is actually my birthday YEAH!! I hope you guys having a great time reading my articles and/or watching my videos. And more importantly, get a melodica NOW and start learn playing it :)
Anyway since I haven't recorded playing the "Saxophone Melodica" for a while, this time I would arrange and record the Happy Birthday song on the "Saxophone Melodica". This melodica is REALLY hard to play with melody and accopaniment together, it just takes way too much air to get the sound out. But good that I could actually play it. Hope you guys like it!!