07/06/05
Rap-Master keyboard (featuring VOICE EFFECTOR!)
Sherie and I went to Red White & Blue at lunch today, and amidst the headless Barbie dolls and sealed Lance Bass action figures, I found this little noisemaker for $3.95. Featuring a mic input, plastic wannabe turntable and the pitch-changing VOICE EFFECTOR switch, the logo says it's made by Realistic, but I'm pretty sure that's a Radio Shack version of Casio, because this thing has more than a few classic Casiotone presets all up in it ("Twinkle Echo" for one.)
The 30 "rap patterns" actually contain some pretty phat (albeit Casio-style) beats up until pattern 13. From then on it's the original 12 beats, only smothered with a thick layer of cheese music on top. It's hard to believe someone at Casio actually thought the paean to fruitiness known as "Hip-Hop 3" really sounded like hip-hop. More appropriate names for this setting? "Unicorn Rainbow", "Lite Jazz 1" or "Gay Dad 3".
The faux turntable platter consists of two generic "scratch" sounds, one for each direction you spin it. That's about all. Oh, there's also a big orange "Orchestra Hit" button in case you want to make some HI-ENERGY dance music. Don't worry, it gets better...
The coolest thing about the Rap-Master? The microphone jack allows you to plug in and take advantage of the VOICE EFFECTOR switch, which - while it's fun to turn it up to "high" and make yourself sound like Ween - is best used in the following manner:
1. Choose a beat. Start it.
2. Put the mic up to the Rap-Master's speaker.
3. Move the VOICE EFFECTOR switch to different positions. (It has five, by the way.)
4. Listen in amazement as the feedback-affected beats manage to sound EIGHT TIMES as cool as the original beats (which were cool to begin with.)
Seriously folks, this isn't painful, squealing feedback we're talking about - it's almost as if all sorts of different effects and filters are applied to the beats when you do this. Each beat has at least one VOICE EFFECTOR setting that makes it sound really fucking good, and you can also apply this method to the 25 preset tones and get some great, definitely usable sounds that way as well. Experiment!
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© 2005 seawall