Chords for Introduction to the Otamatone

_ Hi, I'm Galen and this is Automaton, my automaton.
_ _ I'm going to give you a quick introduction in this video to
_ what you can expect if you're looking into getting your own automaton.
Maybe you don't know what to get.
Maybe you don't know _ _
if you want to get one or not or you don't know how hard it is to play.
So I'm going to summarize all that
as quickly as possible so that you can make your decisions.
If you're interested in getting an automaton, the first question you should ask is which one?
Well, there's the
normal automaton here and the automaton deluxe here.
The normal will run you about 20 bucks.
You can play it.
It is harder to play because it's got this tiny little fingerboard.
It's small.
It doesn't have as many settings and you cannot hook it up to an amp. _ _
The deluxe is 50 bucks.
It's worth the upgrade.
Get it.
I'll play a little bit on each so you can hear how they sound.
_ _ _ _ _ There's the sound of the normal.
_ _ _ Here's some of the same stuff played on a deluxe.
_ _ _ _ You can hear the sound is just better on the deluxe.
_ _ As far as what you can play it with,
_ you are gonna find out that it's a little bit soft.
It's about as soft as a violin or other string instrument playing softly,
which means that if you want to play it with a string quartet, with a band, in a noisy place,
you're gonna need to use the line-out jack on the [E] back end of the deluxe.
It has a volume control, but even at high volume, _ _ _
that is not going to compete with a string instrument.
It's not gonna compete with an orchestra instrument.
It is certainly not gonna compete with a pumped up electric guitar.
_ _ You can play what you can play with it.
You can play one note at a time. _ _
And it's got a wide range because it's got a range switch on the bottom that takes maybe about a second to
change from low to mid to high.
_ _ _ There's your low range.
Here's your high range.
_ _ So it can play just about any note you need.
You can play a bass line on it. _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [F] _ _
_ _ [E] _ You can play some stuff in a normal treble staff that_
[B] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [F] _ _ _ _ [A]
or you can play something up really high that sounds kind of funny. _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [E] _
_ So you can play just about anything you want as long as it's one note at a time,
and you don't jump through ranges too fast. _
As far as how hard or easy it is to learn how to play the automaton, that depends on your background.
If you already play violin like I do, or any other string instrument that doesn't have frets,
it translates very easily.
This thing is basically a violin finger move.
_ _ _ You can play almost any passage work that you would play on
one string on a stringed instrument on an automaton, and it will work out.
And a number [D] of things that you wouldn't dare do on one string on a stringed instrument because it would start to make nasty sounds as you got too high.
_ _ If you don't play any stringed instrument,
you've got a bit of learning to do when it comes to figuring out how to put your fingers in exactly the right places.
Because if you're a millimeter off, it might sound quite far out of [C#] tune. _ _
_ _ [A] I move it just a little bit, _ [G#] _
and that's sounding very sour [B] to me. _
_ _ _ _ That little bit of movement is gonna make a big difference in pitch.
The good news is if you keep your finger, if you keep your hand that's
touching this part a long way from the head up towards here,
there's bigger spaces between the notes, and if you play simple melodies in that area, _ _ _ _
pitches are gonna be a lot more precise with a lot less practice.
The other thing you can do to help is you can slide around.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ That is much easier to play the stuff, play what I just did in tune.
That means the pitches _ don't sound nasty.
Then it would be to do it without sliding. _ _ _ _ _
_ _ I missed one of those jumps already, and I'm pretty good at playing this thing.
_ _ The other thing I can suggest if you don't play a string instrument is do the fingering part with whichever hand is your dominant hand.
So if you're right-handed, and you don't play the violin, and you want to play the automaton, use your right hand on the fingerboard.
_ _ I'll change the register here. _ _
_ [C#] _ _ _ _ [B] _ _ [E] _
_ _ [G#] _ _ _ _ [B] _ _
_ _ My right hand isn't trained to finger a violin, and you can still, if you figure out where the right spots are,
you can learn how to play pretty decently. _
_ _ So that's about how hard it's gonna be to learn how to play.
_ So just to summarize, _
it's worth getting the Deluxe because the Deluxe is much easier to play than the little normal model here.
_ It's a single note instrument.
_ _ _ Can't play two notes at once.
It's got a very wide range, _ _ _
_ _ _ but it's not very loud, and if you want to play it with a band or something,
you're going to want to plug it into an amp, speakers, anything.
It's got a normal line-out jack, _ _ and
it's going to be easy to pick up if you play a stringed instrument that doesn't use frets.
If you're coming at it from
guitar or having no string instrument background, you can pick it up.
It's easier to play than a violin,
but it will still require a lot more work than if you did play a string instrument, and I
can't quite tell you how much because I never had to do that.
_ And next time I'm going to start going through some of the arrangements I made for my videos and _
_ just go through a how to play on some of those passages so that you can see what's involved.
So keep an eye out for that.
If you're still trying to figure out if you want to
jump down the rabbit hole of buying one of these or not,
I promise you you won't regret it if you're willing to put in a little bit of work.
You can get a lot of fun out of this thing, or if you're already a violinist,
you won't even need to put in the work to get out of a lot of stuff.
_ See you next time.
Thanks for [N] watching.