WHen I was majoring invocal performance (1988-1993), I'd have loved having that. The 12 keys are the 12 half-steps of the chromatic scale. The normal (Major) scale uses keys 1,3,5,6,7,10,11,12; a chord is 3 notes in key. The three smaller buttons to the left are the quality: major is default, you hit a minor and a diminished chord, and somehow got a 7th chord as well. Normal 4 chord progression (So-called "I-IV-V-I" is 1-6-8-1. a more colorful tone, with more "resolution", you'd charge that 8 button (The V chord, "fifth chord") to 7th-modifier + chord 8. It's aimed at practicing voice and/or guitar without needing a piano keyboard. (Many vocalists have piano issues...) Sad songs, the progression changes to I-iv-v-I (capitalization matters), so button 1, minor+6, minor+8, 1. Or I -VI-iv-v-vii°-I, played with 1, 10, min+6, minor+8, diminished+12, 1 If you know what youe edoing, you can shift it into any key by simple addition; the tuning knob is for matching with intonation-invariant instruments (like bugles, recorders/blockflutes, Tin whistles, etc.) It is VERY approachable to those with elementary chord theory. It also was pretty much superfluous - most decent keyboards (and lots of crappy ones) had the same functionality built in, usually labeled on Yamaha machines as "ABC" (for Auto-Bass-Chord)... you play the root note of the chord, and one or more keys as well, to set the "quality" - Major by default; minor or diminished or 7th with one extra key above the root, minor-seventh with two, diminished 7th with a different 2. Our 1978 or so Yamaha console organ had that functionality on the second manual.
If you are creating music using the stuff on the right, can you use the cassette deck on the left to record it? Mr TM might have mentioned it, but if so I missed it. Seems a bit daft if you can't.
Looking at that logo, the "MA" is bigger and emphasised... Maybe someone else already said this, but isn't "ma' a concept of simplicity and "lack of complexity" in Japanese culture and philosophy? I'm maybe just seeing something that's not there, or being a bit weird, but that would make perfect sense with this machine. I wonder if that was the concept or just a fluke and someone in marketing went with it?
On wifi vs old sound machines, I spent about 4 hours cleaning and reseating and testing things ony mother's old kimball organ until we realized the noise it made was exactly in rhythm with the LED indicators on the wireless router/modem sitting on top of it 😄
To this day, most cars' engines depend on a timing belt. If not replaced every 5-6 years, it may snap, which causes pistons to go domestic violence on the valves. That's a catastrophic failure you can't fix with a new belt. Why is it still like this? Because it's still the cheapest to manufacture system.
and older cars actually had gears instead of a belt (or chain which is also common today), but that changed when the camshaft moved upwards to the top of the cylinderhead
"I doesn't do much." - I find your lack of excitement disturbing. This is basically a personal stereo, synthesizer, drum machine and recording studio in one device aimed at consumers and hobbyists. Back in the 80s! Definitely 11/10 on the amazement scale!
I bet it was a shitload cheaper than a tascam 4 track recorder plus a keyboard and a drum machine too. The sound clearly shows the devices age, but there would have been nothing else like it in the price range at the time, it's really quite amazing.
Absolutely! It looks like exactly the kind of thing that Look Mum No Computer would love. I wonder how hard it would be to replicate (sans cassette and radio) using a single PCB and an Arduino doing the software synthesis heavy lifting --- probably not very... dammit, I already have too many projects on the go as it is!
it is exactly the kind of thing pre teen me would have drooled over. Imagining the possibilities of creating hit records on it and connecting a guitar? wow i just to learn how to play guitar, buy one and imagine the possibilities! Sadly I did buy things like this, not exactly like this but what I like to call today, tat. So much tat was made back then that had no real practical use. Just mashups of one thing with another thing because wow, how zany is that! And when you're young you just see a cool new device. All I can imagine using that for today is sending to Look Mum No Computer and seeing if he wants to circuit bend the crap out of it and maybe turn the tape into a looper thing and make both parts work together. I could not do any of that.
@@Stevie-J any time I see stuff from Japan on eBay and such the items are pretty much all ways in pristine condition. There's definitely truth to the stereotype of the careful japanese owner.
I love the cheesey sounds from these types of "instruments". It's why I buy up all the "toy" keyboards from around the 80s that I can. That whole thing of limitations producing creativity and inspiration is just so much fun to me. Turning something straight cheese into something sweet and groovin' is such a magical experience..
It's like an ancient Teenage Engineering product. haha I actually quite like the sound of the drum machine. Reminds me of the early Roland drum machines like the CR78. They're not the fullest sounds, so it strikes me as something purely for accompaniment, either for practicing musicians or storytelling. Would be interesting to see what a circuitbender like Look Mum No Computer could do with this machine.
The music video at the start was brilliant! It was like a real life late 80s, early 90s PC adventure game... _Techmoan Quest III: Quest for the Divine Tape Deck Belt_
As an old Sony fanboy that’s a thing of beauty. It might ultimately have been a little bit crap as a musical device but that’s not the point here, it’s a great piece of Sony history with some solid industrial design and attention to detail such as the user controls. Casio’s KX-101 was a vastly superior and more impressive-looking take on the idea of a boom box for musicians but from a design point of view the Sony is the one I’d choose as a museum piece. Very cool.
In 50 years this thing will be a rare antique and well worth the investment financially at least. But the cool factor is explained well by the kid on the box. Kids the definition of being totally rad!!
Lots of focus on user control. zero focus on usability. Nielsen/Norman would have a field day on this and it would be used as an exam essay question for all of time. "Use heuristics to make this thing usable - use sketches if needed"
I have a Casio keyboard from a few years later that has many of those same functions (with a very similar sound) as "auto-accompaniment" options. Nothing says I Am A Serious Musician quite like playing along to a tinny bossa nova drum-and-cymbal line with some rinky-tink arpeggios running in the background. :)
What I love about those basic/kiddy type instruments is that you’re not under pressure for it to sound awesome so you can play whatever for fun :) Oh god how I miss my casio, I think someone threw it out..
I think this is an "Entertainer" machine. I can imagine them using something like that. We had a lot oft them in the 80s. Men between 40 and 70 having small shows in the local towns hall for three days and then moving on. They would sing and do magic tricks, telling jokes and funny stories. They collected the money directly at the entrance. That stopped in the middle of 90s.
I guess they were going for the "accompaniment" angle which was super popular on home keyboards, and probably why it's pictured with a guitar. With enough patience you could map out a whole song's worth of chords and drums (to tape) and then jam and sing over it. Pretty niche approach though with those big pads.
It's kind of like a musical "notebook" to get down ideas quickly. I couldn't imagine anyone trying to make a finished track with it but I could see it being useful.
Exactly. It seems to be aimed at the vocalist or guitarist who wanted something for backing - not something to do the melody. I'd hope you could use the tape recorder to record the synth to make it a simple/poor man's sequencer.
I have known simmilar machines as "rhythm machines". You choose a rhythm, background melody, whatever to help you play your guitar or singing. Not sure if the machine can then record your playing, but that way you could make simple demo tapes. Sometimes street musicians use such machines. Of course there are way more advanced machines with different instruments, etc. but sometimes something simple is just enough.
I also agree. Back in the day many guitarists kind of just focused on guitar and not so much keyboards. Something like this would enable someone to lay down a chord progression and then work out their own ideas on a bass or guitar. I also remember my first keyboard being a mini keyboard Casio that had a similar function for making chords... these items were great for wetting your appetite for music and getting your foot in the door so to speak.
one of my favorite things I still own is like the Chordmachine's grandson: a My First Sony tape deck with a built-in drumpad which can be switched to animal sounds. you can "drum" over your favorite cassettes!! it's very well put together, colored bright red, and actually quite awesome!
I had a friend who had one of these. Back in the 80's. Back then, this was the pinnacle of technology and really impressed me. This is what you spent money on if you had it back in the 80's. All this stuff was brand new tech, and I happily integrated it into my life. Only really well off people had these, I had a grey Sanyo M2820 the kind with one speaker.
I was amused by the warning, Matt. In my house lives an eight year old child whose sadistic teachers decided he should learn to play the violin. The sound of a cat being turned inside-out has ruined several weekend lie-ins. Shrill sounds? No problem. A friend had a Casio machine that looked like a boom box, but with a keyboard on the front - a very peculiar machine. I've looked, and it was the Casio KX-101. It looks even cooler/barking mad than I remember. I love that metallic drum sound caused by your router. It's the sort of thing that one of my favourite electronic groups, Cabaret Voltaire (Richard H. Kirk, RIP.), would have used.
@@TheFarSideOfNj - He was given the choice of the violin or the tuba. I think with the violin, we got off lucky. To hear the same 'Oompah, oompah' noises reprated ad infinitum would have been too much. As it is, I can forsee the violin getting 'accidentally' trodden or sat upon. The little lad doesn't like practising it, or is vaguely interested in learning to play, but the school said the children had to learn an instrument. The Triangle makes a pleasant noise, so I'm led to believe.
@@brianartillery That depends on the triangle lol. The snare drum and certainly the cheap "bell" kits floating around schools these days are decidedly NOT pleasant. But a drum pad would be okay. Violins are tough for a variety of reason. Did they put little "dots" or stickers where the notes are to help? For a lot of young students that can get them going well enough so they can enjoy it.
Watching you demonstrate the controls, it looks pretty versatile to me for a synth of that era. You can have single notes, straight chords or arpeggios, and it seems like one of the red buttons changes the chords from major to minor. Weird device but definitely looks like fun to play with.
As a hobbyist musician at the time, I'd have struggled to find a use for this. All but the most basic Casio or Yamaha keyboards are more versatile and intuitive.
It looks like the synth chord functions are similar to the left hand buttons on a standard accordion. If so, think of what an accordion player can do with admittedly limited musical options, like playing polkas. And if you can play polkas, what else is there in the world to worry about? This gadget also reminds me of my full-size Wurlitzer theater organ, built in the 1980's. It has a similar rhythm section and some features like "magic fingers", an arpeggiating option. Such add-ons were common in the era, marketed to semi-musicians. The Sony would be more convenient to carry around than my 500-lb Wurlitzer, you bet.
I'm not sure it would have been useful, but as a musician I would have loved one to play around with. I could certainly see using it for a very basic song sketching tool. Could be useful for lofi or vaporwave music as well.
It feels like they missed a trick really. If it had a proper sequencer, better integration with the tape (eg for a tape loop) and some way to change that sound a bit, even just a high/low pass filter, this thing could have ended up a techno classic. Maybe adjust the tempo range towards the higher end as well.
I'm a keyboard player and I would dearly love to have a play around with this! I like the pitch-bend on the arpeggios, reminiscent of early Frank Zappa. The "finale" button to end your chord sequence is a nice touch. Can you record your voice whilst playing your chosen rhythm and chords as backing? There you have your melody, provided by your voice, together with the accompaniment, could be a lot of fun!
Look up the Omnichord - a similar style of "accompaniment instrument." With this machine, you could work out a song with chords that sound good with it, record the chords/singing onto a tape, and then with another instrument maybe played along to your new song. I could see people using this for coming up with the structure and sound of a song.
A little too early for that - that would have taken a more sophisticated microcomputer than would have been in the right price range in the 80s. Even today these are meant for professionals, as evidenced by the $500 price tag.
@@BrightBlueJim Maybe I misunderstood - it sounded like the ChordMachine could only mix the mic input on top of any of the other input signals (cassette, radio, chord part) - and could then record what you're playing on the chordmachine, and therefore the mixed mic signal, at the same time to cassette (mixed down.) Then, the savvy musician might listen back to that cassette recording (of chords and vocals) and try playing, not recording, their instrument alongside it. That's what I means in terms of a rudimentary music-composing device.
@@pissmilker2313 Maybe I confused things by bringing up the omnichord. I just mentioned that as a instrument of a similar function, since Techmoan seemed to be confused about an instrument that's primarily chords. Then I was talking about the full potential of the chordmachine, if you can indeed record chords and vocals to cassette on it at the same time. Two separate thoughts, maybe they got jumbled.
@@JakeLionsWorld No, that's reasonable. Almost all home keyboards from the 80s (and on) included auto-accompaniment stuff with rhythms and chords, and included the regular keyboard for the player to play along with it. But very few of them included an internal recorder to record what was played. You'd usually have to plug it into a separate cassette recorder, or if you could afford it, one of those fancy multi-track cassette recorders. I didn't get a multi-track recorder until the early 90s. Before that, I was using 2 cassette recorders to bounce tracks and build up songs with multiple parts.
This seems to be a beginners version of an Roland Pro-E, or an Elka Wilgamat or OMB-3, or a Böhm Böhmat, or a Wersi Wersimatic - all keyboards that do nothing but automatic accompaniment. They are all meant for using with another instrument to play the melody or to sing to.
From a fairly accomplished classical musician...you stuck the landing at around 15:26. If you ended the "song" that way on accident, then it was a happy accident. If you chose that sequence on purpose, you've got a pretty good ear. Either way, it was quite satisfying. I also can't believe some big-name producer hasn't caught onto this thing. Someone who practiced at it could make some neat music.
It's surprising how few instruments can play chords. Guitars and keyboards, that's about it as far as getting someone to play chords in a band. There aren't too many jazz autoharpists around, or three-bore clarinets. You'd think someone would've invented some more options by now.
@@ps5hasnogames55 I don't live in America either? It was introduced to the island in the late 1870s, which seems like it would be before your time, so I'm not sure how your nationality would affect the ukulele's cultural impact. I'm curious what you think separates a "kids toy" from a "real instrument"
You really should try to some high quality recordings of the varies drumloops and sounds this thing makes and release them as a sample pack for producers. The fact it comes from a device like this is enough to make it super awesome.
This thing is incredible - chord section is kind of a simplified version of the Omnichord by Suzuki. Particularly the chord sounds are very similar. Thank you so much for showcasing it!
Its looks limited nowadays, but if you had one of these and siblings/mate with a casio keyboard....then you could convince yourselves that you were a "Drawing Room Depeche mode" waiting for a breakthrough.
I really, really want on of these!! It's has some similarities to the Omnichord and a couple classic Casio Keyboards from the same era. I can immediately see it being a useful tool for songwriting and contemporary lo-fi music.
@@WaldoFindsYo No? No, I don't really want one? No, it doesn't remind me of my other old Casio and Suzuki instruments? No, I wouldn't enjoy making music with it? How could I be so wrong about all three of my thoughts? Thank you for setting me straight.
@@WaldoFindsYo I disagree. I collect and play oddball, obscure, and weird electronic instruments and musical toys. I instantly regretted buying a Dave Smith MoPho but have cherished my Fisher-Price Music Maker and Realistic Rhythm Box. Right now I'm on the hunt for a couple cheesy old organs like the Baldwin Discoverer or Bontempi POP3
That is actually a fantastic songwriting tool - the chord pattern you've played is quite sophisticated. An amazing retro tool and fun for songwriters !
I was just going to write that. If there is anything on the market today that resembles this device, either hardware or software I would buy it right away.
@@Siarawaszympanemjest I mean I'd say midi MPC pads can do all of this and more. The Korg nanokeystudio for example. I use the Nanokey plugged into my phone running flstudio mobile. Very mobile and not expensive way to do these things.
This reminds me of the electronic organs sold by Thomas and Bontempi, in the 1960s-80s. My grandma had a Thomas organ with a 2-octave keyboard and 3 banks of chord buttons: Major, Minor, and 7th. Your right hand played the melody on the keyboard, while your left hand played the chord buttons. This made it much easier to play than a standard keyboard.
It seems like a cool jamming machine. I would use it to record a sketch of a song, or practice with a pre-recorded backing track. I could also record the chords from the chord machine, then plug my guitar, and then do some vocals. Very nice device!
I can't help but feel there are a lot more features of this synth that you missed, which is obviously through no fault of your own. I'm definitely going to go out and buy one and have a play round. It looks like so much fun! Thanks for posting!
This is a very interesting device, it's amazing how you keep coming up with completely random stuff I had no idea existed. One thing I immediately noticed was the proximity of the speaker and the tape deck when closed. I would not leave a tape in the deck!
It is obviously for jamming or karaoke. I presume you can record a sequence of chords and let it be played back in a loop (not from the tape, but from memory). That way you can play or sing along the melody along with the chords that are being played.
I have gotten into synths. At first glance I thought it would be cool to have a Chordmachine. But given how limited the synth section is; it wouldn't be worth it. That said; if I stumbled across one for cheap; I would buy it. But I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to look for it. Thanks again Matt for introducing me unusual tech I never knew existed.
That’s outstanding!! There’s no better way to bring out creativity than to introduce limitations on the creation. I bet some crazy good stuff has come out of those things.
This was certainly for a type of karaoke where you don't need to buy karaoke tapes. If you had a chord book or new some chords to your favourite song you could easily auto accompany yourself. I mean you could just use a guitar or a piano for the same purpose but I guess this has a bit of a beat at least. One correction is that you say it only plays one note at a time when it actually seems to be capable of playing chords with multiple notes voiced together. Which may have made it somewhat cutting edge at the type compared to monophonic synths.
The ‘chord’ bit is a band in a box type thing, for making your own accompaniment which you could use live or record to tape, either with own compositions, common chord progressions that musicians find useful or creating backing tracks to any number of different songs without having to pay for expensive custom made songs. This kind of feature is found in many keyboards. Then you can listen to the radio to find your latest inspiration, saves a lot of space compared to having a separate keyboard and guitar amp and hifi. Quite neat really. Obviously for kids beginner level sophistication.
This definitely feels like something meant for singer songwriters to use for making demos. There's a ton of software nowadays that is basically a somewhat more advanaced version of this.
Thanks for this video! I enjoy watching you repair and demonstrate old tech like this. I miss the early 80's when manufacturers seemed to experiment by releasing rather odd units like this.
I LOVE these vids about obscure electronics like this, especially when they are from mega companies like Sony. It's as if they said 'Let's try this. If it doesn't fly who cares.'
The scenes from the street are pretty nice. Should have more of that. People from the whole world watch this and it's always good to know what surrounds their favourite blogger.
God you know it’s well made when after 40 years, some minor servicing is all that’s needed to fix it. This is on crappy paper type PCBs as well, so it’s always surprised me.
This is more musical than it may appear, auto chords, single notes and an arpeggiator, if it had a sequencer on it so you could programme in a four chord loop or something, it would be good to jam along to
You could use it as a "Jam companion", but you're absolutely right, it's severely lacking many features we take for granted in 2022, having said that, it's better than nothing I suppose (Speaking as a musician 🎸 🎹)
I believe this was aimed at musicians. It would have been very useful in writing songs. It is a sort of "mini studio" with drums and rhythm built in. You add the vocals and/or lead guitar with it all going onto a tape.
It's essentially the same thing as when I'm playing ukulele and singing at the same time. Since I can't walk and chew gum at the same time, I generally only strum chords while I sing and that machine does exactly the same thing. Not sure how the buttons are arranged from how you played it, but it can be quite powerful and make most any kind of music. It would be perfect with a fake book or guitar music that just has the chord names above lyrics.
Those labels for clock location and expander placement, is a circuit bender's dream! I looked for this online and it must be quite rare! Another great video, thank you!
Musician here. I basically see it as a cross between a karaoke unit and something designed for songwriters/musicians to demo ideas. What I'm less sure of is how it would work well with a guitar, but we don't really know how the pedal option functions. Does the unit have a way to program chords that you can cycle through with the pedal? If so, this could be an interesting way to demo songs with a guitar. A lot of organs/keyboards have this chord/drum functionality, so it's cool to see it being marketed for vocals/guitar. As for the form factor, it's portable and self contained -- something you might bring along with your instrument? I would have had a lot of fun with one of these growing up.
While it doesn't make much sense as a consumer device, I can see this perfectly as an entertainment center for a bar or a small restaurant, before omnipresent DJ-ing was a thing. Put in a tape for decent background music, and later, as everybody is appropriately intoxicated, key in a simple, popular song from the booklet and sing along. (Also, mind the small form factor and how it stores away quite perfectly and is easy to clean on the outside.)
So this is how it works! My brother in law has one of these tucked away at the parents house in Japan, and I've always been curious about it. Will need to pull it out of storage and see how well it works on the next visit.
Hey man, you are just the best. I've been watching your videos for years and not only have I learned so much from you but your videos are also incredibly interesting and entertaining. Thanks for all the captivating moments over the years.
Interesting! Looks like another pretty good quality made Sony product. I remember in the 1980's a lot of different digital keyboard type sound machines like this. I had some different lower quality ones as a kid. My friends and I had different ones we would play around with. I could imagine a younger me in awe if I seen one of these. Thanks for sharing!
In traditional Indian Music, there is a musical instrument called "shruti box" which do something very similar (playing chords). There are also modern electronic shruti boxes.
I recognize that IC702 - that is from Texas Instruments and is a precursor of their TMS320 DSP (digital signal processor). There is a Wikipedia page for the TMS320 that explains what it is. It makes sense that this made its way into this device. Around the same time as this the TMS320 also gained popularity due to its adoption into the Yamaha DX7? Synthesizer.
This is such a great piece of technology for reminding us the kind of crazy built-for-one-job machines that people made back before they would have just ended up as phone apps. I don't know why, but when you opened the compartment on the speakers and started pulling the cable out I lost it. There was just something delightfully retro about that whole scene.
I would imagine a target audience for this product could be buskers - a portable amp which you could plug your guitar and mic into and have a rudimentary piano/synth in the background for backing. That's if a foot pedal for mic reverb was available at that time....
Surely there is a Techmoan album using that thing round the corner. ? Chordmachine by Techmoan .... Available on Ronco Records as seen on TH-cam. Cassette / Mini-Disc release. I'm ready to add to basket
for the time this seems like an awesome device to quickly record song ideas, get the general vibe of the chords and the song in order to do a proper version later in the studio. Well done sony.
I didn't find it quite as mysterious - it's probably for backing for singing and the "notes" are really chords with the arpeggio mode being the most used. Perhaps it came with a song book telling you which numbers to press. The buttons described as " knocking it up an octave" (😆) seem to be altering the chord to major/minor etc.
This could have been cool if you could play back and record at the same time to add layers. I could see a use if you could record a drum line with the drum machine, add in guitar, add in synth and record multiple times to get more sounds etc, then record vocals over that. Add being able to effectively take samples off the radio with the tapes and it could have been a cool toy.
I can find this very useful for recording demos straight on to tape. If I was a teen in the 80s I recon I would have loved one of these to record guitar and vocals on to along with a drum backing
it's pretty cool, really. we know a few musicians that actually would be able to work with that. they'd probably use the machine to handle the chords and drums, while plugging a keyboard thru a flanger and echo pedal, into the mic input, and they probably could record a decent-sounding tape off that thing.
Watching this vid, I think the answer to what its intended use is is kinda obvious: It's not a boom box. It's a karaoke machine. While chords aren't the be-all and end-all of pop music, a great many pop songs can be adequately represented with just a handful of chords. As such, I could see something like this being pushed in the karaoke-friendly JP market based on the strength of that alone: rather than buying tons of tapes or learning to play proper keyboards, this could offer a simple and fairly compact way of being able to karaoke almost any pop song of the last 70 years, albeit not in the best quality, but just imagine it. You're a Japanese tween in the eighties, and the latest idol sensation releases a song you adore. Rather than having to wait to get a karaoke tape for it, or just sing alone with it on the radio, with a few listens you can learn the basic chord progression for your ChordMachine and bam: lyric-less karaoke ready to go.
One of the first things I do on a Saturday morning is check to see if there's a new Techmoan video. Never disappointed. I wonder what was going through the minds of the Engineers that created this. Whether they were fully engaged and excited whilst designing this, or if they were all scratching their heads wondering what it was that they were trying to achieve. I wonder what the people tooling up the factory to make these were thinking..
Yeah plugging in a guitar and play along the chords seems like a great idea, I wouldn’t mind using one Btw loving this channel more and more, interesting documentary type and I feel I’m learning something :) great job overall Oh yeah loved the intro, intriguing and calming :) - is the box the thing you are gonna talk about, or are you just carrying a random box
I think people who commented earlier have it right. In a nutshell, this device has been miscategorized. It's not a boom box or even a personal stereo. It's intended to be a musical instrument. More specifically, it's what an amateur musician might use to turn himself into a one-man band. The guitar input, which could also have been used as an electronic keyboard input, is the giveaway. (As others have suggested, a street busker might have made use of it as well.) It even has a pitch control that allows you to tune the device to your instrument rather than the user having to tune the instrument to the device. But what places it firmly in the amateur market, as opposed to the professional market, are the inclusion of a low-end tape recorder, speakers that fall far short of performance quality, inflexibility when it comes to the beat box selections and chords (a pro or even pro-sumer model would have enabled the musician to program their own beats or upload them via a MIDI interface) and, yes, the built-in radio. A serious musician would have appreciated the mic so he could mix in his voice with the instrumentation, but the ability to sing along with the radio or tape is really more of a home consumer thing. As to why it failed, I think you're on target when you suggest that Sony didn't understand the market for electronic instruments. Maybe this was a sort of a test to see if it made sense for them to enter that market. Or maybe they thought the decreasing costs of electronics could lead to a trend back toward the Tin Pan Alley days, when people were more interested in playing music on their own instruments at home. (Prior to the advent of hi-fi stereo, you basically had two choices if you wanted to listen to music with great sound: go to concerts or learn to play it yourself. Many people actually opted for both.)
WHen I was majoring invocal performance (1988-1993), I'd have loved having that.
The 12 keys are the 12 half-steps of the chromatic scale. The normal (Major) scale uses keys 1,3,5,6,7,10,11,12; a chord is 3 notes in key. The three smaller buttons to the left are the quality: major is default, you hit a minor and a diminished chord, and somehow got a 7th chord as well.
Normal 4 chord progression (So-called "I-IV-V-I" is 1-6-8-1. a more colorful tone, with more "resolution", you'd charge that 8 button (The V chord, "fifth chord") to 7th-modifier + chord 8.
It's aimed at practicing voice and/or guitar without needing a piano keyboard. (Many vocalists have piano issues...)
Sad songs, the progression changes to I-iv-v-I (capitalization matters), so button 1, minor+6, minor+8, 1. Or I -VI-iv-v-vii°-I, played with 1, 10, min+6, minor+8, diminished+12, 1
If you know what youe edoing, you can shift it into any key by simple addition; the tuning knob is for matching with intonation-invariant instruments (like bugles, recorders/blockflutes, Tin whistles, etc.)
It is VERY approachable to those with elementary chord theory. It also was pretty much superfluous - most decent keyboards (and lots of crappy ones) had the same functionality built in, usually labeled on Yamaha machines as "ABC" (for Auto-Bass-Chord)... you play the root note of the chord, and one or more keys as well, to set the "quality" - Major by default; minor or diminished or 7th with one extra key above the root, minor-seventh with two, diminished 7th with a different 2. Our 1978 or so Yamaha console organ had that functionality on the second manual.
Looks like the modifier keys (H-1 or H-2) allowed you to switch between 'regular' (major) and minor or 7t chords.
If you are creating music using the stuff on the right, can you use the cassette deck on the left to record it? Mr TM might have mentioned it, but if so I missed it. Seems a bit daft if you can't.
Thank you for your explanation
@@fredbloggs8072 im pretty sire he said that you couldnt record the cord side
@@keltar4071 See the caption at 13:00, you can record whatever it outputs, radio, mic, chords, drumbeats.
That ‘CHORDMACHINE’ logo goes way harder than it needs to, I love it
Isn’t it using the same typeset/font that Microsoft used for it’s original logo during it’s pre-Windows era times? That “M” looked familiar
@@Blood-PawWerewolf : Nah, not the old MS logo (that's a mess, tbh)
It is a font that's been used many times, though. It reminds me of ActiVision.
Looking at that logo, the "MA" is bigger and emphasised... Maybe someone else already said this, but isn't "ma' a concept of simplicity and "lack of complexity" in Japanese culture and philosophy? I'm maybe just seeing something that's not there, or being a bit weird, but that would make perfect sense with this machine. I wonder if that was the concept or just a fluke and someone in marketing went with it?
If it doesn't allow me to actually bend notes then I guess it's not very useful.
It has potential for a band name and logo for sure lmao
Love that you can use a wifi router as an interactive proximity-based audio FX unit. Some seriously forward-looking performance tech.
Sort of a rudimentary Alesis AirFX, and nearly 20 years before that unit. 😄
Even left a panel for circuitbending.
Lmfao
It's a percussion theremin!
I liked the ring modulation it created. Quite an awesome sound.
On wifi vs old sound machines, I spent about 4 hours cleaning and reseating and testing things ony mother's old kimball organ until we realized the noise it made was exactly in rhythm with the LED indicators on the wireless router/modem sitting on top of it 😄
LOL that's great, what a way to realize what the problem was
This is a lot like those organs in the late 1960's & 1970's, where they had preset cords and rhythms to assist the player.
lmao, amazing
is it possible to create a shield inside the machine?
@@Federico84a sheet of aluminum foil would work.
It never fails to amuse me that a key component of music technology in this era was a rubber band.
To this day, most cars' engines depend on a timing belt. If not replaced every 5-6 years, it may snap, which causes pistons to go domestic violence on the valves. That's a catastrophic failure you can't fix with a new belt. Why is it still like this? Because it's still the cheapest to manufacture system.
and older cars actually had gears instead of a belt (or chain which is also common today), but that changed when the camshaft moved upwards to the top of the cylinderhead
goat invention
"I doesn't do much." - I find your lack of excitement disturbing. This is basically a personal stereo, synthesizer, drum machine and recording studio in one device aimed at consumers and hobbyists. Back in the 80s! Definitely 11/10 on the amazement scale!
I bet it was a shitload cheaper than a tascam 4 track recorder plus a keyboard and a drum machine too. The sound clearly shows the devices age, but there would have been nothing else like it in the price range at the time, it's really quite amazing.
Yeah, absolutely amazing device.
Absolutely! It looks like exactly the kind of thing that Look Mum No Computer would love. I wonder how hard it would be to replicate (sans cassette and radio) using a single PCB and an Arduino doing the software synthesis heavy lifting --- probably not very... dammit, I already have too many projects on the go as it is!
it is exactly the kind of thing pre teen me would have drooled over. Imagining the possibilities of creating hit records on it and connecting a guitar? wow i just to learn how to play guitar, buy one and imagine the possibilities! Sadly I did buy things like this, not exactly like this but what I like to call today, tat. So much tat was made back then that had no real practical use. Just mashups of one thing with another thing because wow, how zany is that! And when you're young you just see a cool new device.
All I can imagine using that for today is sending to Look Mum No Computer and seeing if he wants to circuit bend the crap out of it and maybe turn the tape into a looper thing and make both parts work together. I could not do any of that.
(where was the drum machine feature? at 19:19 he was lamenting it missing in action)
Definitely cannot call it boombox. Sony just missed another opportunity to call it tape re-chorder.
"Tape rechorder" - comedy gold! But yeah, what a missed riff not being able to tape itself!
The antenna being unbroken after 40 years is practically a miracle. 17:09 - what are the odds? Another great video Mat!
Don't call him by his first name, he's not your mate
@@AboveEmAllProduction You're a real knob, you know that?
@@AboveEmAllProduction Twonk.
@@Stevie-J any time I see stuff from Japan on eBay and such the items are pretty much all ways in pristine condition. There's definitely truth to the stereotype of the careful japanese owner.
@@AboveEmAllProduction 17:09!
The method to replace that belt was beautiful in its simplicity. I wish all cassette players were designed that way.
I love the cheesey sounds from these types of "instruments". It's why I buy up all the "toy" keyboards from around the 80s that I can. That whole thing of limitations producing creativity and inspiration is just so much fun to me. Turning something straight cheese into something sweet and groovin' is such a magical experience..
It's like an ancient Teenage Engineering product. haha
I actually quite like the sound of the drum machine. Reminds me of the early Roland drum machines like the CR78. They're not the fullest sounds, so it strikes me as something purely for accompaniment, either for practicing musicians or storytelling. Would be interesting to see what a circuitbender like Look Mum No Computer could do with this machine.
Nice one for AudioPilz, Bad Gear series.
"Do you know what a twit you are?" Had me choke on my coffee. Well done, mate. That was great.
The music video at the start was brilliant! It was like a real life late 80s, early 90s PC adventure game... _Techmoan Quest III: Quest for the Divine Tape Deck Belt_
As an old Sony fanboy that’s a thing of beauty. It might ultimately have been a little bit crap as a musical device but that’s not the point here, it’s a great piece of Sony history with some solid industrial design and attention to detail such as the user controls. Casio’s KX-101 was a vastly superior and more impressive-looking take on the idea of a boom box for musicians but from a design point of view the Sony is the one I’d choose as a museum piece. Very cool.
Seperate latches, cable secure once latched closed, antennae, powered by AC/DC D cell, its incredible.
In 50 years this thing will be a rare antique and well worth the investment financially at least. But the cool factor is explained well by the kid on the box. Kids the definition of being totally rad!!
i can imagine japanese B boys rappin to beats made on this.
what better way to record vocals or guitar without having a whole studio
Lots of focus on user control. zero focus on usability. Nielsen/Norman would have a field day on this and it would be used as an exam essay question for all of time.
"Use heuristics to make this thing usable - use sketches if needed"
This is hot bit gear 💥💥💥
I'm here because of PlayStation Stars. The ChordMachine is one of the displayable rewards. The device looks fun!
I have a Casio keyboard from a few years later that has many of those same functions (with a very similar sound) as "auto-accompaniment" options. Nothing says I Am A Serious Musician quite like playing along to a tinny bossa nova drum-and-cymbal line with some rinky-tink arpeggios running in the background. :)
What I love about those basic/kiddy type instruments is that you’re not under pressure for it to sound awesome so you can play whatever for fun :)
Oh god how I miss my casio, I think someone threw it out..
Had the"same" Casio.
I still weave my Casio VL-Tone VL-1 into songs sometimes.
@@trailg19c Casio has made hundreds of different toy keyboard models that fit this description.
@@robob3ar If any consolation, I have my Casio keyboard from when I was in grade 5 in a box somewhere. Though my Atari 800XL was indeed thrown out. :(
I think this is an "Entertainer" machine. I can imagine them using something like that. We had a lot oft them in the 80s. Men between 40 and 70 having small shows in the local towns hall for three days and then moving on. They would sing and do magic tricks, telling jokes and funny stories. They collected the money directly at the entrance. That stopped in the middle of 90s.
Entertainment sadly ended in the middle of the '90s.
@@YearsOfLeadPoisoning Now we have the internet.
@@andreasu.3546 The what?
@@YearsOfLeadPoisoning Never mind, it's not gonna catch on anyway.
@@mycosys Not sure if the word is "practice" but it definitely begins with a 'P'.
I guess they were going for the "accompaniment" angle which was super popular on home keyboards, and probably why it's pictured with a guitar. With enough patience you could map out a whole song's worth of chords and drums (to tape) and then jam and sing over it. Pretty niche approach though with those big pads.
It's kind of like a musical "notebook" to get down ideas quickly. I couldn't imagine anyone trying to make a finished track with it but I could see it being useful.
Exactly. It seems to be aimed at the vocalist or guitarist who wanted something for backing - not something to do the melody. I'd hope you could use the tape recorder to record the synth to make it a simple/poor man's sequencer.
I have known simmilar machines as "rhythm machines". You choose a rhythm, background melody, whatever to help you play your guitar or singing. Not sure if the machine can then record your playing, but that way you could make simple demo tapes. Sometimes street musicians use such machines. Of course there are way more advanced machines with different instruments, etc. but sometimes something simple is just enough.
I agree 100%.
I remember these times and it seemed like everyone had a side gig accompanying people at some point lol
I also agree. Back in the day many guitarists kind of just focused on guitar and not so much keyboards. Something like this would enable someone to lay down a chord progression and then work out their own ideas on a bass or guitar. I also remember my first keyboard being a mini keyboard Casio that had a similar function for making chords... these items were great for wetting your appetite for music and getting your foot in the door so to speak.
one of my favorite things I still own is like the Chordmachine's grandson: a My First Sony tape deck with a built-in drumpad which can be switched to animal sounds. you can "drum" over your favorite cassettes!! it's very well put together, colored bright red, and actually quite awesome!
Sounds cool!
I remember that
That sounds awesome!
I had a friend who had one of these. Back in the 80's. Back then, this was the pinnacle of technology and really impressed me. This is what you spent money on if you had it back in the 80's. All this stuff was brand new tech, and I happily integrated it into my life. Only really well off people had these, I had a grey Sanyo M2820 the kind with one speaker.
"pinnacle of technology" indeed. Music wasn't even invented yet - we had to create it ourselves back then.
I was amused by the warning, Matt. In my house lives an eight year old child whose sadistic teachers decided he should learn to play the violin. The sound of a cat being turned inside-out has ruined several weekend lie-ins. Shrill sounds? No problem.
A friend had a Casio machine that looked like a boom box, but with a keyboard on the front - a very peculiar machine. I've looked, and it was the Casio KX-101. It looks even cooler/barking mad than I remember.
I love that metallic drum sound caused by your router. It's the sort of thing that one of my favourite electronic groups, Cabaret Voltaire (Richard H. Kirk, RIP.), would have used.
Lol!! I have been there with the violin !!
At least it wasn't a recorder . . .
@@TheFarSideOfNj - He was given the choice of the violin or the tuba. I think with the violin, we got off lucky. To hear the same 'Oompah, oompah' noises reprated ad infinitum would have been too much. As it is, I can forsee the violin getting 'accidentally' trodden or sat upon. The little lad doesn't like practising it, or is vaguely interested in learning to play, but the school said the children had to learn an instrument. The Triangle makes a pleasant noise, so I'm led to believe.
@@brianartillery That depends on the triangle lol. The snare drum and certainly the cheap "bell" kits floating around schools these days are decidedly NOT pleasant. But a drum pad would be okay. Violins are tough for a variety of reason. Did they put little "dots" or stickers where the notes are to help? For a lot of young students that can get them going well enough so they can enjoy it.
Ah, the joys of PARENTHOOD...😉
Watching you demonstrate the controls, it looks pretty versatile to me for a synth of that era. You can have single notes, straight chords or arpeggios, and it seems like one of the red buttons changes the chords from major to minor. Weird device but definitely looks like fun to play with.
Agreed. It's a portable accompanist/recorder doubled as a stereo, probably aimed at hobbyist musicians.
Indeed, it a pretty capable little (big) box.
As a hobbyist musician at the time, I'd have struggled to find a use for this. All but the most basic Casio or Yamaha keyboards are more versatile and intuitive.
versatile? It has only one sound!
It looks like the synth chord functions are similar to the left hand buttons on a standard accordion. If so, think of what an accordion player can do with admittedly limited musical options, like playing polkas. And if you can play polkas, what else is there in the world to worry about?
This gadget also reminds me of my full-size Wurlitzer theater organ, built in the 1980's. It has a similar rhythm section and some features like "magic fingers", an arpeggiating option. Such add-ons were common in the era, marketed to semi-musicians. The Sony would be more convenient to carry around than my 500-lb Wurlitzer, you bet.
I'm not sure it would have been useful, but as a musician I would have loved one to play around with. I could certainly see using it for a very basic song sketching tool. Could be useful for lofi or vaporwave music as well.
You can play around with MIDI ^_^
It'd be great to have the sounds of this as a sample pack. Especially the drums.
It feels like they missed a trick really. If it had a proper sequencer, better integration with the tape (eg for a tape loop) and some way to change that sound a bit, even just a high/low pass filter, this thing could have ended up a techno classic. Maybe adjust the tempo range towards the higher end as well.
I'm a keyboard player and I would dearly love to have a play around with this! I like the pitch-bend on the arpeggios, reminiscent of early Frank Zappa. The "finale" button to end your chord sequence is a nice touch. Can you record your voice whilst playing your chosen rhythm and chords as backing? There you have your melody, provided by your voice, together with the accompaniment, could be a lot of fun!
Look up the Omnichord - a similar style of "accompaniment instrument." With this machine, you could work out a song with chords that sound good with it, record the chords/singing onto a tape, and then with another instrument maybe played along to your new song. I could see people using this for coming up with the structure and sound of a song.
A little too early for that - that would have taken a more sophisticated microcomputer than would have been in the right price range in the 80s. Even today these are meant for professionals, as evidenced by the $500 price tag.
@@BrightBlueJim Maybe I misunderstood - it sounded like the ChordMachine could only mix the mic input on top of any of the other input signals (cassette, radio, chord part) - and could then record what you're playing on the chordmachine, and therefore the mixed mic signal, at the same time to cassette (mixed down.) Then, the savvy musician might listen back to that cassette recording (of chords and vocals) and try playing, not recording, their instrument alongside it. That's what I means in terms of a rudimentary music-composing device.
@@JakeLionsWorld I agree with @BrightBlueJim . Doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see an omnichord in a future episode though.
@@pissmilker2313 Maybe I confused things by bringing up the omnichord. I just mentioned that as a instrument of a similar function, since Techmoan seemed to be confused about an instrument that's primarily chords. Then I was talking about the full potential of the chordmachine, if you can indeed record chords and vocals to cassette on it at the same time. Two separate thoughts, maybe they got jumbled.
@@JakeLionsWorld No, that's reasonable. Almost all home keyboards from the 80s (and on) included auto-accompaniment stuff with rhythms and chords, and included the regular keyboard for the player to play along with it. But very few of them included an internal recorder to record what was played. You'd usually have to plug it into a separate cassette recorder, or if you could afford it, one of those fancy multi-track cassette recorders. I didn't get a multi-track recorder until the early 90s. Before that, I was using 2 cassette recorders to bounce tracks and build up songs with multiple parts.
This seems to be a beginners version of an Roland Pro-E, or an Elka Wilgamat or OMB-3, or a Böhm Böhmat, or a Wersi Wersimatic - all keyboards that do nothing but automatic accompaniment. They are all meant for using with another instrument to play the melody or to sing to.
The Pro-E does a lot more than auto accompaniment. At least I have used mine for more than that. I don't use it at all in that manner.
From a fairly accomplished classical musician...you stuck the landing at around 15:26. If you ended the "song" that way on accident, then it was a happy accident. If you chose that sequence on purpose, you've got a pretty good ear. Either way, it was quite satisfying.
I also can't believe some big-name producer hasn't caught onto this thing. Someone who practiced at it could make some neat music.
It was deliberate, but I’m not sure there was much skill involved.
It's surprising how few instruments can play chords. Guitars and keyboards, that's about it as far as getting someone to play chords in a band. There aren't too many jazz autoharpists around, or three-bore clarinets. You'd think someone would've invented some more options by now.
@@edmatzenik9858 *angry ukulele playing*
@@ps5hasnogames55 im sure hawaii will be very pleased with that assessment of an instrument that has become part of their culture
@@ps5hasnogames55 I don't live in America either? It was introduced to the island in the late 1870s, which seems like it would be before your time, so I'm not sure how your nationality would affect the ukulele's cultural impact. I'm curious what you think separates a "kids toy" from a "real instrument"
You really should try to some high quality recordings of the varies drumloops and sounds this thing makes and release them as a sample pack for producers. The fact it comes from a device like this is enough to make it super awesome.
yeah, i’d definitely buy this sample pack!
This thing is incredible - chord section is kind of a simplified version of the Omnichord by Suzuki. Particularly the chord sounds are very similar. Thank you so much for showcasing it!
Haha, that mic feedback at 17:30 is just adorable. You go, fierce little synth!
Techmoan, you should remake your "we're up all night to get lucky karaoke" on this device
Its looks limited nowadays, but if you had one of these and siblings/mate with a casio keyboard....then you could convince yourselves that you were a "Drawing Room Depeche mode" waiting for a breakthrough.
Sting famously wrote ‘Message in a Bottle’ (1979) while on a bus, using a combination cassette recorder and drum machine.
I really, really want on of these!! It's has some similarities to the Omnichord and a couple classic Casio Keyboards from the same era. I can immediately see it being a useful tool for songwriting and contemporary lo-fi music.
no
@@WaldoFindsYo No? No, I don't really want one? No, it doesn't remind me of my other old Casio and Suzuki instruments? No, I wouldn't enjoy making music with it? How could I be so wrong about all three of my thoughts? Thank you for setting me straight.
@@lo-firobotboy7112 you will immensely regret the purchase
an EG-5 casio guitar would probably be better for lo fi vibes
@@WaldoFindsYo I disagree. I collect and play oddball, obscure, and weird electronic instruments and musical toys. I instantly regretted buying a Dave Smith MoPho but have cherished my Fisher-Price Music Maker and Realistic Rhythm Box.
Right now I'm on the hunt for a couple cheesy old organs like the Baldwin Discoverer or Bontempi POP3
As a collector of weird retro tech I was happy to learn of this and just purchased one. Thanks so much for the video.
That is actually a fantastic songwriting tool - the chord pattern you've played is quite sophisticated. An amazing retro tool and fun for songwriters !
Nothing can emulate better than the real thing.
I was just going to write that. If there is anything on the market today that resembles this device, either hardware or software I would buy it right away.
LOL no its not! Its terrible no one would use one...
@@NathanChisholm041 unless you wanted to emulate a specific 80's sound. So someone, would.
@@Siarawaszympanemjest I mean I'd say midi MPC pads can do all of this and more. The Korg nanokeystudio for example. I use the Nanokey plugged into my phone running flstudio mobile. Very mobile and not expensive way to do these things.
This device is CRAZY, so many possibilities, I would have loved it as a kid. Thanks for sharing as usual
I would have loved this thing as a kid hours and hours of fun. I am still trying to find my old Casio keyboard with the beats.
@@matthewhilty4209 I'd love to have one now!
This reminds me of the electronic organs sold by Thomas and Bontempi, in the 1960s-80s. My grandma had a Thomas organ with a 2-octave keyboard and 3 banks of chord buttons: Major, Minor, and 7th. Your right hand played the melody on the keyboard, while your left hand played the chord buttons. This made it much easier to play than a standard keyboard.
Didn't they used to give those away as prizes in The Price is Right during Bob Barker's long reign?
This device is now a trophy for PlayStation star members lol
It seems like a cool jamming machine. I would use it to record a sketch of a song, or practice with a pre-recorded backing track. I could also record the chords from the chord machine, then plug my guitar, and then do some vocals. Very nice device!
I can't help but feel there are a lot more features of this synth that you missed, which is obviously through no fault of your own.
I'm definitely going to go out and buy one and have a play round. It looks like so much fun!
Thanks for posting!
@@mycosys yes, this. Seems like a portable practice space in one handy case
like the electric guitar, this is made for it.
This is a very interesting device, it's amazing how you keep coming up with completely random stuff I had no idea existed. One thing I immediately noticed was the proximity of the speaker and the tape deck when closed. I would not leave a tape in the deck!
And I guess they are not magnetically shielded speakers 😁 😁
well spotted, the tape head probably doesn't like it much either, I wonder if that's why it sounds so dull (I assumed it was just out of alignment)
It is obviously for jamming or karaoke. I presume you can record a sequence of chords and let it be played back in a loop (not from the tape, but from memory). That way you can play or sing along the melody along with the chords that are being played.
I have gotten into synths. At first glance I thought it would be cool to have a Chordmachine. But given how limited the synth section is; it wouldn't be worth it. That said; if I stumbled across one for cheap; I would buy it. But I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to look for it.
Thanks again Matt for introducing me unusual tech I never knew existed.
Always a pleasure watching Techmoan on Saturday afternoon..
This is the most "un-Sony" thing I've ever seen from Sony...
The construction, the functionality--everything
That’s outstanding!!
There’s no better way to bring out creativity than to introduce limitations on the creation. I bet some crazy good stuff has come out of those things.
This was certainly for a type of karaoke where you don't need to buy karaoke tapes. If you had a chord book or new some chords to your favourite song you could easily auto accompany yourself. I mean you could just use a guitar or a piano for the same purpose but I guess this has a bit of a beat at least.
One correction is that you say it only plays one note at a time when it actually seems to be capable of playing chords with multiple notes voiced together. Which may have made it somewhat cutting edge at the type compared to monophonic synths.
The ‘chord’ bit is a band in a box type thing, for making your own accompaniment which you could use live or record to tape, either with own compositions, common chord progressions that musicians find useful or creating backing tracks to any number of different songs without having to pay for expensive custom made songs. This kind of feature is found in many keyboards. Then you can listen to the radio to find your latest inspiration, saves a lot of space compared to having a separate keyboard and guitar amp and hifi. Quite neat really. Obviously for kids beginner level sophistication.
17:09 was literally the highlight of the video for me 🤣What are the chances that's what was being said on the radio at that exact moment lmao
This definitely feels like something meant for singer songwriters to use for making demos. There's a ton of software nowadays that is basically a somewhat more advanaced version of this.
Thanks for this video! I enjoy watching you repair and demonstrate old tech like this. I miss the early 80's when manufacturers seemed to experiment by releasing rather odd units like this.
I recommend Teenage Engineering for this sort of whimsical experimentation in tech these days
I LOVE these vids about obscure electronics like this, especially when they are from mega companies like Sony. It's as if they said 'Let's try this. If it doesn't fly who cares.'
I love that despite all the features, Sony still called it a FM/AM Stereo Cassette-corder
The scenes from the street are pretty nice. Should have more of that. People from the whole world watch this and it's always good to know what surrounds their favourite blogger.
I cracked up when you switched on the radio and the DJ says "What a twit you are". Excellent timing.
As well
God you know it’s well made when after 40 years, some minor servicing is all that’s needed to fix it. This is on crappy paper type PCBs as well, so it’s always surprised me.
I bet it was barely used.
This is more musical than it may appear, auto chords, single notes and an arpeggiator, if it had a sequencer on it so you could programme in a four chord loop or something, it would be good to jam along to
Apparently it does have one. I wonder if the pedal would cycle through the sequence like on a Suzuki Omnichord.
Ah, another Saturday treat from our favourite consumer tech archaeologist!
You could use it as a "Jam companion", but you're absolutely right, it's severely lacking many features we take for granted in 2022, having said that, it's better than nothing I suppose
(Speaking as a musician 🎸 🎹)
I believe this was aimed at musicians. It would have been very useful in writing songs. It is a sort of "mini studio" with drums and rhythm built in. You add the vocals and/or lead guitar with it all going onto a tape.
17:09 "You know what a twit you are..." That made me howl! Great video as always.
It's essentially the same thing as when I'm playing ukulele and singing at the same time. Since I can't walk and chew gum at the same time, I generally only strum chords while I sing and that machine does exactly the same thing. Not sure how the buttons are arranged from how you played it, but it can be quite powerful and make most any kind of music. It would be perfect with a fake book or guitar music that just has the chord names above lyrics.
Those labels for clock location and expander placement, is a circuit bender's dream! I looked for this online and it must be quite rare! Another great video, thank you!
Go on sendico. Seeing how it's Japan only you'll have to hit up yahoo auctions and the like. Best of luck... and get me one!
Musician here. I basically see it as a cross between a karaoke unit and something designed for songwriters/musicians to demo ideas. What I'm less sure of is how it would work well with a guitar, but we don't really know how the pedal option functions. Does the unit have a way to program chords that you can cycle through with the pedal? If so, this could be an interesting way to demo songs with a guitar. A lot of organs/keyboards have this chord/drum functionality, so it's cool to see it being marketed for vocals/guitar. As for the form factor, it's portable and self contained -- something you might bring along with your instrument? I would have had a lot of fun with one of these growing up.
While it doesn't make much sense as a consumer device, I can see this perfectly as an entertainment center for a bar or a small restaurant, before omnipresent DJ-ing was a thing. Put in a tape for decent background music, and later, as everybody is appropriately intoxicated, key in a simple, popular song from the booklet and sing along. (Also, mind the small form factor and how it stores away quite perfectly and is easy to clean on the outside.)
Loved the walkin intro and it's tunage, brilliant :)
"Warning: This video contains annoying shrill sounds"
no worries, I've been watching a lot of Netflix stand-up comedy lately
So this is how it works! My brother in law has one of these tucked away at the parents house in Japan, and I've always been curious about it. Will need to pull it out of storage and see how well it works on the next visit.
Hey man, you are just the best. I've been watching your videos for years and not only have I learned so much from you but your videos are also incredibly interesting and entertaining. Thanks for all the captivating moments over the years.
Interesting! Looks like another pretty good quality made Sony product. I remember in the 1980's a lot of different digital keyboard type sound machines like this. I had some different lower quality ones as a kid. My friends and I had different ones we would play around with. I could imagine a younger me in awe if I seen one of these. Thanks for sharing!
In traditional Indian Music, there is a musical instrument called "shruti box" which do something very similar (playing chords). There are also modern electronic shruti boxes.
I recognize that IC702 - that is from Texas Instruments and is a precursor of their TMS320 DSP (digital signal processor). There is a Wikipedia page for the TMS320 that explains what it is. It makes sense that this made its way into this device. Around the same time as this the TMS320 also gained popularity due to its adoption into the Yamaha DX7? Synthesizer.
This is such a great piece of technology for reminding us the kind of crazy built-for-one-job machines that people made back before they would have just ended up as phone apps. I don't know why, but when you opened the compartment on the speakers and started pulling the cable out I lost it. There was just something delightfully retro about that whole scene.
The sort of video that deserves 10 million views just for the effort.
You walking by the canal, holding an unidentified red box, made my day
What a great tool for a young 80/90’s aspiring musician. They can play and record to tapes as well as create music and sing over the top.
I would imagine a target audience for this product could be buskers - a portable amp which you could plug your guitar and mic into and have a rudimentary piano/synth in the background for backing. That's if a foot pedal for mic reverb was available at that time....
Exactly. And the speaker detaching suggests that too.
Surely there is a Techmoan album using that thing round the corner. ? Chordmachine by Techmoan .... Available on Ronco Records as seen on TH-cam. Cassette / Mini-Disc release. I'm ready to add to basket
for the time this seems like an awesome device to quickly record song ideas, get the general vibe of the chords and the song in order to do a proper version later in the studio. Well done sony.
I didn't find it quite as mysterious - it's probably for backing for singing and the "notes" are really chords with the arpeggio mode being the most used. Perhaps it came with a song book telling you which numbers to press. The buttons described as " knocking it up an octave" (😆) seem to be altering the chord to major/minor etc.
That intro is too good. Way too good. I keep rewinding. Now i will never see this video or know what a chordmachine is.
That drum sound was lovely!
New specs Mat? Nice. Looking for something similar for my next pair of frames.
It may be an unusual device but It's a gorgeous looking piece of classic sony kit ❤
Man: Desperately seeks to review every music format on earth.
Also Man: "I'm not musically minded."
I know what he means though. He's obviously a big fan of music and audio.
This could have been cool if you could play back and record at the same time to add layers. I could see a use if you could record a drum line with the drum machine, add in guitar, add in synth and record multiple times to get more sounds etc, then record vocals over that. Add being able to effectively take samples off the radio with the tapes and it could have been a cool toy.
I can find this very useful for recording demos straight on to tape. If I was a teen in the 80s I recon I would have loved one of these to record guitar and vocals on to along with a drum backing
Good find! This will be an antique before you know it, it almost is! Never seen it before but I love the kid on the box, totally radical!!
it's pretty cool, really. we know a few musicians that actually would be able to work with that. they'd probably use the machine to handle the chords and drums, while plugging a keyboard thru a flanger and echo pedal, into the mic input, and they probably could record a decent-sounding tape off that thing.
there was something very "John Shuttleworth" about the start of this video
Watching this vid, I think the answer to what its intended use is is kinda obvious:
It's not a boom box. It's a karaoke machine.
While chords aren't the be-all and end-all of pop music, a great many pop songs can be adequately represented with just a handful of chords. As such, I could see something like this being pushed in the karaoke-friendly JP market based on the strength of that alone: rather than buying tons of tapes or learning to play proper keyboards, this could offer a simple and fairly compact way of being able to karaoke almost any pop song of the last 70 years, albeit not in the best quality, but just imagine it. You're a Japanese tween in the eighties, and the latest idol sensation releases a song you adore. Rather than having to wait to get a karaoke tape for it, or just sing alone with it on the radio, with a few listens you can learn the basic chord progression for your ChordMachine and bam: lyric-less karaoke ready to go.
People back then used to say "it's a marvel of miniturisation" when these new gadgets were released. Funny, because they seem freaking huge now!
you gotta love the 80's !! that really is the oddest machine ive ever seen! what a combo tape/radio/drum machine /keyboard / !!!! i love it
This thing I awesome. As a musician I could totally find great applications for this device.
One of the first things I do on a Saturday morning is check to see if there's a new Techmoan video. Never disappointed. I wonder what was going through the minds of the Engineers that created this. Whether they were fully engaged and excited whilst designing this, or if they were all scratching their heads wondering what it was that they were trying to achieve. I wonder what the people tooling up the factory to make these were thinking..
It's amusing to me you commented this after he took last Saturday off.
@@medes5597 I meant never disappointed with the content really.. quite happy for him not to be uploading content on new years day..
Yeah plugging in a guitar and play along the chords seems like a great idea, I wouldn’t mind using one
Btw loving this channel more and more, interesting documentary type and I feel I’m learning something :) great job overall
Oh yeah loved the intro, intriguing and calming :) - is the box the thing you are gonna talk about, or are you just carrying a random box
What a cool little device !
Huge Fan of Techmoan,because of all the products featured !!
As a musician, this is a very cool hobbiest, consumer device. A kid with an electric guitar in the 80s could've done some cool stuff with this.
I think people who commented earlier have it right. In a nutshell, this device has been miscategorized. It's not a boom box or even a personal stereo. It's intended to be a musical instrument. More specifically, it's what an amateur musician might use to turn himself into a one-man band. The guitar input, which could also have been used as an electronic keyboard input, is the giveaway. (As others have suggested, a street busker might have made use of it as well.) It even has a pitch control that allows you to tune the device to your instrument rather than the user having to tune the instrument to the device. But what places it firmly in the amateur market, as opposed to the professional market, are the inclusion of a low-end tape recorder, speakers that fall far short of performance quality, inflexibility when it comes to the beat box selections and chords (a pro or even pro-sumer model would have enabled the musician to program their own beats or upload them via a MIDI interface) and, yes, the built-in radio. A serious musician would have appreciated the mic so he could mix in his voice with the instrumentation, but the ability to sing along with the radio or tape is really more of a home consumer thing. As to why it failed, I think you're on target when you suggest that Sony didn't understand the market for electronic instruments. Maybe this was a sort of a test to see if it made sense for them to enter that market. Or maybe they thought the decreasing costs of electronics could lead to a trend back toward the Tin Pan Alley days, when people were more interested in playing music on their own instruments at home. (Prior to the advent of hi-fi stereo, you basically had two choices if you wanted to listen to music with great sound: go to concerts or learn to play it yourself. Many people actually opted for both.)