Fisher-Price Scale
By Karl Petersen
As an antidote to the escalating cost of quality disk boxes, I have once again acquired a Fisher Price disk box of astonishing simplicity and robustness. I did not inquire if it required disassembly and packing before I transported it home from the garage sale (three doors north), but I did remove the tone-arm (music box movement) from the base unit in order to see if there was anything particularly interesting about it.
The simple starwheels plink the comb without aid of dampers. The tuning is in the modern key of G#, and I have simply transposed to C for convenience. The absence of accidentals limits arpeggio chords a great deal. In the distant past, I pinned a tune for this device, and have another in mind to try. Perhaps someone with a very short compass keyboard would like to offer arrangements and we will go into business! As a greater limitation than the short compass, the playing time is only 30 seconds.
cdefga
G..CDE.GABcdefgabcd
As you can see, the gaps in the bass octave make it less than useful for melody, and the melody section is doubled for sixteenth notes and slow trills. (If your mail reader does not have proprtional spacing, the doubled notes should appear superimposed on their mates.) An upper d is available for an expanded repertoire. I did not see many of these features used on the disks, however, and most selections actually repeat and identical 15 second tune twice over.
No, I have not pursued the development of a keyboard driver for this device. The law of diminishing returns applies.
Karl A. Petersen
kap@firedragon.com |
(Message sent Wed 30 Oct 1996, 01:04:01 GMT, from time zone GMT-0700.) |
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