How to play the Melocussion ?
Well, let’s go through it !
A wonderful moment
The main goal of the Melocussion is to play drums, to play piano accompaniment (what you usually do with your left hand on a classical piano), to loop them up and to improvise with the pure acoustic sound of the melodica (if you’re good enough).
The Melocussion is capable of doing more, but I won’t go much into the other features details, mainly because I’m not sure if I’m going to keep them. It’s still a work in progress after all…
The main way to do the thing the instrument is made to do is to press buttons on the integrated keyboard. Note that the keyboard is comfortably placed bellow the fingers of the left hand that usually doesn’t do much when you hold a classic melodica :
Get prepared to see more in the future posts
This little keyboard and a little bit of programming can do a lot, each key as a purpose, and because it’s beginning to be a little bit complicated, even for me, I have made this schematic :
I have divided the functionality into 4 categories, and the 4 green buttons allow me to quickly select the menu that I need.
The Rec Master menu
Allows me to play 8 different drum samples (1 to 8 in blue), and eventually to start / stop recording to make them loop.
The loop also works with the MIDI keyboard.
Musically, the loop start from the first time I play a drum after starting the recording and end when I press the record button again.
The A to D buttons allows me to set the “Group” in where the drums will be stored, more on that with the Live Guide menu.
The Pist Specialist menu
Allows me to place drums into a pist, like on a classical music software. Each drum placed will play, after the loop as been set by the Rec Master, will play at the told moment.
i.e., after selecting a drum with the blue buttons, I can press on the 8 buttons, and this drum will be played regularly 8 times during the loop ! Very helpful to make some kind of metronome…
The Live Guide menu
Allows me to stop / start the music done with the piano, the recorded drums, or with the Pist Specialist.
I can stop each Rec Master ‘Group’ individually, allowing me to make some constructed stuff nonetheless.
The Assets Select menu
Finally, this menu allows me to select a drum set from the 8 stored set, and a piano font from a list of 254 instruments !
