That’s French electronic music artist Mezerg, whose videos aren’t just vehicles for catchy 4/4 dance numbers, but are interesting performance art pieces.
Here’s another video of his, where he’s jamming on the theremin, using it as a combination volume control and low-pass filter:
Because I play the accordion and other keyboard instruments and sometime do a search on them, I see ads for musical instruments from time to time. Lately, I’ve been seeing ads for the thing pictured above.
They were banner ads, so the photo was tiny. At first glance I thought it was an ad for PVC pipes. Then I saw the text: Casual wind instrument. And it sells for less than $100.
When something is that cheap and described in such bland terms, it’s usually bad. Think of Zima: “Clear malt beverage”. Or the more accurate Canadian term for what gets called “American cheese” in the U.S.: “Processed cheese food”.
This thing has a name: It’s the Venova, made by Yamaha.
“The Venova is a completely new type of wind instrument,” says the website, “that is easy to learn. With simple fingerings and a sound like a saxophone, you can be playing music in no time!”
While it looks like PVC pipe, it’s actually made of its stronger cousin, ABS. It should take a drop without chipping (and definitely without denting), and it’s supposed to be water washable.
Here’s the burning question: What does it sound like?
Let’s first check out the Venova under the most ideal conditions: Professional musicians, recorded in a music studio, with the benefits of a little sound processing, backing tracks, and multiple takes:
Here’s the Venova under conditions you’re more likely to encounter: not in a music studio, occasionally with a backing track, but still being played by a professional musician:
Here’s a setting that you might find really familiar: In a music store, no backing tracks, just a decent player and the instrument:
Want some more in-depth reviews? Here are a few that take a closer look at the instrument:
There’s a lot of clever design in the Venova. There’s the “branched pipe”:
This gives the Venova a more complex sound. Yamaha’s promo material says that it helps make the Venova sound more like a conical wind instrument (such as the saxophone) than a cylindrical one (such as the recorder).
There’s also the “meandering pipe”:
It gives the Venova a longer air column in the same linear length. This allows for two things:
More complex harmonics
Shorter distances between finger holes (which means that you can play it as if it were a recorder)
If I taught music at school, I’d give the Venova a look. It’s got a lot of the qualities that might make it a good instrument for musical education: Easy to play, in the key of C, durable, inexpensive.
Finally: There’s one wind instrument player I’d love to see on the Venova — the one and only Saxsquatch. C’mon, Yamaha, if it retails for under $100, you can easily send him one!
Creative Commons photo by Evan-Amos. Tap to see the source.
I’ve been silent because a lot of my time has been eaten by the “homework assignment” part of the job interview process at a pretty nice organization. I just submitted the assignment, and now I wait. Fingers crossed!
I do a 10K bike ride as often as I can, which can be a challenge.
The weather in Florida tends to turn on a dime this time of the year, and it’s something you have to account for when your exercise involves moving about on a lightning rod in the country’s lightning strike capital. Then there’s my work schedule, which is a finely-tuned balance of ramping up a side hustle LLC and doing the performative contortions required in a senior-level job search (I’ll write more on these topics in a later article).
In spite of these challenges, I’ve managed to squeeze in a bike ride five days a week on average, which I think is pretty good. I’ve been able to combine it with tasks such as the occasional run to the post office and grocery shopping. In fact, unless the store is too far away, the items I need to buy are too large, or if the weather isn’t cooperating, I do most of the shopping on my bike rather than with the car.
I do enough biking and walking around the neighborhood that my house keys and car fob are separate. This is something that goes back to growing up in Toronto, where transit and taxis were plentiful, even in the pre-Uber/Lyft era, and stepping out of the house didn’t necessarily mean taking the car.
But I’m living in a place where the car both signifies and determines your station in life, where drive-thru convenience stores and ATMs are the norm, and where the front door of your house is merely the gateway to your car. I don’t think I’ll adopt the local habit of bundling my house keys with the car fob anytime soon.
I’ve written about this place before. The road that circles the “lake” — it’s actually a pond — is well-paved and about a quarter-mile around, making it an easy and picturesque way to add a mile to the daily ride.
I had a proper haircut scheduled for later that afternoon at my regular spot, The Heights Barbershop, so I figured it was time to take one last selfie featuring my “Zoom mullet”, a self-inflicted job done with my old beard trimmer:
I’ve been here for six and a half years, and I still marvel at seeing palm trees and other tropical flora, despite the fact I get outside just about every day:
I’m using this it a little background noise while working on a programming assignment (more on this later on my tech blog, Global Nerdy). If you’re willing to put up with the occasional YouTube ad and need something to watch or have on while doing chores, exercises, or hey, even programming, here it is:
I had no real plans for the weekend, but after watching this video, I feel like running out to Bearss Groves to buy a watermelon and a kiwi fruit (a.k.a. the fruit formerly known as the Chinese gooseberry):
