this machine plays folk songs
Here’s a song I made using: a tyco hotkeyz keytar, a yamaha dd-7 drum machine, and a sample from a Woody Guthrie song:
I like how Woody is holding the drum machine at such a jaunty angle.
The reason I chose to mix these three things together (and it should probably be mixed a lot better) is because there are certain design elements to each of these things that make them go together perfectly in a live performance setting. I probably could have edited the song to get everything a lot tighter but I only used live performances in the mix to demonstrate that a song like this could be played live.
First the hotkeys. My brother bought this at a thrift shop a few years ago, it’s a lot of fun to play with and makes some really great noises, but what I really like about it is that it is so unclear whether this is really a toy or a musical instrument. I don’t wanna go into too much detail about how it works exactly (actually I do but I won’t) but basically it has a certain amount of programmed musical sequences that you can change by pressing different keys. You can also change the tone and the tempo of all the sounds. And the most amazing feature is that there are buttons you can push to change the key to the 4th or 5th note in the major scale of whatever key you are in at the time. What this all means is that you can play along with any song in any key at any tempo so long as the song follows a basic 3 chord blues progression, which most pop, rock, country, soul, and almost all folk and blues songs do.
Next the yamaha dd-7 drum machine. I think my Dad got this like 15 years ago or something. It has a drum pad so you can play along with anything with an array of drum sounds. It also has like 100 programmed beats that can be sped up or slowed down to match that tempo you want to play along with. But the best part is that it has a ‘tap’ in feature that allows you to tap in the tempo you want it to play a programmed be at, so you can almost instantly match a beat to the tempo of any song.
And then Woody Guthrie. Besides being one of the most prolific and influential songwriters of the 20th century, Woody Guthrie wrote practically all of his songs in a 3 chord blues progression (so did Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Leadbelly, etc.). What I think is really interesting are the parallels between the way that these electronic instruments were designed to be totally portable and easy to play so that the average person could just pick them up, put some batteries in them, and have a good time, and the way that Woody Guthrie designed his songs so that the average working man could go sing them at his union meetings.
This all leads me to believe that if the tyco hotkeys keytar and the yamaha dd-7 drum machine had been around back in Guthrie’s ramblin’ days, he never would have messed around with a guitar and a harmonica.