Alaron - My Song Maker, Miles 3738 (improved & bugfixed My Music Center successor)

Alaron - My Song Maker

This is the direct successor of My Music Center (see there); sounds and behaviour are almost identical. The greatest benefit of this instrument is that the chip flaw is gone and though 2 voiced music can be played now without problems. Also the keyboard has been extended to 37 keys.

The preset sounds and percussion are identical but unfortunately the great animal samples are gone. This thing has also now 22 demo melodies, those individual bars (with full accompaniment) can be repeated in a loop by the "one key play" feature, which can be interesting for tekkno. In the manual this instrument is called "RY-9057T", the PCB is labelled "MC9057-01G, 99-3-6".

different main features:

modifications:

notes:

I may add pitchbend/ clock speed hacks later. The hardware is very similar like My Music Center.

The extended keyboard range provides now higher and though even more intermodulation- distorted great digital sounds. The "one key play" feature of the 22 demo tunes provides tons of continuously repeating accompaniment loops with arpeggio and partly very strange patterns when no keys are pressed. Despite in this mode can not be played on the instrument's keyboard, they can form a great basis for tekkno variants or other meditative music. (In this mode fortunately even no auto- power- off feature quits the continuous repetitive performance.)

The demo melodies of this instrument are (according to the manual):

  1. Jingle Bells
  2. Say Hello
  3. Row Your Boat
  4. Joy To The World [wrong song]
  5. Little Brown Jug
  6. Hark The Herald Angles Sing
  7. The First Note
  8. Are You Sleeping
  9. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
  10. Happy Birthday
  11. Little Bee
  12. Wiegenlted [misspelled German "Wiegenlied" - should be lullaby]
  13. Mary Had A Little Lamb
  14. OH! X'mas Tree
  15. Yankee Doodle
  16. Little Miner
  17. Happy Reunion
  18. Ten Little Indians
  19. Republic March
  20. We Wish You A Merry X'mas
  21. Long Long Ago
  22. The Little Donkey
Most of these tunes are quite short; the orchestration is not bad but these melodies have far less quality than the great original My Music Center arrangements.

The My Song Maker keyboard was sold by Toys 'R' Us and also variants with the same CPU but other cases and brand names may exist. In an electronics shop I once even saw a cheap, black non- toy home keyboard which had additional LEDs and mid size keys, but apparently contained the same 2 note polyphonic toy keyboard CPU. (It seemed to have more than 37 keys, but the left most keys were just wired as drum pads.) Variants of this keyboard can be recognized by having similar elements like My Music Center but 37 keys and under the 4 drum pads stands S1.. S4 and there is a button labelled something with "samba" (for drumroll mode) and a "one key play" button.

A My Song Maker variant with key lighting (but only 32 keys) is the Elta - Kid Line Keyboard. Also a totally different looking keyboard model was released under the name Alaron - My Song Maker (seen on eBay), which has an asymmetric case (red with yellow speaker and green drumpads to the left, blue control panel, some word- shaped buttons) and exists also in a Bontempi version.

Attention: There are predecessors of this keyboard CPU those employ the same control panel layout like above but still have the keyboard flaw of My Music Center and also don't feature its great accompaniment loops of the "one key play" mode. If any possible, I urgently recommend to test- play it before buying. One of these faulty predecessors was the Music Fun - Melody Keyboard keyboard.

Miles 3738

Miles-3738, electronic keyboard

Also this quite oversized midsize tablehooter contains nothing else than a My Song Maker CPU (and thus is only 2 note polyphonic). 7 of the keys are fake and do the same like 4 of the drumpads since the CPU supports only 37 keys. Unusual for such a thing is the built-in power supply.

This keyboard was also released as SK-3738 and JT 3738 Portable Electronic Melody Maker (with yellow, green, red and blue buttons, seen on eBay).

different main features:


7 fake keys play drumpads.		 Fake cipher labels camouflage the OBS button controls.

notes:

I remember that in Germany this instrument was offered in an electronics component shop for about 59 DM (about 24€) already before the normal My Song Maker appeared at Toys 'R' Us. This tablehooter yells quite loud even at the lowest volume setting and the sound contains quite strong beeping static key matrix noise (independent from the volume setting). A bit confusing is that the OBS buttons of preset sounds and rhythms are labelled only with the numbers "00" to "07" instead of sound and rhythm names, and their names are listed in the manner of a sound bank keyboard instead. Apparently the designer of this tablehooter attempted to camouflage the OBS controls of this instrument to give it the visual appearance of its technically more advanced sound bank competitors. Also the demo song names are listed on the control panel and contain various Engrish misspellings. A possible predecessor of this yelling thing was the bizarre Miles - Golden Camel-11AB.
 
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