Had another great Asheville experience this morning, this time at Moogfest's Modular Marketplace where I picked up a little wonder you may have heard of called a brandnewnoise voice recorder. It consists of a small (3″W x 3.5″L x 2″H), pretty, hand-made wooden box housing a digital audio recorder. It is so simple any idiot can operate it, which is right up my alley. Push and hold the red button and it records up to 30 seconds of audio from its built-in mic. Release the red button to stop recording, then push the black button and it plays back your recording. Turn the black nob to and fro to change the pitch during playback.
That last feature is the entertaining part.
I don't completely understand why, but at the ripe age of 67, it makes me smile and even break out laughing to hear my own voice, or anyone else's, for that matter, sound higher or lower than its normal pitch saying just about anything.
The best part is that the inventor, a really nice guy named Richard Upchurch from Brooklyn, NY, was manning his own table at the Modular Marketplace. He was very fun to talk to, is enthusiastic about his products (yes, there are other models - see his site for further details), and he was even nice enough to autograph my purchase on the back.
Powered by two AAA batteries (he even includes two with each recorder) the "Nob Nob", which was the name printed on the carton it was packaged in, requires no training manual and is well worth its $50 price tag in giggles alone. In the first hour after we got it back to our Jeep, Anita Gayle and I had recorded and played back at various speeds, many infantile phrases like, "Hi, how are you", "Must be time for lunch", and my personal fav, "I'm from Ohio", which for some obscure reason kept us in stitches for many minutes more than we should admit to.
Anyhow, Richard's little voice recorder would make a great gift for the friend who has everything because nobody really "needs" one.
Or do they? Yes, they do. Trust me.
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