Otamatone [Color Series] Japanese Electronic Musical Instrument Portable Synthesizer from Japan by Cube / Maywa Denki [Japanese Edition], Yellow

Color:Yellow The Otamatone is an electronic musical synthesizer. It wasdeveloped in Japan in 1998 by the CUBE toy company and the Maywa Denki designfirm. The Otamatone is a singing toy whose body is shaped like an eighth note(it also somewhat resembles a tadpole, ‘otamajakushi’ being Japanese for’tadpole’), with sound emerging from a ‘mouth’ on the notehead. It requirestwo hands to play: while one hand holds and squeezes the ‘head’, the otherhand controls the pitch of the tune by placing the finger on a ribboncontroller on the stem; a higher position on the stem creates a lower sound.The ribbon controller is deliberately delinearized to resemble a guitar, sothere is a shorter distance between higher notes than between lower ones.Varying the pressure on the head (thereby opening and closing the ‘mouth’ ofthe Otamatone) creates a wah-wah effect, and shaking the neck (and therebyslightly changing pressure on the head) creates a vibrato effect. Switches onthe back of the head allow users to change octave, turn it off or on, orchange the volume. The sound made by this toy can be compared to the sound ofa theremin, synthesizer, or jinghu.