Improv 418: Sad Clown in a Diner (Roland Aerophone Mini, Sax Voice)

So...every year, Long & McQuade, a big Canadian music store, has an in-store event, Jack&Attic Sale, in which instruments are offered at a discount. Many are used, some demos, and a few new. The deals range from negligible to amazing. I have a problematic tendency to go and pick something up. Last year, I may have bought a didgeridoo. This year, the sale was, for obvious reasons, online. I scrolled through the offerings, looking for something interesting, and found...this. There are a few models of Roland Aerophone. I got the littlest and cheapest; the most expensive costs something like $1,300 new and was still $999 on sale. Mine is a demo model (with a new untouched mouthpiece; the old mouthpiece was also included, and I can tell it&been used). It&a woodwind synthesizer. These are relatively hard to find. My little one does six instrument sounds--sax, flute, clarinet, trumpet, violin, saw lead--and while none of the voices sounds 100% like the original instrument (they range from 20% to 80%), it&a cool instrument to play around with. The fingering is just like that of a recorder, though there are some extra keys that make hitting accidentals easier. The Aerophone is not really a toy, though it&definitely designed to ease new players into woodwind playing. As someone who already plays a number of woodwind instruments, I quite like it. I&using the sax voice in this video. As you can hear, it is--to steal badly from Douglas Adams--almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a...