The Casio CT-390 Travels To The Center Of The Universe

[m10538]

This is episode 1 of a 9 part serial that is based on my Casio CT-390 tapes. There is some Yamaha PSR-190 and even some guitar in it but 99% is the 390. I liked the brash aggressive sound of the 390, especially the forceful percussion. The Yamaha was a wimp compared to it! This isn't normal nice music of course. Most of it is loud 'n screechy. Few people will like it I suppose but I think I got some interesting sounds out of my ol' 390. Check it out:

 

[m10538]

I don't know what the character limit is in these posts. I'm going to try to put my 5000 character limit YouTube description here.

THE AWESOME ADVENTURES OF SPACE DUDE!!! WOWIE ZOWIE!! That's right, kiddos! Gather 'round the glowing Tube, strap yourselves in and get ready for...ACTION!...ADVENTURE!...ROMANCE!...LOTS OF BORING AND CONFUSING STUFF! And of course my bizarre tuneage ringing in your earholes! This is the entertainment event of the century!!! A nine part serial packed with fantastic sights and sounds that will buhlow yo' mind!!!!! Holy moly!

So, what is this anyway? It's...ugh....I, ugh.....I......oh, I don't know. It'z a mess, man. Just a craaaazy mess. Just like life. Yeah, that's what this is...it's just about being alive in this wacky ol' universe. It's the story of a dude. A dude on his one way trip through space and time. Like all of us. He's born. He experiences some stuff. Then he dies. You know, the usual pattern. He has good times, bad times, he tries to do the best he can. He learns some life lessons along the way. And maybe, just maybe, you will too as you follow him on his amazing journey.

This whole series took TWO YEARS to make! Ugh! I thought it would be three parts and take a couple of months but it engorshed into nine parts totalling four hours as I kept thinking of new things for him to experience. I've always thought that producing cartoons and stop-motion animation must be just awful and painful. Now I know how true that is. You work on it for 5 hours and you only move it ahead by 1 minute! Half way into this series I thought "Oh, crap! What have I gotten into?!" But once started I had to finish it. It's all lo-fi campy stuff done on Android tablets. I like stuff like that. Even if I could make professional looking Hollywood type stuff I wouldn't want to. I prefer grunge over glitz.

This began when I wanted to make a video of Keyboard Tape 5, recorded in 1992. But I ended up pulling stuff from every keyboard and guitar tape to fill it all out. The fifth tape was 40 minutes long and all one "story." Featuring a recurring ascending theme, a second theme 3 times and lots of strange bits. The ascending theme made me imagine a rocket launching and ideas for the vids took off from there. The whole tape is just the Casio CT-390 and that's what you'll be hearing most of the time in all 9 parts. Almost all of the fifth tape is the CT-390 on auto-harmonize and with the tone bank button on adding percussion to every key hit. It's being pumped through an amplifier and sometimes through delay and chorus guitar pedals. It's noooiiiisssseeyyyy!!!!

The fifth tape wasn't a blank tape, it was my brothers old Huey Lewis album Fore! that he didn't want anymore. I...I can't imagine why. I'll leave it up to you as to whether I ruined that tape or made it better. It must have been low quality tape because it didn't age well. It took many plays in different players and a lot of clean up and EQ to make it listenable.

I meant this first vid to be an analogy of the beginning of a life. The sliding doors open and you're spat out into the universe! Your umbilical cord breaks like the umbilical cables on the rocket at liftoff and off you go! As a kid you play with toys and stuff so I have Space Dude fool around doing some star surfing...cool! Then your brain turns on, you go to school and you start learning about the universe around you. The brain of Space Dude's ship is the Frinkatron 9000. Professor Frink is my favorite Simpsons character. I tried for some geeky humor as SD finds out what dark matter and energy are but he blocks the screen so you can't see. My money is on w.i.m.p.s. Or possibly w.i.m.p.erinos.

I needed some kind of moral or theme for this story so I took some inspiration from (stole from) the movie Quest of the Delta Knights, which is one of my fave MST3K episodes. I nicked the triangle in a circle symbol from Archimedes' handbook. In my story it stands for Knowledge, Wisdom, and Compassion. I tried to make these vids be "enlight-o-tainment." Goofy entertainment sprinkled here and there with lil nuggets o' wisdom to embiggen your heart and soul!

Not much action in episode 1, but there's some exciting stuff coming up, I promise! Space battles, talking robot cars, freaky alien critters, even a [CMF edit: "fun snuggling"] scene! Oh-ho baby! I don't want to give too much away but by the last episode Space Dude destroys all evil in the entire universe everywhere and forevermore! I'm totally serious! How's he do that? You'll just have to wait till the conclusion to find out!

I have a running "where's Waldo" thing going on in this. The Dude In the Red Spacesuit is hiding somewhere in some episodes. Can you spot him? If you're the first to say when and where you get a prize! Well, not really. But everyone will know how keenly observant you are! The times that Space Dude sees him, like at the end of this episode don't count though, just when he's unseen. Can you spot him hiding earlier in this episode? Who is The Dude In the Red Spacesuit? The answer will be revealed at the end of episode 9! ACTION! ADVENTURE! ROMANCE! And MYSTERY!!!! Oooh!!

Edited March 20, 2020 by m10538
removal of the "S" word...nasty!

[m10538]

Hey, it worked! Now you don't have to get up, and walk alllllll the way over to YouTube for the description! Cool!