Happy Birthday to me, yesterday!!!!!

Hello peoples, I'm in a VERY happy mood today, or at least I was and still am from yesterday? Care to guess? Well don't, cause it was mah bday yesterday!!!!!!! Oh man not only was it an amazing day I also got mah BOSS VE-20 loopstation!!!!! I'll tell you ALL about how it went down in the next few paragraphs.

Let's start with me waking up. Now, every birthday that I've had up until now has had an effect on my morning. For some reason, I just feel like I have some sort of summer air inside of me, some sort of freshness flowing through my veins. Although it didn't go down like that this year, it was still an amazing morning. As soon as I woke up, at around 6:30 or something like that i had a BIIG grin on my face about it. But that's natural for everyone that has their special day, even if you're 65 you'd still smile on that morning when nobody's looking even if you're a grouch. So as soon as I got out of bed, I rushed myself downstairs to the kitchen table where I found mah presents!!!!!! Now, I've been waiting for the VE-20 for a LOONG time, I'm talking about 7 months here and it was DEFINITELY worth it all. When I first began tweaking it and testing out it became SOOO easy to make mini songs or intros and VERY quickly. I ofcourse woke my mom before doing so and she congratulated me on my special day and how I have my entire future ahead of me, which I do. It was a good moment for us all and I then quickly proceeded to my room where I turned on the VE-20 and went over the manual and practiced it until around 7:45, it was just so mesmerizing how easy it is to create your own tracks with it. After that I got my stuff, ate my breakfast, and ran to school. And if it's one thing I've learned it's that it's REALLY awkward to tell people it's your birthday, well at least it is for me. Oh and a shout out to Tijana whom was in my art class that morning and has the same bday as me. So anyways, here are some thing I learned to survive a good bday. If it's someones birthday, don't just ignore it, make sure to remember it and celebrate it by congratulating them. If you overhear it's someone's birthday don't just ignore it, use it to your advantage and make the whole class sing it! But if i's one thing, if two people have the same birthday, congratulate BOTH of them. Sadly at Don Mills this was not recognized, and somehow it carried onto one girl here too, but she can do whatever she wants. Anyways, ALWAYS congratulate someone on their birthday, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, oh and.....ALWAYS. It's their day where the world revolves around them for once, and when it's your turn then they'll make sure to cheer you on, happiness given is happiness returned another day. So that's basically it, I'm going to rate what I know of the BOSS VE-20 and what I plan to do with it in the next paragraph,

Ok so when I unwrapped the BOSS VE-20 there was an instruction manual, the actual loopstation, 6 AA batteries to start with, and I think that's it. You can get one at multiple places, if you're in Toronto then you can get it locally at Long & McQuade for around 340$ with the PSA Adapter (charger) or you can get it at Amazon.ca or .com which is the preferrable option because it costs less. There are multiple input and output jacks on the VE-20, there are 2 for Amps (left and right), Microphone, Charging, Headphones (you need a special type of cord or a converter will work fine, I prefer the converter because it's cheaper to buy and it's what I use to plug into my speakers) and I think that's it. If you need a detailed description go to their website:http://www.bossus.com/gear/productdetails.php?ProductId=1043
And read up on the loopstation and all its specs because I just got it 2 days ago and I don't even know EVERYTHING about it. SO let's start with the effects, there is about 15 of them that I don't understand that professional vocalists use like 3rd and 5th harmony and other stuff like that. There are basic effects like Echo, 6 Voices, 3 Voices, Chorus, Rock, Pop, Hip-Hop etc. Then there are the AWESOME ones like Radio (I love it because it actually sounds like an old radio voice with static, just youtube search it and you'll see), Robot (which is like a REALLY deep voice which is good for the bassline of a song), Strobe (where some parts of what you are saying are cut out, for example if I say "Damn this is good" you'll hear "D mn thi s i go d" it sounds better than how I wrote it) and I think that's all that I remember. Those are all the ones that I use frequently, I mostly use 6 Voice for the beatboxing part, Radio for the harmony, and Robot for the bassline because it's REALLY deep and warpy if you can control it. If you're wondering, you need a PSA 120 Adapter to charge the VE-20 from an outlet or use 6 AA's (preferrably rechargeable because I think that the VE-20 will kill the batteries quickly) and I use an SM-58 microphone, it's by far REALLY good even though I don't know a lot about mic's. Here's a website for the mic just in case you know your fair share about this stuff: http://www.shure.com/americas/products/microphones/sm/sm58-vocal-microphone
So that's my "review" on the BOSS VE-20, I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to practice over the summer, and even next year. Oh and I almost forgot, what are my plans for the VE-20? Well firts I gotta get good performing at home, because the VE-20 works kind of like a match. Once you record a voice track (which you can do multiple times) you cannot edit it or erase it from the song so you have to choose VERY carefully what you say and not to mess up. So in order to overcome that challenge you have to know what you say and how you say it before you say it. For that to happen, I'm going to have to practice A LOT in my freetime and write TONS of songs to practice. And the other thing is, the only way you can record yourself on the VE-20 is by videotaping yourself or a studio. For 1, the studio costs MONAY, which I don't have, and you need A LOT of it just to record one song. 2, the VE-20 doesn't save you track once you sing it, because once you're done singing and you erase it, there's no going back and you can't edit some parts of a song which is why it works like a match. I still LOOOVE the VE-20 to death!!!!!!! My plans are to first practice at home, then take it to school when I'm good enough for a competition or just to perform in class. And then during the summer of hopefully grade 10 or anytime I have free time on my hands over the weekend or on a holiday or a break I will hopefully figure out a way to hook up the VE-20 to speakers on Yonge and Eglinton and play my songs and figure out what to do from there. Maybe I'll be playing in the TTC subway station, or even the New York transit system where even MORE people live, I think (I don't really have the numbers on the top of my head right now).

Well, those are my ambitions and they'll become plans as I get better and better at the VE-20 and maybe I'll even get another loopstation like the RC-50 in the future. Who knows? I sure as hell don't. Anyways, thanks for reading this post and you KNOW how much I'd appreciate it if you guys sent me your own stuff, think it as your birthday present to me. Well you know what to do: Read it, learn it, live it, love it, and post it!!!!

Cheers, MarkL

P.S. I posted some new songs for you guys which I think you should listen to. Dr. Dre's "I need a Doctor" talks about the relationship between him and Eminem and how he risked his career to help one of the best rappers known today become what he is. And the other song is "Forever Young" by Jay-Z and Mr. Hudson. It talks about how we all need to reminesce about our youth every now and then and it just talks about our youth today and stuffs.