Alien First Words Plus


Alien First Words Plus - Formerly a VTech First Words Plus. This model features a male voice as well as a female one, has a few different sounds, and has a complex network of LEDs which flash in concert with the sounds.

Modifications:
- Pitch up & pitch down body contacts. The pitch-up contacts are particularly sensitive, sometimes bridging them will trigger a loop or a crash. As with the Alien First Words, the centre contact will also distort the sound in line-out mode.
- Random loop button. Ideally, this triggers a loop ranging from monotonous digital bells to a complex arpeggio, but also pushes the LED flashes into a loop, resulting in no sound whatsoever. Pressing the stutter button and touching the body contacts can sometimes trigger the next loop.
- Stutter button. In talk-mode, holding down the button makes the machine stutter "gran" over and over; in music-mode it stutters the first note of one of the melodies. Like the loop button, this can also be unpredictable. Pressing the sound buttons will intersperse the stuttering with fragments of other sounds, and combining this with the body-contacts can really make some weird noises.
- Reset switch. In the event of a total crash or an uninterruptable LED loop, this switch turns the machine off and on again.
- 1/8" line-out jack. For recording the instrument.

Despite its unpredictable nature, the variety of bizarre sounds it can produce make it a lot of fun.

Sound clips:

Melody warp A cute little melody warped with the body contacts.
Warped words 1 Various words distorted and pitch-warped with the body contacts.
Stutterin' granma The stutter button at work.
Pitched-down daddy Scary!
Loop 1 An example of a loop being triggered by the body-contacts after first pressing the random-loop button.
Loop 2 Another loop, being warped by the body-contacts.
Loop 3 A simple digital bell loop.

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