Find seven employees who are making a fool of themselves!
12.3.2019
What happens when I hand seven Digitec Galaxus employees simple toy instruments and let them play them without any great concept? See and, above all, hear for yourself.
Can we manage to rehearse a song with toy instruments that is recognisable and sounds like a band? It has to work somehow. After all, various punk bands have had a similar career around the world. So I assigned seven Galaxus employees to the "Galaxus Band" project. Only David has band experience. He plays guitar. The other six participants are complete beginners.
Band members of the Galaxus children's toy band
Simon Balissat on accordion, Natalie Hemengül on jingles, Ramon Schneider on drums, Raphael Knecht on xylophone, Carolin Teufelberger on recorder, David Lee on guitar and Martin Jud as vocal support on the microphone.
On first inspection of the products, it quickly becomes clear that it will be a difficult endeavour with these instruments. The problem: the non-existent range of tones. Another problem: the instruments are not tuned. The simplest solution was therefore to select the stadium anthem "Seven Nation Army" by The White Stripes for the performance. The song is well-known, easy to play and the chorus is recognisable despite the narrow bandwidth. Here is the original:
The confidence that we can pull it off is high, but so is the fear of embarrassment. To be on the safe side, we organise a band rehearsal the day before the video shoot. Just under an hour should be enough. That's the plan. Of course, a new problem arises: The saxophone is unplayable. A new wind instrument is needed. The limited choice leads us to a recorder. We don't let this minor setback get us down. We can do this. The result after two hours of strumming around:
Conclusion
Goal achieved! We rehearsed a song with toy instruments that is recognisable! But seriously, the real heroes of the video are the band members. They breathed life into the instruments. Without them, the "instruments" are just primitive toys. The guitar, for example, could neither be tuned nor played at the beginning. David made an extra effort to put new strings on the guitar. The divisions on the fingerboard (frets in technical jargon) are still unusable. The xylophone contains two identical notes that cannot be adjusted. We banished the saxophone to the corner after the rehearsal, as the off-key notes would only have further damaged the song. The recorder was at least playable. The piano keys on the hand organ provided a rudimentary melody, but the buttons on the side are more of a decoration. Only with the rhythm set there were no problems.
After testing the instruments, we can say that they are cute, but useless. They may just be enough for children's first "musical experiences", but if you want to encourage your child and protect their ears, buy higher-quality instruments straight away. Musical training on a real instrument may be more expensive, but it makes much more sense for everyone: fewer weird sounds in the house and the child learns rhythm and a sense of harmony early on.
Our seven band members gave it their all. You can recognise the song at the end of the shoot, but to be honest, it definitely sounds different. And even an existing band (hopefully) sounds a lot better than our experiment. But Simon mentions after the shoot with a wink: "We're not the best, but we're still better than a Guggenmusik". We'll leave that in the room for now.
Galaxus children's toy ribbon
What do you think of our jam session with the toy instruments?
- Simply embarrassing!25%
- Mega fun, more of this please!75%
The competition has ended.
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I’m the cook, cleaner, police officer, nurse, entertainer, motivator, author, storyteller, coach, organiser, chauffeur, lawyer and judge. To put it simply, I’m a mum to a daughter and not just a (Content) Manager at the office but also at home.
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