I sitting around Friday night, trying to learning Bowie’s Moonage Daydream on guitar (or something at least resembling it), when I had an idea: what would happen if I ran my Nintendo DSi through a couple guitar effect pedals and then into my portable Marshall amp?
I had the portable amp out because I plan on dressing up as a Spider from Mars for an “intergalactic” birthday party (which is why I was learning Moonage Daydream).
This idea came to me when I was curious if I could run my iPod Shuffle or DSi through the amp in case I didn’t want to try and play the song.
I decided against the Shuffle quickly because it has “issues.” It is doing this thing where one of the sound channels keeps cutting in and out and it is very sensitive to any cord movement–it pauses right away if the sound cord giggles too much.
So I went with the DSi.
I ran it through my distortion pedal and then my chorus pedal and messed with the tone and distortion on the amp itself. It made for an interesting sound.
You can tweak the pitch and speed of the songs via the DSi, which I of course did. Listening to Rush’s Working Man sped up, distorted and in a chorus was something out of this world.
I liked being able to tweak the output of the song live via the pedals and the DSi interface.
Does this have any sort of practical application? I doubt it, but it was fun.
The little Marshall, with its built in belt clip, makes for a great portable speaker if I need sound for a costume however.
I am going to have the guitar and amp with me for my costume and I am toying with attaching one of the pedals (maybe the distortion) somewhere on my costume, as the OD (overdrive) on the little amp leaves a lot to be desired.
