Musical Instruments : Hohner Melodica Piano

Rating: - Servicable budget melodica, some adjustment required.
This melodica is nice because it's cheaper than Hohner's fancy professional models. And you don't lose much, it seems: it sounds like a melodica should sound, and it can be played with a reasonable degree of musicality, even by a novice like myself. The instrument comes with a little gig bag and two mouthpieces (a short one and a flexi-tube one). The construction and materials are of acceptable quality, I have no complaints.

Those of us with finicky ears are going to want to have this thing tuned, though. Music stores dealing in folk instruments ought to be able to do this, for a fee, or one can find DIY tuning instructions on the internet. Although the instrument is *mostly* in tune with itself, it will almost certainly need to be adjusted in order to play along with other chromatic instruments, or your Gang of Four records, or whatever. All that said, this would be a good instrument for the amateur musician or student to learn on. I keep it around for doodling and songwriting, and I use it on a home recording every now and then (whenever I feel like spending my time doing post-production pitch correction).

One final (miscellaneous) note: the sonic frequencies produced by this melodica are apparently unpleasant for cats to hear: mine get agitated and start to complain when I play it for them. I don't know if it's melodicas in general or just this one, but they don't like it. Anyone have any insight into this?

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Rating: - Easy to play, fun, nice sounding instrument!
This is a nice sounding instrument, that is fingered like a keyboard. It comes with two different styles of mouthpieces. The melodica comes in a nice sturdy case, is lightweight and is quite portable for traveling. The melodica is enjoyable to play and is pleasant to have with you, when playing a regular keyboard is not possible. The melodica is also a fun way to learn music and keyboard basics and does not sound tinny or unpleasant, if one is just getting started learning music.