Edgardo Cambon

Percussionist, Vocalist, Composer, Educator, Band Leader

Customer Experience

“My name is Edgardo Cambón, I am a percussionist and singer. Two weeks after I took my first conga lesson at age 15, I was already teaching some one else in order to pay for more lessons. Along that process, some simple pieces of equipment have helped my career and skills enormously, a good metronome, a good cassette recorder (remember those?), a multitrack recorder to lay down some ideas, but not even in my wildest dreams I could have thought of any single tool that would help me more than the Superscope PSD340./p

AS A PERCUSSIONIST In my many travels (7 in total!) to the island of Cuba and many more to other parts of the world, to study and research, or to perform, I made many field recordings, I wish I would have had the PSD340 by me then, at any rate, I have been re-recording some of this old cassettes (or later DAT) onto CD, slowing down some of those fast chops I was trying to figure out for years and burning a new CD on aslower tempo on deck “B”, reducing a huge bulk of cassettes to a few CDs, from which I can burn a safety copy in a very short time, all in the same unit.

I am always learning new material for my band and many other projects, whether for studio work or live performances. I can slow down a tune with out changing the pitch and learning and writing breaks, with headphones or even running an audio signal from the RCA Line OUT into my mixing board with some amplification and my PA speakers, I can record myself onto the recording deck as I am playing! I can record myself playing a rhythm part (track) with a microphone through the analog input, then take that recording and play that part back on the play back CD deck and record onto the recording deck another part, instrument or voice line and, thus, it serves as a multi track device. Something else I do a lot is recording myself playing along with programmed rhythms from my drum machine.

AS A VOCALIST I have a strong tenor voice and a pretty wide range, but lets face it, all voices have a “sweet spot” on their range where you sing comfortable. And, no one should sing for too long out of their range. When I am choosing new material for my band or learning a song for someone else, if I feel it is too high or low, I can change the key signature without changing the tempo (unless I want to!), burn a CD for my arranger, sing along if I want to, and deliver a CD copy of the tune in the key that I want to sing the song. In addition, the voice reduction feature allows me to practically erase the lead vocalist of the original recording and sing along any tune I need to learn.

AS AN EDUCATOR I teach in many different situations, private classes, small ensemble workshops or larger lecture demonstrations at Universities. With the PSD340 my private students leave the lesson with a “fresh” copy of our class on CD, without havingto download it onto a computer program or anything, and I can apply all above benefits of the unit to my students, I can ask them to sing along and record them, play live over a previous recording, slow down chops, etc.

By simply pressing pause while in record mode, the CD recorder will make a separate file of that stop which will look as another track on any CD player when they are listening to it at home or in their cars. This function is very beneficial when they are trying to review the lesson and everything is “cued out”… I just press pause and release it every time I teach them something new and at the end of the class, I “finalize” the CD, which is a very fast process done at the touch of a button, allowing the digital data to be “set in the CD” (yes, I am not a technical kind of guy) and in a couple of minutes as I put down in the calendar my next class with a student: Voilá! The CD of their class is done!

BUT WAIT THERE IS MORE! I can record my live performances or rehearsals, make tracks of the different songs and quickly burn copies for band members before they even leave the venue, well…except the horn players: they run out of the Club before I can even blink my eyes! Just kidding!

Seriously, it is true, some of this functions could be also accomplish with a desk computer or a lap top, but the PSD340 is very discrete and unnoticeable on stage, it is not fragile, the mechanism will not skip or “jump” and it is very portable and as easy to operate as an old cassette player, and it won’t “drop” or quit as computers tend to do.

I was also very please with the protective case I got and the remote control made my live recordings much easier and I could create different live tracks of our show with out having to move from my Congas and as I was talking to the audience.

Percussion and vocals are still a tradition that is best as passed on from generation to generation in a verbal or “spoken word” way, the PSD340 does everything I need to document that tradition, except for playing the music and writing it for me...

Thank God for that or I’ll be out of work! Enjoy it!

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