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LO-FI LOVE

Analog Tara on Casio chic, July 2001.

Who can resist the lo-fi charms of an 8-bit sample of your own voice laid over a digitized "samba" loop, peppered with the occasional sound of a synthesized "dog bark"? Welcome to the world of Casio. Toy sampling keyboards, marketed as musical learning tools for children, can be seen as part of a long tradition of "easy-play" instruments in American culture. In the early-20th century, the player piano was the first instrument to juxtapose 19th-century values of individual achievement and creative expression with the values of the new consumerist mythology. The fact that musical skill was not required to "operate" the player piano was linked with a notion of democratic, universal accessibility to culture; pop, folk, and classical genres were now available for consumption - and thus, for performance - regardless of the performer's skill or work ethic (see references below)

In subsequent decades, manufacturers aimed to incorporate an increasing variety of compositional tools and cultural influences in consumer keyboards. Home organ models in the 1960s and 70s were furnished with punch-button "bossa" rhythms and automated compositional structures like "finish"; Casio's mass-market digital keyboards in the 1980s and 90s placed "Ska" and "Tex-Mex" rhythms alongside "Fox Trot" and "Baroque."

Casio sampling keyboards hit the market with the SK-1 (1986), and several models from the proceeding decade offered variations on the same theme. Most models in the SK series have mini-keys designed for children, and each model has different effects processing capabilities and a slightly different sound and rhythm set from the pancultural Casio diaspora. All have a built-in sampling mic as well as some sort of pads for triggering samples in "real time" over the prefabricated factory songs and grooves. For an excellent overview of Casio and wannabe-Casio offerings, visit the Casio Sampling Keyboards page, which includes photos, features and specs on a number of classic models.

There is some body of opinion that Yamaha's competitor to the Casio SK series, the VSS-30, is preferable; it offers 3 seconds of 8-bit sampling time, and you can apply multiple effects to a sample, including the nice "U-Turn" feature, which plays the sample forwards then backwards. Compare user opinions of Yamaha's offerings at Sonic State and Harmony-Central.

The Casio Rapman/Rap-1 (circa 1990) is another sampling keyboard with features that stand apart from the pack. Marketed to kids with rap-musician aspirations, the Rapman offers a voice effector for altering the pitch of your voice, drum pads, and a scratch wheel. Visit the unofficial Rapman site at http://www.freebox.com/casio/ for more info. Sonic State's user comments on the Rapman are overwhelmingly positive; one user claims: "Chicks will DIG you, walking down the street sporting your sleek stylish Rapman, on your shoulder, busting dope freestyles in the amply sized microphone." In the tone bank, Casio offers its sonic interpretation of urban reality with sounds such as "Ambulance," "Car Horn," and "Emergency Alarm." Or you can, of course, sample your own crises.

As opposed to the Rapman, which offers decidedly hipper beats, the SK-60 I just picked up at a flea market contains a rather dated, pan-European soundset: songs such as the theme from "The Nutcracker," "Amazing Grace," and "London Bridge," and rhythms such as "polka," "waltz," and "big band." Honestly, after a few listens, I'm having a hard time putting these particular nuggets to use. On a brighter note, the instrument sounds are surprisingly okay! I will definitely find a happy context for the organ and electric piano sounds. In what one might call this Casio simulacrum, many of the sounds have built-in "touch sensitivity" that bears absolutely no relation to your touch (save for the empty reference to the very notion of "touch sensitivity"). Kinda cool!

Some fun can probably be had playing around with the SK-60's ample array of campy, gendered vocal samples, which include "bah (female)," "la (children)," "doo 2 (male)," and "doo-bee-dee-bah." This is almost like mustering the ghosts of Patsy Cline's backup singers at the touch of a button. It's somewhat disturbing to realize this keyboard was intended for children; with its bizarre, digitized, auto-doo-wopping, I suspect it'd be one of those creepy-scary toys that could make kids cry.

Regardless, the sampling is what makes these little keyboards so nifty. Ease of use, strange lo-fi effects manipulations, and the limitations of grainy, 8-bit-or-less sampling resolution and 2-3 seconds of sampling time offer a different brand of inspiration than the higher-tech features many of us have grown accustomed to. Sampling your own voice into a Casio, adding effects, and playing back the samples at higher and lower pitches, never fails to be startlingly creepy. You have to work much harder to get a comparably scary sound from a pro sampler. With Casios, creepiness comes naturally.

Obviously, there are many limitations to working with a toy synth, but sometimes it's nice to take a breather from our ingrained MIDI world where everything can be so neatly quantized and tweaked. The simplicity of Casios can be a refreshing break from complex programming abstractions. No need to bury your head in a manual; as one SK-5 user commented on the Harmony-Central site: "Don't know what a button does? Press it!"

Alan Davey's Home of Synthetic Sound has a few mp3 samples of Casio loops: "rhumba," even "beguine"! If you're looking to buy, at any given moment there is a proliferation of Casios on ebay.

Can't help but mention that a quick web search for "consumer sampling keyboards" located a page of "Fun Things To Do at the Mall," which included a suggestion to record belches in the sampling keyboards in Radio Shack, and use them as backing rhythm for "Jingle Bells" to the entertainment of passers by. Don't you stealth performance artists get any nasty ideas for public art! As for me, perhaps the best sound of all on my newfound Casio is the demonic moan from the broken on-off switch when I turn it off. This alone makes it worth the $10 investment.

References and further reading on the cultural history of pianos + consumer keyboards:

Craig H. Roell, The Piano in America 1890-1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

Paul Theberge, Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1997.