Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for a man who has actually been a REAL keyboard rockstar, a man who recently undertook the vows of The Holy Order of Casio - never to touch a keyboard by another company again, the only man to witness CasioNova’s worst show ever, a man who is very very kindly is giving me a very special present, all round swell chap ….
Richard!
(woo yeah!, yay ! hoorah!!)
Richard has done a lovely little essay on the Casio Sk-60. Garner some wisdom, folks …
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Casio SK-60

I love it (it must die …)

Hmmmmm. Tricky one this. See, whilst the SK-60 is indeed, very, very
cool there are more than a few things about the little bugger that make
me want to throw it hard against the wall. If I ever did however, I’d
lovingly re-assemble it and promise never to be so short-tempered again
… before stomping it to pieces with tears in my eyes. Confused??
Yeah, me too. Mind you, I have just turned Vegan. I blame the lack of
“dead stuff” in my diet …

So, I hail from the UK and after planning on going back home with my
wife (from Melbourne) for Christmas, I’d spent a couple of months on
eBay UK looking at the Casios. See, old Casios in general are harder to
pick up here in Australia I think, whereas in London you pretty much
trip over them in the street … I ended up winning a few auctions
(MT-41, MT-60 and SK-60) and had them posted to my Mums.

My first jetlagged impressions on the SK-60 were, my god, its tiny. Its
comes in a couple of inch’s shorter than the SK-1, albeit an inch or so
deeper. But there seems hardly anything to it, all hollow underneath as
it is. So if you were planning on throwing one against a wall, it would
shatter I think, in a most satisfying way … Another thing that struck
me immediately is the style of the actual keyboard. Very very cool. The
keys finish up flat (see photo) rather like a Hammond B3 or something.
I like that.

So, on powering it up for the first time and hitting the keyboard …
“Ugh”. You know, its hard to explain. I guess it comes down to taste
and well, the era in which the SK-60 was made. The PIANO sound is
actually good in that it sounds like a Piano. But thats why I like the
80’s gear more, because they never had a chance of replicating a real
piano. They sort-of invented their own Piano sound, and mostly they
sounded great. But I guess, with technology advancing a little in the
mid-90’s, good (and by good I mean realistic) sounds were probably a
bit easier to come by. I read somewhere online actually that the sounds
are the same as on one of the newer CTK Casios. Oh well, at least this
one isn’t that nasty silver or anything. Anyhow, for a wee little
instrument such as this the sound is impressive in an, erm, you know,
not particularly funky way. The rest of the “instrument” sounds are
much the same. Not hugely inspiring (with maybe the exception of the
STRINGS preset and a couple of the SIREN and SPACE effect noises. Mind
you, thinking about it, the ORGAN is sort-of jazzy …).

Moving on to the sampled HUMAN VOICE section, things start to get
interesting. I think this is what Casio imagined to be the whole point
of this keyboard as most of the functions seem to be built around it.
Whilst I was a little wary at first, some of the samples have really
grown on me. I think the mid-90’s was maybe 10 years too late for the
sounds as they all have that Art Of Noise / Fairlighty sound about
them. But I like all of those Art Of Noise / Fairlighty sounds and
really, in a tiny little keyboard, how cool is that?!? Casio are just
nuts sometimes. Some of the random things they have on their keyboards.
I think thats why people get a bit soppy about them.

There are 11 simple voice samples and each seems to be multi-sampled
maybe 3 times. My favourites are 46 OOH (CHOIR) and 54 BAH (BASS).
After that, there is a kind of human beatbox preset called VOICE
PERCUSSION (which can also be played on the 4 sample pads when you
first turn the keyboard on) and (and this is where things get much
cooler) 6 HUMAN VOICE (CYCLE) sounds. Here, the keyboard cycles through
a number of human voice samples as you play. For instance on voice 65
DOO-BE-DEE-BAH, the first time you hit a key you get DOO, the second
time, BE, the third, DEE and so on. Sound interesting? Well, in
practice it isn’t that much fun unfortunately, until you realise you
can actually do this with your own samples. EUREKA! And this is where
things get amazing (and shit). Just as you reach for another Casio to
sample the bejesus out of, you flip the SK-60 round to find that there
is no Mic or Line input … at all. See, I was prepared for this as I
had done a small amount of research but that still didn’t stop me
looking, in disbelief. And whilst you’re at it, they neglected to put
in a headphone jack either. Crazy! Everything they did in the 80’s came
with one… So the only connection round the back is for a power
adapter. Booo.

So, for the rest of my holiday I had to make do with the built-in
SAMPLING MIC. Not a huge amount of fun. Anyways, fast forward a couple
of weeks and I’m back in Melbourne with a newly Mic-in-and-Line-Out
equipped SK-60 and the smell of solder in the air. Adding connections
is fairly easy, even with me being a relative novice of the soldering
iron (I actually practiced on a Yamaha PSS-80 first, that I wasn’t
afraid to set light to) and I have to say drilling the holes gave me a
certain sick pleasure …

Once I’d been sampling a little I was struck by how great the sampling
quality was. Certainly a step up fidelity-wise from the SK-1 & 5 that I
have, but still retaining that special filthyness that everyone likes.
It gives you 4 short samples, 2 medium samples or 1 fairly long one. In
fact , I timed the long one and it was about 2.5 seconds. After
sampling you get the option of looping (a fixed loop unfortunately),
reversing, adding a long release or messing with the tuning.

Another cool thing I didn’t mention earlier is that this thing is
12-note polyphonic! Thats a fairly luxurious amount of polyphony. So,
sample a couple of unison string notes off a (duophonic) SA-1 and
bingo, you’ve got yourself a cheap-ass mellotron … sort of. Anyhow,
the thing samples nicely.

But, the most interesting feature is the ability to take 2, 3 or 4
samples and then have the keyboard cycle through them as you play. Use
4 totally different sounds to get a sort of random, machiny sequence
thing going or (my favourite) four different notes of the same sound to
turn the most boring chords and scales into crazy, off the wall erm,
shit. Hey, there are a million cool things you can do once you put a
line-in into this baby and well, if you were to start poking about in a
circuit bending type way, I’m sure you could pretty much rule the world
…

So thats all the good stuff. I haven’t touched upon the PAD EFFECT
because its a bit stupid. Here, at the push of the button you get 4
different effects on the 4 sample pads but these unfortunately don’t
effect what’s being played on the actual keyboard. Kind of annoying. I
also haven’t touched upon the SONG BANK section because well, its shit.
And I think a little pointless too. You get 24 tunes to choose from
(all multi-layered with the voices, instrument sounds and drums), and
12 FREE SESSIONS which are backing tracks in the sort of POPS, POLKA
type styling. Whilst a song is playing you can turn the melody off and
take over the job yourself or, with a push of the MAGICAL SINGER
button, change all the instruments into HUMAN VOICE sounds and the
drums into VOICE PERCUSSION (the beatbox thing). See, I’m not too sure
of the point of all of this. Whilst I like a demo on a Casio and even 5
is forgivable, 24 seems a bit overkill. Still, I guess this thing was
aimed at people learning to play, and playing along to GREENSLEEVES may
be an effective way to learn the ways of the erm, board. But then to
have the same keyboard equipped with the fairly advanced sample-cycle
thing?!?! Like I said before, Casio are just nuts sometimes. I do find
the FREE SESSIONS thing very annoying. I would rather just have RHYTHMS
on their own, without a fixed key backing track, or at least half and
half. In fact, why not 12 rhythms, 12 demos and 12 backing tracks. That
would’ve done me. But until I get my bending skills up and start poking
around inside there seems to be no way to get the drum sounds on their
own. Bugger.

Anyhow, I’ve rambled on enough (if you’ve got this far,
Congratulations!) In conclusion then: A mixed bag of a Casio but
ultimately, due to the complete and utter coolness of the sample-cycle
thing, its funky looking keyboard and its smallness, I’ll forgive it
its crap song bank and backing track stuff, its lack of connections and
its far too good (in a bad way) presets.