EYE ON THE CASIO SK-1
by e*rock

Many of us are familiar with the Casio SK-1, whether you play music or not. The world’s cheapest sampler; a small battery powered, black plastic cased keyboard, no bigger than 18 inches long, which happens to make it extremely portable as well. Casio began manufacturing it in 1986. I received one from my parents as a birthday gift for what was probably my 13th birthday. I have been playing with it on and off ever since. Thousands of kids across America were sampling themselves burp and screwing around on the SK-1 years before becoming today's Aphex twin fans. It’s extremely limited as far as a musical instrument, but as far as a fun instrument, the SK-1 is priceless.

Originally it sold for around $100 new, but also hasn’t been manufactured for years. I guess Radio Shack’s Realistic brand had a knock-off version of it, but since it’s “heyday” it wasn’t hard to find one lying around at garage sales and 2nd hand stores from $3 to $30. Recently my brother spotted one in a music store in NYC marked at like $150, because as the owner said, “It’s a collector’s item.” Whatever. I find it hard to believe that anyone out there is really collecting them, although now that I’ve written this article I’m sure it’ll reach instant cult status and it’s value will skyrocket into the hundreds.

There was also a higher end model, the SK-5, which had four sample banks that would save your samples when you shut off the power. It had some different sound banks and little drum pads or something, but people I’ve talked to seemed to think that it wasn’t really a better product. I’ve never even seen an SK-5 in person and I’ve also heard mention of a Casio SK-8 in Germany. Perhaps there was a different version released for the European community.

The Sk-1 sound bank setup is made of 9 preset voices (5 PCM voices, 3 harmonic synthesis voices and one user-adjustable harmonic synthesis voice), 11 drum patters (I wouldn’t really call them beats) with chord accompaniment, portamento and vibrato effects, 13 different envelope selects which can be applied to any voice in use, a crude record function, master tuning and most importantly the sample and loop set keys.

SK-1 PRACTICAL NOTES
1. Sample a sound with a quick attack, like a tap or click and then loop the sound. This gives it a continuous sounding tone or buzz which are useful as playable notes. You can come up with tons of new sounds this way.
2. You can adjust the envelope on sampled tones too.
3. You can get much louder and cleaner samples by plugging any cheap-ass Radio Shack mic into the mic input.
4. You can get some nice over-driven tones running it out through a guitar amp with a little tube distortion. This softens the harsh high end a bit too, so you can get decent organ/synth sounds and keyboard sounds that would go nicely on say Watery Domestic. It makes the little keyboard feel like it’s got some power too.
5. Run out through a long delay and mic your output (preferably through your stereo or a louder, better speaker than the built-in speaker) and sample the tail end of your decaying echo. Repeat. You can get some cool bubbly sounds just from resampling the synth tone over and over.
6. It was pretty good in Jr. High for sampling phrases from your voice and changing the pitch for prank calls. “I feel kinda weird, Mom...(repeat at higher and higher octaves)” Or sample your sister when she’s being obnoxious and follow her around the house playing back her own voice until she screams. Okay, maybe these aren’t so practical anymore, but it was fun at the time.
7. You can download free samples of the SK-1 “drum” sounds from here to sample with:
Homepage- http://www.intrepid.net/~audioman
Whether or not this is a good thing is debatable.
8. Most people don’t ever use the record function for manual “sequencing,” but it’s really simple. (I doubt that anyone actually read the manual either. I know I never did.) Start by selecting the “record” and “chord” mode. When you hit a key it’ll go off, playing the accompaniment with a beat while you adjust what key it’s in. The “nc” key (“no chord”) is really useful here to cut up the chord accompaniment or leave space for the “breakdowns.” Anyway when you’ve got enough of a beat, switch over to “solo 1” mode and hit “auto play.” Now you can add an organ part. Switch to “solo 2” and add a ripping flute solo. Now you’ve used all your tracks. You can change the instruments while it’s playing back though to turn the ripping flute solo into an intense trumpet solo or play over the top to edit it (which really just screws it up). You can also edit one note at a time with the “one key play,” but I think that it’s pretty useless as well. Anyway, you’re really rocking now.
9. If you really want to stretch the limits of your keyboard, an article by Q. R. Ghazala appeared in the quarterly Experimental Musical Instruments Volume 12 #2. December 1996 on modifying your SK-1. It’s called “The Casio SK-1: Escapist Sample Shuttle” and is also posted on the web (http://windworld.com/emi/ghazala.htm) albeit without the photos or sidebar that appear in the print version. The article details how to hot-rod your SK-1 so that you can give it a primitive sequencer as well as some extensive creative circuit bending for the sake of finding new sounds. What Mr. Ghazala does is implant two external jack so that you can plug in a drum machine or microphone which turns the SK-1's note memory into a tight little sequencer. The other process he inflicts is to momentarily connect different arbitrary points on the circuit board to find creative short-circuits, then building switches around them to produce sounds never originally intended with the Sk-1.

SK-1 IN ACTION
BECK: A Western Harvest Field By Moonlight (Fingerpaint) Used all over the entire record, including the final locked groove.
SILVER JEWS: Arizona Record (Drag City) Good use of “Human Voice” on final track “Bar Scene from Star Wars.”
SUKPATCH: “Keys East” Honkey Tonk Operation EP (Slabco)
FUCK: They seem to use it on many of their records to some extent, but most notably they use it live simply holding the keyboard directly up to a vocal mic rather than through an amp.
R.L. BURNSIDE: A Ass Pocket of Whiskey (Matador) sk-1 played by Judah Bauer.
POTUZUNIK: Amore Matore (Mego) Creates surprisingly interesting techno-lo fi trance sounding rhythms with the dorky Sk-1 “drum” sounds.
QUASI: Early Recordings (Key-Op) You can see a close up shot of an Sk-1 on the inside booklet.
TECHNICOLOR: V/A Solutions & Remedies (Claire Records) “I Just Wonder About Him” You can hear the unmistakable “Human Voice” sound.
FLOWCHART W/ TECHNICOLOR: “Casio Dawn”from the Little Darla comp v.11 makes good use of the internal disco beat
MAHOGANY: Metro (Black Bean & Placenta)
EVOLUTION CONTROL COMMITTEE: “Big Wyoming” (Eerie Materials)
THE GRACE PERIOD: Bakempa Tramset CD (Audio Dregs)
ANA D: “Satellite 99” on the Supermarket compilation (Elefant)
HOSPITALE PEOPLE: S/T 7” a Low electronic side project.
PUZZLE PUNKS: Pipeline CD (-) Eye Yamantaka is pictured on the inside booklet playing an Sk-1 as well as various other noise-toys.
SEA SAW: Magnetophone CD (Simple Machines) Inside cover is a close up of SK-1 with broken A key.
APHEX TWIN: supposedly uses the casio drum sounds on the Ventolin EP
SLABCO also put out out a swell cassette comp called Casiocore (which I believe is out of print at the moment) with the likes of many Casio damaged four-tracked songs