Home Keyboards For The Pro Engineer Originally published in TapeOp, 2004. If you played keyboards in a band in the 80's, chances are that what you lusted after was a Prophet 5, and what you had was a Casio. I'm not going to lie to you: the Prophet was better. But you loved your Casio, didn't you? You could play that flute patch over a bossa nova ryhthm accompaniment for hours, and when you finally grew up and got yourself a real synth (or, in my case, a guitar), you kind of missed the intimacy and immediacy of your old home keyboard. Well, all those keyboards are still out there, at swap meets and garage sales, and on eBay. If you're on a budget (who isn't) and need some cool sounds for your studio on the cheap, look no further. Believe it or not, not all home keyboards were cheesy—some of them were even great. Here, then, is a brief survey of some fantastic molded plastic, available for less—sometimes a lot less—than fifty bucks. * Yamaha VSS-30. These days, a lot of lo-fi mavens crow about the Casio SK-1, a cheap and tiny sampling keyboard released in 1985. I had one back then and used it in my band for sound effects and semi-realistic piano, and many a budding musician recorded 8-bit barfing sounds, to the delight of their little brothers and sisters. The SK-1 is pretty cool, but the Yamaha VSS-30 is better. You get the lo-fi sampling and the volume envelope from the SK, plus a bunch of effects—looping, reverse mode, "U-turn," echo, fuzz, tremolo, and a truly wild vibrato—which you can run separately or at the same time, and even tweak for speed or intensity! Furthermore, the presets are better than the SK's, especially the organ, which I've used on several recordings. My favorite trick is to plug an SM57 into the mic input jack (it's RCA, so you'll need an adapter, or probably a chain of them), record a crash cymbal, and play it backwards. Very gritty and retro. * Casio MT-68. With its gray casing, and knobs and buttons accented in orange and beige, this little keyboard positively screams mid-eighties. It's even more of a surprise when you play it, though—it sounds corny, but very distinctive! There are only 20 tones, but they're analog, and are accompanied by a terrific rhythm and bass-accompaniment section. There are some good organs and whistles, and sustain and vibrato, and the ability to slightly adjust the volume envelope with pushbuttons. And it sounds even better with a bit of chorus or distortion. I use the organ sounds all the time for warm, simple accents, and though primitive Casio rhythms are pretty popular right now, I haven't heard these used much on recordings. And perhaps most importantly, the MT-68 makes a great sketchpad for songwriting. This keyboard is actually credited on Aimee Mann's last album, and you can pick it up (even on eBay) for less than 30 bucks! * Kawai PH50. Kawai's K1 digital synth was a popular and great-sounding keyboard, and it's still in use today by lots of electronic music composers. What most people don't know is that Kawai released a home version of the K1, the PH50. The PH50 is a preset synth, but it's stereo, and has MIDI and a joystick for realtime control of pitch and midulation. Plus, the 200 presets are terrific! Skip the "realistic" patches and try the imitations of famous synth sounds ("Chick Solo" and "Jan's Solo" have obvious antecedents), pads, or special effects. My favorite is patch 66, "Visitors," a killer layered wash with computerized bleeping in the background. Strings and brass are excellent too. If the patches don't sound full enough to you, try stacking them—you can stack up to four different sounds for some amazing monophonic leads. The PH50 is cheaply constructed, so expect a dodgy joystick (mine's busted) and lousy action from the stubby keyboard. Stereo implementation is odd, too—the left side of the keyboard is panned left, and the right side panned right! But the MIDI is great—I have mine permanently mounted on the wall, and control the notes, pitch, and modulation through a larger synth. * Yamaha PSS-380. Back in the 80's, Yamaha's FM (Frequency Modulation) synthesis was king, as typified on their DX7 synth, known for its bells, pianos, and metallic pads. The DX7 was great, but it was hard to program: FM itself was complicated, employing a bunch of sine waves that modulated one another in complex ways, and the DX7 (and its more advanced cousins like the DX5) lacked knobs, sliders, or any kind of manual controls. Well, as it happens, Yamaha did release an FM synth with sliders—but it was a home keyboard, the PSS-380! The PSS-380 (or PSS-390, which is the same thing with colored buttons, or PSS-370, the mono version) might be the coolest home keyboard ever. It's a diminutive preset board with 100 sounds, and while few of them are immediately interesting, they are endlessly tweakable. You can layer two patches, which allows either for interesting combinations or for thick, chorused versions of single patches. If that's not enough, turn on the "digital synthesizer" function, which lets you adjust "spectrum" (a kind of resonance control), "modulation" (ring mod), vibrato, and volume; plus there's a simple envelope (attack, decay, release) that functions as the FM equivalent of a filter. The result? Whacked-out electronic tones that, though rather cold, will really cut through a mix. My favorite tactic: layer two similar tones ("Toy Piano" and "Music Box" for instance), then synthesize them in real time. A genuinely unusual sound! * There are dozens more neat little keyboards worth looking for—the Casio Rapman, the "My Music Center" children's toy, the Casio MT-410V (which features a genuine analog filter, of all things!), the all-analog Yamaha PS-30. Keep your eyes peeled on your next trip to Goodwill. Give everything a try, no matter how crappy it looks, and don't forget to barter! c2004 by J. Robert Lennon.