Casio SK-1 Army

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matt_macfarlane

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Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Casio SK-1:

sk1.jpg


A true masterwork of lo-fi electronic engineering and general playfulness, the SK-1 is a unique and wonderful relic from the 80's which can usually be found at thrift stores for around 5 bucks. Most everyone my age has owned one of these at some point during their childhood or teen years. For those not familiar, it's basically a cheap kids' keyboard that allows you to sample up to 1.4 seconds of audio from any external source (like a chair squeaking, people saying naughty words, basically anything you can hold the built-in mic up to), and then you can play the sample on the keys with often hilarious and weird results. It also has some corny built-in beats and a few lame internal sound patches.

I own two of these at present, and am looking to buy more, hopefully between 5 and 10. "Why," you ask? To form the Casio SK-1 ARMY! Imagine TEN of these keyboards in one venue at one time, all amped and plugged into whatever pedals, reverbs, stompboxes, or whatever, all going at once! Imagine the sheer power and strange results you'd get! This is my vision, with one goal in mind for the end of the road: 25 or more of them in Carnegie Hall, with all players dressed in tuxedos and grabbing samples from audience members, any drums and instruments which may be hanging around, or vocal samples from the players themselves. Anyone who's ever jammed on one of these things knows that this would be a momentous and beautiful sight to behold!

If you live in the Seattle/Bremerton area and own an SK-1, or you would like to sell me yours so that I may issue it to soldiers in the SK-1 Army, let me know! Or, if you live in a metropolitan area with 10 or more SK-1's in circulation, start your OWN SK-1 Army! The world will feel the force and presence of the Casio SK-1 Army!!
 
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matt_macfarlane said:
25 or more of them in Carnegie Hall, with all players dressed in tuxedos
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Actually, it's tails ( short for tailcoats).
Tuxedos are suitable for weddings and pops concerts like the Boston Pops. A Carnegie gig would be tails.

If the show is in the afternoon, gents should wear suit and tie, tails or tuxes would be tacky. The major tux/tails company is called After Six, which is the rule: never wear tux/tails before 6 pm.

Tails are worn with white bowtie, BTW. Don't ever wear a black bowtie with tails, it's really tacky.
 
yeah, but 25 SK-1's onstage in Carnegie Hall would be pretty tacky anyway, so the tuxes really wouldn't hurt that much. i guess it's time for me to go dig out my old copy of "Miss Manners," i'm getting rusty in my old age.
 
matt_macfarlane said:
yeah, but 25 SK-1's onstage in Carnegie Hall would be pretty tacky anyway,.
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I guarantee you that there have been a lot of performances in Carnegie that sounded worse, John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen come to mind.

I have played at Carnegie many times, I am a pro violinist. In the 80s and 90s, pretty much anybody who had the money could rent the hall and play there, so it has heard it's fair share of crappy music. BTW, Tchaikovsky led the first performances in Carnegie in 1893, the year he died. They wanted to demolish the hall in the 1980s, but violinist Isaac Stern led the opposition group that saved the hall. The official name of the main hall is now "The Isaac Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall", there are two other halls in the building: the Weill Recital Hall ( seats about 350), and an experimental studio/hall, as well as a rehearsal space.

If you REALLY want to impress, have the 25 SK1-ists play the Musikverein in Vienna, THAT is the primo classical venue on the planet. A lot of the great Germanic/Austrian repertoire was premeired in that Hall, Brahms conducted his symphonies there. The Philharmonie in Berlin is a terrific hall, but it is an ugly fucker on the outside, a victim of 1960s post Bauhaus architecture.

My favorite Concert Hall is the new one in Luzerne, it opened around 2000 and is arguably the best acoustical environment on the planet, the SK1 would ring true in there. In America, the Severance Hall in Cleveland was refurbished in 2000 and sounds glorious, as well as having the best backstage amenities ( Orchestra Hall in Chicago also has wonderful backstage facilities, including dayrooms for musicians/SK1-ists to take naps in). The new Disney Hall in LA is supposedly amazing, I have never played there. The Krannert Center at the University of Illinois is also amazing, the Chicago Symphony used to drive down there and record before they refurbished their hall. The Meyerhoff Hall in Baltimore has a terrific sound and is extremely live, the SK1 would probably have a 2.5 second reverb in there. SInce the SK1 has no built-in reverb ( I used to own one), that might be a suitable venue for its dry preset sounds.

The American Dance Festival is america's premiere classical dance summer festival, held at Duke University. They used an SK1 in concert in 1987 at a concert attended by luminaries such as Nancy Reagan. I know this for a fact because I played it. The sample was my friend yelling " Pastrami", the piece was some serial euro-trash nonsense.
 
You guys have way to much time on your hands. And FYI, an Army of SK-1's would not want to be seen in public with a bunch of dudes in tuxs, tails or otherwise. They'd rather be seen with strobes-pulsing, fog-rolling, and sound system thundering inside any of our finest Super-Sized Stadiums (can't you just picture those giant EAW woofers at the FleetCenter ripping your ribcage apart, while your 25 SK-1's get featured on the 30x30 Jumbo-Tron).
 
perhaps my dry sense of humor is lost in translation to text.

i thought it was pretty obvious that the "25 SK-1's in Carnegie Hall" idea was a joke, but I guess some people take that kind of thing seriously. Realistically, i'm thinking ten or eleven sk1's in a bar playing weird shit and taking drunk people by surprise, but that's just me. feel free to nitpick acoustics scenarios.
 
matt_macfarlane said:
perhaps my dry sense of humor is lost in translation to text.

.
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Not at all.

It would seem that MY super-dry sense of humour is the one being lost in translation. You honestly cant think that anyone would use the phrase "SK1-ist" seriously?
 
hehe. the "dry humor" comment was directed more towards the other gentleman than at you, you played along fantastically. the misunderstanding is my fault for not being able to read into shit properly.

i think it would be fair to declare this thread officially dead in the water, unless anyone actually has an sk-1 they'd like to sell me. i'll pay 15 bucks + shipping.
 
Monty...

has the ultra-rare and highly sought after PINK Casio! :eek:
 
Why is it that people with NO sense of humour refer to themselves as having a DRY sense of humour? ;)

(kidding)
 
hey Reel Person, you sellin' the pink one?

invisibleenemies, thanks for the ebay tip, i'm watching all of them and will bid as they end if they're still under $20
 
what I need to know is

where can I take my SK-1 for repair? I never could get the sampling to work half the time.
 
Well, I just bought a circuit-bent one. You bastards, you guys always influence my purchasing. =P
 
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