I watched this again, just because, and I must say, I really miss these 8-Bit Keys videos. They are so much fun and bring a smile to my face every time.
I’m surprised he hasn’t done a video on the Stylophone those to my knowledge have been around since 1977 it’s a handheld synthesizer though so not a keyboard so that could be why
Speaking of false advertising, this thing actually has 30 instruments, not just 20, but there are no buttons for them so they can only be selected through MIDI. This includes instruments used in its built-in demo song!
@@kilianhekhuis Casio didn't use FM synthesis at the time. They used their own synthesis engine called PD Synthesis. That'll be what everything else is generated with.
It is funny that just 2 days ago i finally discovered the name of this band and i was listening to some famous tunes. Funny and spooky, all at the same time.
Opens with establishing shots of the city they live in, then little vignettes of the characters going about their lives, and smiling a lot, ends with them all meeting up for a group shot!
@@ericstoverink6579 Huh, that's strange. A Parker Parker square is a Parker² square. Which is a Parker square square. Which is a Parker square². Mind blown.
I was going to suggest the exact same thing. Back when I first got my SCB-55 back in the early 90s, I only had a few Sierra games that had a GM driver to support it. But found even back then I could copy over the Genmid.drv file along with the help files etc so the installer would see it and know how to show it on the install screen. In many cases, it would work just fine with the games even if they didn't originally support it.
@@nneeerrrd Actually no. I was a soldier in the ARMY and instead of drinking my earnings, I saved it up so I had a nice gaming 486 that got frequent upgrades back then.
9:30 Step 4, pressing CH4 presumably assigns the bank of sounds to draw the needed files from (in this case CH4 is “Space Wars”, which seems appropriate for Space Quest), but does that mean selecting a different bank, say CH3 “Street” would give you car horns and revving engines in place of the intended “space” sounds? Or CH1 “Forest” would give you animal & bird noises? If so, that would make for some amusing game play 😄
Gappasaurus No, when in MIDI mode, these buttons select the actual part you can control in this mode. Sound effects are disabled here, only available from the two Sound Effects from the sound bank. These effect buttons are sequenced sounds built upon those in these two banks. In MIDI mode you can set up the MT/CT/PSK to receive data on the first four MIDI channel by pressing each of these four soft pads, then select a sound for each of them. You can change these around when the game is playing and have fun and screw up the music indeed. The reason you have to press CH4 before start, has to do with how the game sends initial settings to the keyboard. CH4 is often used for drums so I’m assuming there is something they found out the user had to do manually which wouldn’t work by sending data. As mentioned, these are very limited in the MIDI protocol. :)
Thanks for the information Anders! It’s a little disappointing that cheap laughs through an easy exploit are not as simple as i imagined in this case, but I’m glad for the explanation anyway 😉
"Ander's composed a little diddy for us on the same keyboard! lets have a listen..." Anders makes a bloody amazing little tune that perfectly fits the style of the era this keyboard was released and makes it look god damn easy.
That composition certainly nailed the sound of the 80s. I was half-expecting to see a series of cheesy shots where the characters faced the camera and smiled.
I have the Casio CTK- 611. I rescued the thing from the side of the road after sitting in the rain for 2 weeks. I disassembled it then cleaned it up real good, oiled what needed oiled and upgraded it with two 18650 lithium rechargeable batteries. It's not a bad keyboard. It has all kinds of stuff on it . 100 rhythms , 200 tones, touch response, MIDI. Pitch bend, reverb, Etc.
I need to draw a "six degrees of separation" chart for RU-vid collabs between all the channels I watch. I suspect a surprising number of them are actually linked...
The unexpected crossover I didn't ask for and didn't know i needed! Would love to see Matt do a Casio Keyboard unboxing and review in the style of his Numberphile calculator reviews #SSAARCASFPA
I like that idea. I'm not sure if I'd prefer he acted as if it were a strange calculator, or if he simply had enough synthesiser knowledge to cross-apply the style....
I hooked up one of these to my Tandy Color Computer to play lots of MIDI files in OS/9 and lots of these games on regular non-OS/9 CoCo. Fond memories of this excellent keyboard.
Loved the addition (catch that?) of Matt Parker! Very tricksy. Loved everything about this video. From the explanation of the poly voices, to the integration with the game, to finding out it's not just some sound card (surprise!) to plug in to the computer. Genuine surprises all around. Hope to see more fringe posts up alleys like these. Fun stuff!
Wow, this takes me way back. When I was very little, my mom had this exact keyboard, and I was always stealing it to connect to the family computer in whatever ways I could manage. Our Sound Blaster always still sounded better, but man was it cool to have two electronic devices working together back then.
More sierra games have support for this keyboard, back in the 90s I saw it being demonstrated with a copy of Colonels Bequest. Infact, you can copy the drivers from other sierra games into your folder and they’ll automaticly appear in the setup/install app. I used to copy soundblaster drivers into space quest 3 and found out it has some digitized speech and sound effects and I was amazed.
I got conned by that deceptive "210 sound" label as a kid. My Casio was not that model, but had the same lame gimmick. I remember seeing another brand of keyboard that actually had a giant sound bank that I passed up on.
Shin Seiki Evan Right? Same thing with my PSK-30. So disappointed. But I wanted it for the 4 lights on the right side. I thought it was a beat counte like Technics KN800 had when playing rhythms and the sequencer. Alas, it was only four presets that you could store... sigh! 😂🤪💖
Wow tell Anders he really made a beautiful song with the keyboard!! Getting the max out of the "cheapo" sounds and quality for sure. This was a very entertaining vid, thanks!!
Always wanted to see the Yamaha MIE-1 Keyboards if anyone can buy them off Ebay or something, that would be an AWESOME episode since I always wondered as to what chips were used to make it sound good in the late 1980's when it came into the Music classrooms scene.
I just discovered this chanel and here it is, the most recent video is... 2 years old! Man... Hope you come back! Especially if you challenge yourself with _Monty on the run!_
I had a CT-660, which featured the same 'tone bank' and I agree that the only two sounds that worked together were Piano and String Ens. I also had a MIDI connector. The effects and music for many games that produced General MIDI output could be hooked up like the Roland, but only Space Quest III used just four channels (the fourth being the percussion) and selected the instruments that fitted the CT series keyboards' PCM and FM voices. So many sounds in this video brought back childhood memories, right from the opening theme which I immediately recognised the instruments from.
A wild Matt Parker appears! But honestly, thanks for finally explaining the 210 voice bank claim; I wonder just how many people who watched the older videos on this channel were still confused by it up to now. Going by your description of what the sustain should be, they missed an opportunity to make doubling up do something like what you want out of sustain. Simply delay the combined channel very slightly, possibly detuning it very slightly as well. Many Genesis games do this. Some of the early ultra-high end Yamaha FM synths also do this (the DX5 and DX1 are really just two DX7s combined) and make it a selling point by doing it transparently. I think Yamaha calls this "chorusing" instead.
I had this exact model of keyboard back in 1989, and loved every minute of using it. I later hooked up a Kawai K1r rackmount pro synth to it the following year! Haha! Bit of a mismatch but the Casio was my first MIDI equipped device, even if this was extremely limited and cutdown implementation of the MIDI spec. I liked it so much I bought it again in 2006, but this time in desktop module form as the CSM-1, which also features a few extra sounds.
EgoShredder I also had a CT-460 as my first own MIDI device and replaced it with the Kawai K1-II keyboard synth... :) there weren’t that much alternatives back then. I was also using a Roland D-5 in a midi course. Now I have still the Casio, the Kawai and have purchased a Roland D-5 as well... :) (and a Roland SC-155 sound canvas to finish the dream gear I didn’t have back then... :)
VHFGamer - It was actually in a Burnout title that I discovered that song! The interesting thing is, it’s an earlier version that predates Billy Talent II.
Oh! I had a CT-460 back in the day! Had those same sfx buttons and tone bank, but I too was miffed when I thought the bank had more sounds. Nice to hear “forest” again.
Wow! Love it. I did this exact same thing 30 years ago when I was a kid. After visiting one of my friends and drooling over his brand new Sound Blaster Pro card, I noticed an orange box with the rest of the Sound Blaster Pro boxes next to the garbage. I asked him what it was and he said it was some music composing software - Sequencer Plus Pro. He had no interest in it, I on the other hand was curious. After cracking open the box, finding the MIDI cables and reading up on it I remembered seeing Casio as an option in the Space Quest III install. I rushed to grab my sisters old Casio keyboard, she had gotten a few years prior for Christmas mashed on the keys for a few months driving us all crazy and abandoned it to the back of her closet. I hooked it up to my SB, installed SQ3 again, and was floored when I heard the music start up and coming from the keyboard. Granted it wasn’t General MIDI and didn’t compare to any future full blown MIDI devices from Roland or Creative, but at that time it blew a young kid’s mind. And using it with other games as General MIDI you’d wind up with not so correct output. Oh and my friend’s jaw dropped next time he came over and I showed him.
Oh man, I got an MT-540 for Christmas 1990, and I had Space Quest III, but no compatible MIDI adapter. I'd like to mention that the 'big brother' version, the CT-460, had ten additional directly-accessible instruments, which the MT-540 also supported, but only via MIDI. Also loved the appearance by Matt Parker! =^.^=
I found an interesting keyboard that I used to play with as a child. It is made by Kawasaki and it’s called Dual Cool Keys. Besides its regular keyboard function, when you hit the black button in the middle it flips the keyboard 90 degrees. The 4 yellow buttons are 4 games for 2 players to compete on. It will be pretty interesting for a review.
yo that song the other guy put together was so warm and heart felt ,now i know how back in the day they use to get some good music for theme songs and old school tv shows ,here it is i spent 800 usd on ableton live another 2000usd on native instrument another 1000usb on computer and cant make a song as good as that to save my life,so to make a long comment short thanks 8 bit and everyone who helped make this video for bring a few minutes of joy in to my life during these trying times ,thats all for now chow
Oh man, this video really brings me back. My first keyboard was a CT650. It came out only a few years after the CT460 and had the same PCM sound bank as both of the keyboards demonstrated here. Hearing Space Quest III, one of my favorite games from the era as well, played with those voices... makes for a huge nostalgia trip. Great video as always.
Thanks for making this entertaining and interesting episode. Nice that Anders was able to join in remotely. That harpsichord + oboe combination actually made a pretty cool bass
What a great addition to have some members from other RU-vid channels and what I've found to be in Sixty symbols or numberphile I believe. Bravo that's amazing
