The Refractions VST plug is on sale here: decentsamples.c... The Patreon sample library I made in this video can be found here: / patron-exclusive-10839...
And now I'm remembering something else I did with this thing. My best friend and I, in high school in the late '80s/early 90s, did a sort of 'podcast' before podcasts existed, distributed by tape to our friends. It was just us screwing around, doing comedy bits and social observation, in front of a (stereo) microphone and tape recorder. And we had this sort of imagined 'robot' sidekick which was just the SK-1. We'd pre-record its parts and play them back at different notes, usually just "yes yes yes" or "no no no", and we'd build a whole bit around this silly thing. Now I need another one.
I had one of these when I was a kid. It was s Christmas present in probably 1986? I LOVED IT. More than almost anything I owned from back then, I remember playing with this thing endlessly. I wish I still have it, but unfortunately at some point it just...went away. I probably left it at my parents' house when I moved out, and they probably sold it at a garage sale or donated it at some point in the 1990s.
I still have mine! I used in the 80s in a hard rock band. I put in a foot switch jack in it so I could foot-tap chord sequences during the Rush covers our band played.
I was actually about to write this exact comment. My grandpa gave me a pink one for Christmas in 86 when I was 2, and it became my most treasured childhood possession. He must have known something, because to this day music is still the only thing I'm good at.
Finding an SK-5 at a garage sale in 1996 for $10 is basically my villain origin story, set me on a lifetime journey of making weird music. Still have it, and recently added an sk-1. Great machines.
I found of these for $15 CAD at the thrift store last month and I absolutely love it! I strongly believe that limitations encourage creativity, and the SK-1 is a perfect case study. Thanks for the great video David
It's been here from the beginning and it will be here til the end. Back in the days when the kids were mean, sometimes it was my only friend. I used to sit for hours in my room recording loops. Hell, I was inside making tape edits while the kids we're playing hoops. Anytime I was ever grounded, they'd take my TV away. I used to get in trouble so I could play in my room all day. It saved me from years of boredom so that is what I gotta let you know. That I have a special place in my heart for my good friend, my Casio. Brett Johnson.
I recently picked one of these up "broken" on ebay too, lovely keyboard with some nice features. One of the best casios for sound design and experimenting, it's so inspiring that i want to make an entire album using it.
I've made a few lo-fi ambient albums using just the sk-1 with a loop pedal, reverb pedal and delay pedal. The sk-1 was also the main thing used for years by James Ferraro and Spencer Clark in all their early music incl. as The Skaters, as well as a lot of other underground noise / new age musicians. Definitely still an incredibly versatile instrument for something that was essentially just a toy from ~40 years ago. If you're looking for a really incredible modern equivalent should look into the Chompi sampler, it was explicitly modelled on replicating and updating much of what made the sk-1 so great. (And if you want to check out those albums I made with just the sk-1 you can find them on my channel from a few years ago, they're called 'stumbling into eden' and 'a teardrop descends the last face of heaven'.)
What nostalgia! I bought one in '86 and relished the not-yet-described as 'lo-fi' quality. I would sample sounds like trains and other outside noises, then bounce them from cassette tape to cassette tape before I even knew what a multi-track recorder was. Just experimental soundscapes using the SK-1. Thanks for making this one.
We had these in my school back in the 80s. Endless fun! My teacher let me take one home as he saw potential in me. Fast forward decades on and I'm still making beats one way or another.
Radio Shack sold this model rebranded as the "Realistic Concertmate 500". I recognized it INTANTLY! Source: I worked at Radio Shack in the '80s and bought one for myself! Like you I don't know what happened to it. This brought back memories! Oh, no I'm off to Ebay now, LOL.
I had that too as soon as it hit the Radio Shack in my mall. It was quite fun with a tape recorder to do skits with friends and I got a few tracks done with it, one was using a few lyrics from One Night In Bangkok.
Not only can he compose, play, sing and repair obscure instruments, but he can also whip out an editor and code a plugin in C++! 🙃 This was fun to watch and the $29 on-sale Refractions plugin is now sitting burbling away in Ableton alongside Decent Sampler and the 'Korg Prototype' kalimba-type thing from the Berlin episode. Thank you so much!
I love my SK-1! It's such a fun keyboard and I love using the sampler section to create looping samples for recording. Great tool as well to create poly-rhythmical samples.
The SK-1 has a built-in additive synthesis function. Harmonics with levels IIRC, just by pressing keys. I have the Yamaha equivalent (the VSS-30) and it is awesome too!
I think Chompi has done a great job taking this concept to modern levels (but its not dirt cheap so I guess you are still correct with stating no-one has done something like this 😁) thanks for another entertaining video. I have one of these and had a lot of fun playing it sampling from sk1 prepped sample pack from my phone, Its like adding 100s of presets 😁
The combination of these sounds and Refractions.. wow *chef's kiss* - absolutely wonderful. Your closing comments about how the shortcomings of old are now desirable was spot on too. A great closing monologue. Thanks again David, great video (and thanks for the sample pack)
When I was a teenager, I picked up an SK-1 around 2000 for less than $5 at Goodwill. Used it for a few demos and in one real recording for texture. It was fun to bring along trips with an acoustic because it was so compact.
Like many other commentators, I also had a couple of these units back in 1981. I thought it was a joke but after months of experimentation with the sounds and sample capabilities, it became a good way to entertain myself and learn some basic keyboard wizardry .
I picked one up on eBay a few months ago after playing with it as a kid and remembering how fun it was, and it's still an amazing little keyboard. The fact that it's multitimbral and can play two independent parts with different sounds via its internal sequencer is awesome, and even better, if you select your sampled sound as the current instrument, it will use that sound as the automatic accompaniment for its rythm patterns (albeit at a lower volume). I sample house music-style piano chord stabs and let the samba rythm pattern play them back. Super cool.
I grew up with one of these. As a teenager, my band took it to too many gigs and it was inevitably dropped, so it's missing some black keys but I found if you carefully put thumbtacks into the buttons underneath, you can still play it fine. And my microphone still works! I love this silly thing.
this video came out at literally the perfect time. it released right when a listing on facebook for $95 popped on my screen and once i saw your video i purchased it right away! as a producer who’s big into lofi sampling this is probably the best instrument i’ve ever bought, thank you so much!!!
Glad your video popped up in my feed. I still have my SK-1 that I bought back when it was first released (late 80s). It’s in the top of the closet in my home office. I used to do a lot of home recordings of my own electronic music. Now I need to bring it down to see if it still works.
The Casio SK-1 and Yamaha VSS-30 were my go-to keyboards back in the day. Both are amazing and exciting with all the techniques/hacks you learn experimenting with them. The Casio SK-1 was my first. The Yamaha VSS-30 has an overdub feature that was a game changer. 🙂
My brother got one for Christmas in the 80's, I remember using it to make a really good Halloween tape for our Trick or Treater horror display. Scary music for the kids then jump out of a box or bushes and get them all screaming. Good times, wish I knew where the tape went.
My first keyboard!! LOVED it and modded it way-back-when! Now I'm sampling instruments for my first feature I'm composing for - what a journey!! Thanks for making this video!! :) PS I had the RadioShack version (it was exactly the same, but with different colored buttons and their Realistic logo swapping out Casio's).
Another amazing video. I absolutely love your overall style in video production. I don’t think there’s any YT’r who makes vids like this. Keep ‘em coming. 😎
Had one and borrowed another from a school friend to double up on sampling time! A real achievement to loop a beat whic, of course was all I was obsessed with in 1990.
Thanks so so much David for your hard work! I use your DS instruments a lot and they make so much of how my music sounds. Amongst others, your Minifreak is magical.
At the end of 1987, there was an extended family get together at my house for the holidays. One of our cousins brought with her the SK-1 that her father had given her. I jumped at the chance to have one of my own when my dad offered to get it for me early the following year for my eighth birthday. What I didn’t realize at the time was that it wasn’t just a toy keyboard the way it was marketed. It actually had a small additive synthesizer section in it. I gravitated more toward the presets and that sampling section. It was like a broadside seeing the listing for it in Vintage Synth Explorer, along with those for other Casio instruments that had been marketed as a toys.
The Casio SK-1 was a surprisingly versatile instrument, with some good presets, the sampling of course, and another feature you didn't cover: the additive synth sound, great for making various organ type sounds. Admittedly it was difficult, but not impossible to make the additive synth sound like something OTHER than an organ!
An easy way I found to transform the keyboard into cool overdriven synth tones is to slightly pull out the power cable, while playing a note, and then plugging it back it. Makes for an amazing unique sound when I get it just right. Tone resets with a reboot.
Like everyone else, I had one of these as a kid. It both introduced me to the idea of doing musical things, and also probably drove my parents insane with me playing the Toy Symphony using farts. The additive sine wave synthesizer makes for a weird organ.
A high school friend of mine had one of these. It was 1986. Grace Jones' Slave to the Rhythm had just come out and I was (and still am) a Laurie Anderson fanatic. OMG that thing so fascinated me. Sampling was really becoming a thing and to be able to do it so simply was mind-blowing. A truly elegant bit of synthesis. I've always wondered why it was replicated more.
i was in my grandmas basement and found one just a few weeks ago and i have fallen in love with it, you can get some crazy cool drum beats by putting the built in rhythms through a pedal. i’ve been using a electro harmonics canyon delay and looper pedal with it and it is endless fun haha
I got one of these for Christmas in 1986. I asked my mom for a Yamaha DX-7, and got this instead (for budgetary reasons I'm sure). It was a fun keyboard.
There are so many free plugins out there, and I still have so much to explore with my hardware, but I appreciate what you and Venus Theory and other contributors to decent samples do, that I went to buy the plugin right away. Anything that can make an sk-1 sound ethereal is well worth having in one's toolkit.
I had one of these, and it was beautiful! It had such a limited sample time but its limitations are its strength. My favourite approach was to sample one of the times on a comb as I plucked it, a tiny sample which would sound beautiful when looped.
This was my first sampler! While my dad played with the Emulator 2 and Ensoniq Mirage this was all I could afford. There was a fun hack where you could record incredibly short samples by simply tapping the microphone percussively and the autoloop would be so short generate a pitch so you could get some very interesting sounds with ultra ultra short samples.
I have an sk 1 and an sk 5 i got at goodwill many years ago and they are some of my favorite instruments to keep near my desk and pop out a quick jam. I wish i could get a brand new sk1. You are right that no one else has seemed to make something like it
I’m happy to hear someone else muse about how there’s not been a real equivalent to the SK-1 since the 80s. I’m surprised given how successful the SK-1 was at time. Pretty much everyone but me had one, so i had to thrift my own in the 90s.
❤Had mine since they were new. Worth mentioning that its sine wave synthesizer is actually an additive type with selectable wavelengths! I keep mine connected to a utility output on my mixer so it can catch any sound any time. You also need a guitar pick with an SK-1, to hold a key down for you
Still have mine in the original box. I bought it at Target and paid for it mostly in quarters that I’d saved from my allowance. I also found an SK5 in a small horde of vintage toy keyboards a few years ago.
MY SK-1 finds its way into every song that I record. I just love it. It beats all the VST Mellotrons. Just gather the band, all sing one note and boom.
I wanted one of these so bad when they came out. That and every other synth and sampler. When GarageBand hit iOS, I was a 15 year old kid in a music store again.
This video is awesome, I got an sk1 a couple months ago, It's my favorite music thing I own, and pretty much every ambient song i've made since has featured it.
❤ I’ve owned several one thing I love just sample a vst or keybord into it and that one second actually sounds great, especially considering that you can control the cut off and Release of the sample…
I’ve still got the one I got for Christmas, found it hidden before it was wrapped up and snuck it to school and spent a whole music lesson with the teacher and everyone else playing with it before putting it back in the hiding place Then a few years later bought the SK200
Some one gave me an SK-1, and then a few months later found an SK-5 in the box at the Salvation Army for $5. I still have them both. I like the filter mod that brightens it up. That was one of my biggest complaints even when I ran the SK-1 through pedals. I can always hear the muddy-ness. So I’ll definitely mod it eventually.
How awesome I just got one for 15$ last week perfect timing on the video ! I feel it's a very capable machine in the right hands been enjoying it since ❤
