This is a wonderfully fun composition. It makes me wonder why i ever sold my SK-1.

when i made the part with the flute i couldn't stop laughing XD
now that i think about it it bounces a lot like "wooly bully"
which is also a fun song,

im sorry about your loss but at least it didn't end up in the garbage like my dads first SK-1 (RIP) his was totally destroyed
(cracked circuit board missing keys no screws it was dead so don't feel too bad)

i found mine in a house i cleaned out in mint condition :D
now if i only had a use for that G4 iBook i found with it i would be ok. lol

Whee! I might want those samples...someday...if I ever get good enough at remixing. :x
Great song!

look at my freewebs site: Http://www.freewebs.com/casiocat
i already uploaded them =^_^=

and thanks :D

Holy SK-1!!! Σ:3

Its not quite Holy, but its got a chipped key and another one is detached D:

:D im trying to fix it before i actually play it again, :D glad you like.

Ironically i sampled a sampler! :D

you ever consider bending your sk?

Yes and no,

i dont mean to brag but i have more then the necessary skills and equipment to do it, i took 2 years of electronics in high school, (vo-ed) and i aced it,

my problem is sentimental, ya see my dad had a SK-1 when i was 4 years old and it died long ago and disappeared forever,

i found mine in a basement of a house i cleaned out,

if i want to make some strange ass noises with it i will pull the lid off and snoop around the rom chips with an alligator clip, i dont want to drill 1000 holes in it and fill it with toggle switches,

now if i had 2 sk-1's that would be different


for now i don't want to take any chances ruining it. :P

but yeah ive thought of it,..

Not bad for a Casio:) I think that its a good tune, but i have some issues with it. One is that the flutey instrument has a slow attack and it kinda gives a misaligned feeling to the song, in terms of tempo. Second is that the Drums sound really really basic... Maybe some VST's or loops would fix that.

the slow attack on the flute was done on purpose, i kinda wanted it to have a Mellotron or something... i could have shifted it forward just a hair to make it line up but i really liked the "bouncy" sound it made.

and the drums ARE basic :) i got them off SMW II Yoshis Island
i kept them dry to give a little bit of rigidness so an otherwise bouncy song :)

i wanted to keep it basic and fun sounding, but not necessarily lo-fi

but thanks for the constructive criticism :)

in short :
all that was used here was samples. and Synthedit and sequencing
no external modules or Vst's were used.

Meh.. its a subjective matter then. I prefer a rhythmically aligned sound but if that's how you wanted it then it's no mistake. Also, it does add rigidity, but them being lo-fi kinda stands out too much when it's played along with the other sounds...

In extreme hindsight, i should state that i was attempting to make the samples of the flute sound more like they did when actually played on an SK-1, That keyboard has a slightly slow attack for almost all its sounds, and also a slight decay no matter what envelope you select. Even the envelope that appears to have zero attack and decay and only sustain (shaped like a brick)

in short: the envelopes on the keyboard are defined very loosely

There is a signal that consists of a short pre-defined envelope shape laid out in the rom.
this signal is either selected depending on what voice you select, Or by pressing Envelope and pressing one of the black keys, to which each is assigned a different envelope shape.

This is fed to a capacitor which charges and discharges, controlling a small transistor amp's volume,
Basically its a crude envelope generator and VCA mixed in one, There are 4 of these, One per voice.

There is no "Gate" signal that completely ends all sound or begins it, only that shape signal. So any charge left in the envelope cap turns into a squishy "slow attack, Slow decay" sound.

Even selecting a "Brick" shaped envelope with full sustain, zero attack and zero decay results in there being a hint of both. its just part of the design. this is not exactly a MOOG ya know, it was designed to be portable, not perfect. :P

i studied the schematic of the Realistic Concermate 500 before coming to this conclusion.
Radio-shacks version of an SK-1.

I once tried replacing the envelope caps as an experiment, and found that decreasing capacitance would shorten the notes attack to a more realistic amount, however, it also shortened the decay to a very unrealistic amount. I would rather have notes a little sloppy then not decaying properly.

I imagine that if you were to place a monostable in front of each of the envelope signal outputs, and use this to trigger the caps via pcm you could get a much more controllable envelope out of the SK-1
Adding a gate circuit triggered by some glue logic to this could effectively destroy any slow attacks.

However, to do so you would need 4 of these elements in all, which clearly would have been expensive to add to a "Toy" keyboard.

Anyhow, TL;DR The SK-1 is actually not capable of zero-attack/zero-decay sounds. the envelope generators are squishy. I attempted to simulate that here.