Casio VL-1

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Photograph of a Casio VL-Tone VL-1

The VL-1 was the first synthesizer of Casio's VL-Tone product line, and is sometimes referred to as the VL-Tone. Released in 1981, the VL-1 is notable for its kitsch value among electronic musicians, due to its cheap construction and its unrealistic, uniquely low-fidelity sounds.

1 Sound
2 Features
3 Voices
4 Rhythms
5 Notable Uses and Appearances
6 See also

[edit] Sound

Its sounds were mostly composed of filtered squarewaves with varied pulse-widths. Its piano, violin, flute and guitar timbres were poor abstractions of real instruments, typical of then-contemporary keyboards. It also featured a "fantasy" voice, and a programmable sythesizer which provided for choice of both oscillator waveform and ADSR envelope. The synthesizer was programmed by entering a number into the calculator section's memory, then switching back to keyboard mode.

[edit] Features

The LCD display

The VL-1 featured a small LCD display capable of displaying 8 characters. This was primarly used for the calculator function, but also displayed notes played. As well as this, the VL-1 also had changeable tone and balance, basic tempo settings and a real-time monophonic music sequencer, which could play back up to 99 notes. There were also 10 pre-loaded rhythms, which included waltz, samba, swing and bossa nova, among others.

[edit] Voices

Piano
Fantasy
Violin
Flute
Guitar
ADSR

[edit] Rhythms

March
Waltz
4-Beat
Swing
Rock-1
Rock-2
Bossanova
Samba
Rhumba
Beguine

[edit] Notable Uses and Appearances

The VL-1 received some fame when the German band Trio (band) used it in one of their songs, "Da Da Da". They used the Rock-1 rhythm preset and the Guitar voice.
The same rhythm preset features in the first half of The Man Whose Head Expanded by The Fall, only to be cut short by Mark E. Smith's command to "turn that bloody blimey space invader off".
The VL-1's "fantasy" voice is the only sound on the cover version of Roy Budd's theme tune for Get Carter which is featured on the Human League album Dare.
The VL-1 is found in several Homestar Runner cartoons, in one case appearing as Strong Bad's head.
The Rock-1 and Rock-2 rhythms are heard on the track Stop/Start by The Assembly
Boom Boom Boom Boom by the Vengaboys starts with a rhythm that is identical in sound to the Rock-1 rhythm