Casio VL Tone

I own several Casio musical instruments. As is consistent with my aesthetic, they are are cheap and easy to buy. Casio was a company that sold calculators, and began selling musical instruments. The VL Tone was one of their earliest efforts.

I was in college at the time, and I didn't have a lot of money. This thing came out, and it had the rudimentary abilty to program sounds into it. I wrapped my mind around that. I dabbled in music and noisemaking (ala Eno etc) as I do now. I had to have one.

It took a month for me to get the money together, but I bought one, many years ago, and I still have it. I think it and a guitar would be enough I had to get rid of everything else.

What triggered me to write about it now is that I have been thinking a lot lately about what it takes to create things. There used to be technological barriers, but many of those are dropping. Video production, as an example, is very inexpensive in terms of equipment. But it still takes a lot of time to create something that people will watch and enjoy.

I just finished a rough cut on a video project, ran into lots of little snags with Final Cut, but in the end, got it done. My estimate on how long it would take me to do it was way off. But at the same time, I had to again marvel at what I could do -- editing a video project at the kitchen table.

The Casio VL Tone was/is brilliant in that it is an utterly approachable and affordable instrument that allowed just enough depth to allow some mastery. Beyond playing a song reasonably well, I could change the way it worked in ways that were interesting enough that I never really tired of it. It encouraged experimentation, within it's modest limitations.

Casio went on to make some other remarkable instruments, such as the SK-1 and SK-5 sampling keyboards. These are equally remarkable and creative as the lowly VL Tone. I have these as well. The VL Tone is special, though, because at the time it came out, the walkman was the device du jour. The VL Tone was sort of an extension of it, but in a way, the antithesis. Instead of listening to music, you could create it yourself. And you didn't have to be a musician to do it -- no one would judge with the headphones on.