Just a few G1 ramblings.

[CairnsFella]

Hi All.

 

I'll save you some time if you are hoping for some useful info, there isn't going to be any. 

 

I have merely been delving back into my G1 again over the past few months (not that it has been entirely neglected otherwise, but mostly used for controller duties as I have been doing either DAW work, or otherwise playing bass). Consequently I have been on here reading and revising from some of the great informative posts from all you very helpful users over the years.

 

The passing of time has not dampened my enthusiasm for the G1 as a whole, particularly the various sequencer functions, and to a slightly lesser extent, the sampling functions. To be fair though, I have in the intervening period come across both new pleasant surprises, and really disappointing limitations and hurdles in equal measure.

 

Many of the plusses have been sourced from the aforementioned forum contributions. I am sure I found a few of my own too (or at least independent of similar posts). Similarly the -ve's may or may not have been detailed here too. I don't think I will go into any detail (at least not here and now) as I was inspired to post because of my current positivity regarding the G1.

 

I have also revisited what XW videos I could find, though there has not really been many since I last frequented the forum. I particularly enjoyed 'Funzie's' P1 videos. Despite quite a few criticisms he still really seemed to enjoy the device. Again, this rather reflects my own situation (in fact I seem to recall he commented that he mainly uses the sequencers now himself).

 

I do find myself wishing the G1 was actually a desktop keyless system. I know one could argue the PD was this type of thing, but for me it goes too far in another direction (again, "for me"). I do believe that the G1 (and P1) remain synths with a unique combination of quite in depth functions. I read and watch a LOT of synth reviews, and whilst I feel most (whether current or from the XW's era) have better actual sound synthesis performance (either sound quality, sound generation architecture, or both) there are really few (arguably any) that have such a combination of deep arpeggiator, sequencer, phrase sequencer, sample looper, multifunction keys, and control in one package. Of course there are he likes of MPC's, MV1's, Maschine's, Deluge's, Curcuit's, Elektron's etc, but the subset of these which  these outperform the XW in certain area's are in a very different price league, and still (whilst many incorporate a lot of functions the XW do not have) the XW's feature combination is very usable, very musical, and unique. (I realise of course that my comparisons have no 'keys', but this is in line with my prior "keyless G1" comment.

 

This said - and it of course very much depends upon what you really want to achieve - but I do believe if Casio were to revisit this sector currently they would need to raise their game considerably. Deepmind, Wavestate, Argon8, Minilogue, to name a few examples, are perhaps not aimed at the same target audience, but these are all really good quality synths.

 

So, I am unsure the 'jack of all trades' approach (whilst mastering a few aspects) would be enough to go up against these (perhaps a little more targeted) devices. But, in what is perhaps a slight contradiction to this statement, if you actually got rid of the (lets be quite frank, quite dated**) sounds, upped the quality of the controls and housing, and even 'trimmed' the functionality down (at the same time ironing out some of the current quirks) you'd have a really (and in my opinion much better) competitor to current offerings in the Keystep Pro, Korg SQ hardware sequencer arena.

 

**I don't even know myself if I really mean "dated" but I didn't want to use some of the terms that come to mind, nor did I want to give the impression that that great sounds are not possible with these devices, but I will summarise 'my opinion' as the sounds are not the XW's strongest suit. 

 

In fact (and I apologise if this is rather drawn out, but the 'lack of info' warning was provided at the beginning) I am going to contemplate that preceding point a little further. Because I think if you go into a keyboard store and see an XW (or were to have done) it looks like a keyboard. I know that sounds obvious, but what I mean is that it really does look, even to me looking at my G1 as I type and being a user of almost solely the sequencer functionality, it LOOKS like a keyboard. So I believe that is where most comparisons would be made. I would be surprised if more than a few percent of Keystep buyers would even have looked at the Casio, despite it's competitive feature set (yes I know the current keystep has around 4 polyphonic tracks, and CV out, but realistically to add a few poly tracks should not be a huge deal nowadays (even without the CV... I'm not sure it's a majority that use this on the keystep, though CV is becoming trendier).

 

But anyway, I suppose that did seem to end up as a bit of a semi-rant (though really it was praising the positives) but all in all I am very happy with my G1. Indeed, most of the downsides that I have in the past bemoaned - and will no doubt do so again in the future - are really things that I would have been happy not to have even had in the first place. Very much like climbing that mountain, I moan because it is there !!!

 

As I mentioned earlier, I have been logging a decent amount of DAW time, but it is now my intention to get into some electronica jamming and make use of my limited, quirky, but much loved hardware (not that my keyboard skills are really up to it, but nowadays all the 'key constriction' aids will hopefully help me out). You never know, maybe one day I will produce something adequate enough for youtube (but let's not get any hopes up).

 

I would doubt many (if any) have got this far, if indeed ay started.. but whether you have or not, my best to all the Ex-Dubya guys and gals. Thanks again for all your great info over the years.

 

 

[Jokeyman123]

It's early on in its history-took awhile for modders to get to the oldest Casios-now that these have been around awhile-i wonder if any serious modders have looked at the XW's? Having an RM1X and MC-505 for many years-the XW series seems closer to a "dance' or "beat" box functionally-closer to what these were originally designed to do, in a different keyboard form factor of course. And having workstation keyboards too-I've kept the XW because it's different. No it does not have a Kurzweil, Fantom, Montage or similar sound engine and is not an MPC5000 beatbox either (check that one out if you can find one) and i recently picked up a microkorg XL for its "analog" (not really) sounds.

 

The XW is not shabby for its price, there really isn't anything to compare it to unless you are willing to piece together a bunch of software or hardware. it's a "budget" drawbar organ-look at the pro drawbar models-Nords, Kurzweils etc. have better sounds but you need a minimal 1000 dollar investment or a dedicated drawbar Nord or Yamaha. Most danceboxes can't layer sounds, but will have sequencers, recorders for looping or longer works-the RM1X is a full loop/linear midi recorder player for example but no layering or performance splits. even some of the top flight workstations have a crappy set of GM tones-not much better sounding than the XW GM/PCM tones-you will have to spend alot more to get a professional level sound library-or workstation. And auto arranger keyboards or even the high-end arranger modules-do not have all the interesting things one can do with the XW-multi arpeggios, phrase recording, performance layers etc. I've tried several of those too.

 

With the right programming-the XW can definitely mimic what alot of the auto-arranger keys can do- not of course recognize your chords in real time but will transpose from the keyboard but with 8 patterns immediately accessible including key changes and tone variations-with some limitations. So all in all-my XW is sort of a "swiss-army knife" hybrid of musical instruments-takes more work to suss out all it is capable of.  When i am sketching out a quick backup pattern for playing solo with other instruments-I am liking the XW more than my auto-arranger instruments. Less instant gratification maybe. My very advanced keyboard friend/monster player RobEone-who started me off on all this keyboard tech back in 1969 with his Hammonds and home-made effects-has a Mellotron, his original Hammond and some other very hard-core new equipment-has to my surprise-an XW-P1 in his studio!

[CairnsFella]

Hey Jokeyman, thanks for the response.

 

Was not expecting one, but grateful that you have posted, particularly as it made me realise I had gone off in a direction with my original post that I had not really intended - though to be fair I did not really a have direction in mind when I started.

 

I tend to agree with the vast majority of your comments, and where I am less aligned it may just be down to interpretation (not that we have to agree as it is all just opinion after all, and I love a good debate). Interesting that you mention the MPC5000 as I own an MV8000 (essentially Roland's MPC5000) so I am very familiar with the capabilities of this type of unit.

 

It was also interesting that you mention Auto-arranger keyboards. This is a product area that has never really featured on my radar, but I can appreciate the XW's 'slight' overlap into that arena. I would be tempted to say the same about my position on workstations, but there certainly have been workstations that I would love to own, though more for their synth capabilities than anything.  Even though my MV does operate in a similar way I have never been a fan of keyboard sequencers that look like cut down DAW's and are invariably 10 times harder to operate. Of course not everyone's position will be as black and white as mine - if anyone's - but I prefer my hardware to have more "instant gratification" in sequencer and performance controls, and to leave the nitty gritty to my computer. Indeed I have on old WSA1 (I suppose I cant deny this being a workstation given the devices very name) and this has a sequencer that is far more capable of full song composition than the XW, but despite owning the WSA for several times as long, I have used it's sequencing functions a fraction of the time I have used what the XW offers. If I recall correctly I probably only used it to learn how it worked when I bought it, and never again since.

 

So yes, I agree that the dance/beat box functions of the XW's are (very) strong, but I also maintain my view that this is where the presentation of the XW lets it down (primarily, though not exclusively from a sales perspective). It looks like a keyboard first and foremost, where a half decent keybed and good sounds would be the priority, yet these are it's weakest areas. Then you have the  actual 'functionality' for beat creation which is is really great but despite having knobs, buttons and sliders, they are physically not the types of knobs, buttons and sliders that scream "grab me and tweak". I know many comment that the quality of these items are acceptable, or adequate for the price. I am not even going to suggest these statements are wrong, but I would equally say that there is no way they could have got away with being any more flimsy than they are. I get around this to some extent by using a BCR controller, itself not the last word in robustness, but a relative tank in comparison.

 

I seem to recall that the XW series recycled a home keyboard chassis, which can perhaps be blamed for some of the layout and button choices (an excuse though??). Of course I would rather have these controls than not, but in practice (and without the BCR) the 'multi-functionality' of these controls (and I am being G1 centric here as I have not operated a P1) have never been quite as intuitive as I would have liked (well, the knobs are OK, but the ultra low resolution makes filter sweeps a bit of a gamble using on-board controllers - again fortunately I can get perfectly smooth sweeps using the external BCR controllers. And whilst I never thought about it at the time, you have those long led lights strips indicating the function selected on the left, yet I then have to scroll through the oscillators and envelopes with yet more buttons to select the function that the sliders then perform. To me this somewhat defeats the purpose of real-time controls. I mean why not replace the led strips with a button for each oscillator etc. It's really a huge empty space being occupied by a lot of lights and text.

 

Okay, okay, I went off on one again. But it is points such as these that frustrate me given the XW's strongest area's are still let down in implementation, and that could have made the best parts better. I know it's just all pointless speculation. I mean where does one draw the line. The most accurate answer to that is that the line WAS drawn and we have what we have.

 

In the end then, I think our 'similar' references of "Swiss-army knife" and "jack of all trades" sums things up the best. Choose any area that another keyboard (or groove-box) excels in, and the XW can potentially put up a small fight. It'll likely lose the fight but at least it 'can' fight in so many areas.

 

I'm certainly in no hurry to get rid of mine, and I look forward to many more years of sequencing fun. Yes, it will be interspersed with the occasional "why did it do that", the more frequent "why doesn't it do this", and the positively regular "why did I even try to use an on-board sound for that"  but on the whole I anticipate much more enjoyment, and just maybe, one or two more undiscovered surprises.