![Casio MT-40](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Casio_MT-40.jpg)
The Casio
Casiotone
Casiotone was a series of home electronic keyboards made by Casio in the early 1980s. Casio promoted the Casiotone 201 (CT-201) as "the first electronic keyboard with full-size keys that anyone could afford". The name "Casiotone" disappeared from ...
MT-40 is an
electronic keyboard
An electronic keyboard, portable keyboard, or digital keyboard is an electronic musical instrument, an electronic derivative of keyboard instruments. Electronic keyboards include synthesizers, digital pianos, stage pianos, electronic organs an ...
, formerly produced by
Casio
is a Japanese multinational electronics manufacturing corporation headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Its products include calculators, mobile phones, digital cameras, electronic musical instruments, and analogue and digital watches. It ...
and originally developed for the consumer market. It was released in 1981.
Description
The keyboard has 37 main keys and 15 smaller bass keys. Its 9-voice
polyphony
Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, h ...
means that eight notes may be played on the main keys, plus one note on the bass for a total of nine simultaneous voices. The bass section has one timbre, and the main section has 22, assignable to one of four presets. Like most small Casio keyboards the MT-40 has a drum section with 6 different beats, a tempo knob, and a "fill" button. The fill button plays sixteenth note pulses of either the "snare" or "kick" as long as it is held down.
All tones and presets are recordings held on "voice chips"
triggered by user input. This consumer-grade feature distinguishes the MT-40 from the technical definition of
synthesizer
A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...
, a machine in which sounds are generated by manipulating the output of audio frequency generators rather than recordings of those manipulations. The successor of the MT-40 was an otherwise identical machine that came in a gray case, sold as the MT-41 beginning in 1983.
''Under Me Sleng Teng''
The MT-40 has a built-in bassline (internally referred to as the "rock" preset) that, along with the keyboard's suggested
1/16 note fill for that preset, formed the basis of a seminal
reggae
Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, " Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use ...
track, 1985's "
Under Me Sleng Teng". The track's
riddim
Riddim is the Jamaican Patois pronunciation of the English word "rhythm". In the context of reggae and dancehall, it refers to the instrumental accompaniment to a song and is synonymous with the rhythm section. Jamaican music genres that use the ...
went on to spawn nearly 500 cover versions. This song's success is widely credited with single-handedly transitioning reggae from analog to computerized production. This transition to a music production that depended on digital instruments and sequencers is also seen as catalyzing the computerization of
hip-hop music, which was, like reggae, an
analog musical tradition until the mid-1980s. Given the lasting consequences of the ''Sleng Teng'' riddim, the MT-40's "rock" preset has been the subject of considerable speculation.
The famous preset was composed for Casio in 1980 by a then newly-hired music engineer,
Hiroko Okuda.
She was assigned to create several of the keyboard's presets, among them a "rock" rhythm. Okuda had been hired fresh out of music school, where she had produced one of Japan's first graduate theses on reggae. In 2022 she described herself as having been immersed in reggae for several years before her 1980 hire by Casio (the previous year, during Bob Marley's only visit to Japan, Okuda had attended more than three performances from the tour).
Okuda only learned of her part in "Under Me Sleng Teng"'s global success in August of 1986, when she read an article titled “The Sleng Teng Flood” in Japan's ''Music Magazine''. The article described the wave of dozens and dozens of reggae songs being produced in Jamaica, all based on a Casiotone keyboard preset.
Reaction to MT-40 "rock" preset
After the worldwide success of ''Sleng Teng'' many speculated as to the ultimate source of the "rock" preset. At first
Eddie Cochran
Ray Edward Cochran (; October 3, 1938 – April 17, 1960) was an American rock and roll musician. Cochran's songs, such as "Twenty Flight Rock", "Summertime Blues", " C'mon Everybody" and " Somethin' Else", captured teenage frustration and desire ...
's 1958 song "
Somethin' Else" or the
Sex Pistols
The Sex Pistols were an English punk rock band formed in London in 1975. Although their initial career lasted just two and a half years, they were one of the most groundbreaking acts in the history of popular music. They were responsible for ...
' 1976 track "
Anarchy in the UK
"Anarchy in the U.K." is a song by English punk rock band the Sex Pistols. It was released as the band's debut single on 26 November 1976 and was later featured on their album ''Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols''. "Anarchy in th ...
" were thought to be prime candidates, with "Somethin' Else" being widely accepted for decades by connoisseurs.
In 2015 Okuda was quoted as saying the source was a track on an unnamed 1970's British rock album. This was later speculated to be
David Bowie
David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer-songwriter and actor. A leading figure in the music industry, he is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the ...
's "
Hang On to Yourself", the 8th track on his 1972 album ''
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
''The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars'' (often shortened to ''Ziggy Stardust'') is the fifth studio album by English musician David Bowie, released on 16June 1972 in the United Kingdom through RCA Records. It was co-pr ...
.''
However, referring to the question in 2022, Okuda said, “I did use to listen to a lot of British rock, so I’m sure there must have been songs that influenced me. But really, the bassline was something I came up with myself. It wasn’t based on any other tune.”
According to Okuda, there was some talk at the Casio corporation of attempting to defend their intellectual property from its free use in "Under Me Sleng Teng" with lawsuits.
However, other voices at Casio (among them the head of the Musical Instrument division, co-founder of the company, and second-eldest Kashio brother,
Toshio Kashio
Toshio is a common masculine Japanese given name.
Possible writings
Toshio can be written using different kanji characters and can mean:
*敏夫, "agile, man"
*敏男, "agile, man"
*敏雄, "agile, male"
*俊夫, "sagacious, man"
*俊雄, "sagaci ...
) prevailed. Toshio Kashio in particular felt strongly that the company's mission ought to be “bringing the pleasure of playing a musical instrument to everyone.”
Despite the minute size and financial importance of the Musical Instrument division compared to the company's calculator division, then its main breadwinner, Toshio Kashio's defence of free use set a decisive corporate precedent. To the present day Casio's response to clearance requests for the "rock" preset has been an acknowledgement that the song “uses a sound file taken from a Casio MT-40”, and no fee.
The preset is accessed by pressing the "synchro" button and then the "D" bass button (second from left) while the MT-40 rhythm slider is in the "rock" position.
Subsequent Influence
The MT-40 has also secured a niche in indie music, frequently used by
the Magnetic Fields
The Magnetic Fields (named after the André Breton/Philippe Soupault novel ''Les Champs Magnétiques'') are an American Band (rock and pop), band founded and led by Stephin Merritt. Merritt is the group's primary songwriter, producer, and vocali ...
, and featured on most of
Emperor X
Chad R. Matheny, known professionally as Emperor X, is an American singer and songwriter.
Early life and career
Born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1979, Matheny got his start in music when he was given a Casio SK-1 by his grandparents at age nine, ...
's album ''Tectonic Membrane/Thin Strip on an Edgeless Platform''. Its thin fuzz can be heard on lesser known Australian indie band
Turnstyle
A turnstile (also called a turnpike, gateline, baffle gate, automated gate, turn gate in some regions) is a form of gate which allows one person to pass at a time. A turnstile can be configured to enforce one-way human traffic. In addition, a t ...
's top 20 single "Spray Water on the Stereo". California-based indie rock group Picture Atlantic used a mixture of the MT-40's organ sound and bass notes for their tracks "Circe", "Anytime/Coats of Armor", and "....That's Just Me" on their album ''Kleos''. San Francisco indie rock duo Casy and Brian exclusively used the Casio MT-40 for three of their four releases, altering its sound with effects such as overdrive pedals to accompany drums. Former Boston/San Francisco street musician
The Space Lady
Susan Dietrich Schneider, known as The Space Lady (TSL) (née Susan Dietrich, and formerly Suzy Soundz), born 1948 in Pueblo, Colorado and raised in Las Animas, Colorado, US, is a singer and musician in the genres of space music, synth pop, and ...
plays the MT-40 through a Small Stone phase shifter to create an ethereal tone to accompany her delay-enhanced vocals. In the UK
the Farmer's Boys
The Farmer's Boys were a British band from Norwich, England. They formed in the early 1980s and were briefly called 'Bang Goes My Stereo' before changing their name to 'The Farmer's Boys'.Strong, Martin C. (2003) "Farmer's Boys", in ''The Grea ...
used it on a number of singles and album tracks.
Post-punk
Post-punk (originally called new musick) is a broad genre of punk music that emerged in the late 1970s as musicians departed from punk's traditional elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a variety of avant-garde sensibilities and non-roc ...
band Standing Ovation use the MT-40 for synth pad and stabs on their cassette release "What Meaning" in 1983, re-released on vinyl in 2019
In 2015, Japanese musician Tentenko (formerly of
BiS) released an album recorded using the keyboard as the only accompanying instrument.
Damon Albarn
Damon Albarn (; born 23 March 1968) is an English-Icelandic musician, singer-songwriter and composer, best known as the frontman and primary lyricist of the rock band Blur and as the co-creator and primary musical contributor of the virtual ...
of
Gorillaz
Gorillaz are an English virtual band formed in 1998 by musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett, from London. The band primarily consists of four fictional members: 2-D (vocals, keyboards), Murdoc Niccals (bass guitar), Noodle (guitar, ...
used an MT-40 to construct the demo and live versions of the second single from the band's 2017 album
Humanz
''Humanz'' is the fifth studio album by British virtual band Gorillaz. It was released on 28 April 2017 in the United Kingdom by Parlophone and in the United States by Warner Bros. Records. The album was announced on the band's official Instagr ...
, the track "
We Got the Power".
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Casio Mt-40
Casio synthesizers