Category: Keyboard

Accompaniment keyboard

The Casio Casiotone CT-370 is a light, portable, but surprisingly sturdy, well-built keyboard produced during the late 1980s.  Like all members of the Casiotone family, this instruments features many sounds and auto-accompaniments.  The CT-370 can be powered via DC adaptor, or by six D-size batteries.

To the left of the panel we find a single speaker.  Two (one on each side) would have been better, but there are many other Casio models that are stereo.  Under the Casio logo lays a green and white message: “Pulse Code Modulation” – this is to remind us that the CT-370 is based upon PCM samples.  In the 1980s, this was still a big deal.  Following to the right there’s a series of five sliders:  Power on/off, Main Volume, Accompaniment Volume, Rhythm Volume, and Chord type.  While the first four are self explanatory, the fifth slider allows you to choose the way your keyboard is set up:  you can have the full keyboard dedicated to one sound, with no left side auto-accompaniment, or you can set up two types of accompaniment, and the Casio chord feature (a simplified auto-accompaniment, where you press two keys and you get complex chords – useful for beginners).

Continuing to the right, there are three red buttons:  these are the Synchro/Fill-In, Start/Stop, and Intro/Ending controls.  They allow the user to: start the rhythm/accompaniment as soon as you touch the keyboard, start/stop the rhythm, and finally create a brief introduction, or finish in style with an automated ending.  Very, very useful for performing live.  Two grey buttons are dedicated to the tempo:  faster, and slower.

A series of ten grey buttons allows you to choose the rhythm, while a lone blue button toggles between two settings, to access the remaining ten rhythms.  The same for the Tone section.

Finally, two green and a yellow button that strangely are not well labeled:  the first green button allows us to mix and match any two of the preset tones, for a whopping 210 tone bank.  The second green button is the auto-harmonize, which harmonizes the right hand to the chord you’re playing on the left.  And lastly, the yellow button is dedicated to the demo song.

The keyboard itself feels pleasantly light, and while this may be very bad for piano sounds (especially since it’s not dynamic), it’s perfect for organ or synth sounds.  The back of the unit is very Spartan, with only the power connection, a 1/8″ mono output, and a tune knob.

This is not a bad keyboard, and now it may be even considered “PCM vintage” is there were such a thing 😉  The tone mix feature adds a lot to the overall sound – even though it obviously cuts the polyphony in half to five voices (hey!  that never stopped the Prophet-5 😀 )

Today, the Casiotone concept is still going strong, with the CTK-series.

Casio CT-370 audio demos

The Casio Casiotone CT-370 factory demo (“Night Birds”, by British group Shakatak. A very similar version of this demo is also featured in the Casio CSM-1 module (CSM-1 DEMO SONG) , and it sounds pretty similar – I suspect the on-board ROM is based on the same samples)

Tones

Rhythms

Casio CT-370 manual

Casio CT-370 specs

• Portable and well built;
• Several good sounds;
• Auto Harmonize, mix sounds;
• easy to use

Year of release	1980s
Polyphony	10-note
Presets	20 (210 obtainable by linking two sounds together)
Rhythms	20
Keyboard	49 keys
Responds to velocity	no
Sound generation method	PCM
MIDI	no
Sound expansion capabilities	no
Effects	auto harmonize
Controls	sliders
Outputs	mono
Display	no
Misc	built-in speaker

Casio CT-370 photos

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Casio CT-370 links

https://www.casio.com/products/electronic-musical-instruments

Auto-accompaniment keyboard

Casio CTK-601 audio demos

(For web-space and time reasons, I recorded only the most significant, well-programmed rhythms and the most good-sounding and intriguing tones)

The two Casio CTK-601 factory demos:

Casio CTK-601 rhythms

Casio CTK-601 tones

Casio CTK-601 photos

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Casio CTK-601 manual

Casio CTK-601 specs

• light and portable;
• surprisingly some very good sounds;
• good accompaniment programming;
• powerful, crisp on-board speakers

A great little keyboard!  Best Buy used to sell these for very little money, and I got one new.  Its set of General MIDI sounds is pretty good, and the synthesizer section offers a great way to shape your own sounds very easily.

Year of release	1990s
Polyphony	24-voice
Presets	200 (168 ROM + 32 User) tones
Rhythms	100, with auto-accompaniments
Keyboard	61 keys (five octaves)
Responds to velocity	yes
Sound generation method	PCM
MIDI	yes, in-out
Sound expansion capabilities	No
Effects	digital reverb (Room, Stage, Hall)
Controls	pitch bender (a bit awkward to use)
Outputs	stereo output/headphones
Display	yes, LCD non-backlit

Casio CTK-601 links

https://www.casio.com/products/electronic-musical-instruments