The Casio Casiotone MT-40 is an electronic keyboard , formerly produced by Casio and originally developed for the consumer market. It was released in 1981, with the MT-41 gray version joining it in 1983.
48-449: The keyboard has 37 main keys and 15 smaller bass keys. Its 9-voice polyphony 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
96-467: 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 machine in which sounds are generated by manipulating the output of audio frequency generators rather than recordings of those manipulations. The successor of
144-468: A common filter and/or amplifier circuit shared among all the voices. The result is a synthesizer that can play chords, provided all the notes start and end at the same time ( homophony ). For example, playing a new note on top of notes already held might retrigger the volume envelope for the entire sound. Monophonic synthesizers with more than one oscillator (such as the ARP 2600 ) can often be patched to behave in
192-423: A complete sound-generating mechanism for each key in the keybed (e.g., a piano has a string and hammer for every key, and an organ has at least one pipe for each key.) When any key is pressed, the note corresponding to that key will be heard as the mechanism is activated. Some clavichords do not have a string for each key. Instead, they will have a single string which will be fretted by several different keys. Out of
240-500: A large number of audio outputs to a mixer. The stops or drawbars on the organ modify the signal sent from the audio-generating system, and the keyboard switches the mixer's channels on and off. Those channels which are switched on are heard as notes corresponding to the depressed keys. In classical music, a definition of polyphony does not only mean just playing multiple notes at once but an ability to make audiences perceive multiple lines of independent melodies. Playing multiple notes as
288-537: A note one octave lower, the frequency of the oscillator is divided by two. Polyphony is achieved so long as only one of each note in the scale is played simultaneously. A forefather of octave divider synth and electronic organs. Octave divider technology similar to Novachord was used. Polyphonic ensemble keyboard consists with one synth per key (totally 60 synthesizers), based on octave divider Patchable polyphonic synthesizer consists with three synths per key (totally 144 synthesizers), based on octave divider. In
336-455: A number of varieties, including double, triple, and quadruple ocarinas, which use multiple chambers to extend the ocarina's otherwise limited range, but also enable the musician to play more than one note simultaneously. Harmonic ocarinas are specifically designed for polyphony, and in these instruments the ranges of the chambers usually overlap to some extent (typically at the unison, third, fourth, fifth, seventh or octave). Cross-fingering enables
384-443: A paraphonic manner, allowing for each oscillator to play an independent pitch which is then routed through a common VCF and VCA . The earliest polyphonic synthesizers were built in the late-1930s, but the concept did not become popular until the mid-1970s. Harald Bode 's Warbo Formant Orguel, developed in 1937, was an archetype of a voice allocation polyphonic synthesizer. Novachord by Hammond Organ Company , released in 1939,
432-399: A polyphonic instrument is a (classical) piano , on which the player plays different melody lines with the left and the right hand - depending on music style and composition, these may be musically tightly interrelated or may even be totally unrelated to each other, like in parts of Jazz music. An example for monophonic instruments is a trumpet which can generate only one tone (frequency) at
480-481: A single chamber to span an entire octave or more. Recorders can also be doubled for polyphony. There are two types of double recorder; drone and polyphonic. In the drone type, one tube is tuned exactly like a regular recorder with a range of approximately two octaves, and the other tube is a drone and plays the tonic note of the scale. The polyphonic recorder has two tubes with a range of one major sixth. With overblowing, some notes can be played an octave higher, but it
528-509: A time, except when played by extraordinary musicians. A monophonic synthesizer or monosynth is a synthesizer that produces only one note at a time, making it smaller and cheaper than a polyphonic synthesizer which can play multiple notes at once. This does not necessarily refer to a synthesizer with a single oscillator ; the Minimoog , for example, has three oscillators which are settable in arbitrary intervals , but it can play only one note at
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#1732884459696576-736: A time. Well-known monosynths include the Minimoog, the Roland TB-303 , the Korg Prophecy , and the Korg Monologue . Duophonic synthesizers, such as the ARP Odyssey and Formanta Polivoks built in the 1970s and 1980s respectively, have a capability to independently play two pitches at a time. These synthesizers have at least two oscillators that are separately controllable, and a duophonic keyboard that can generate two control voltage signals for
624-414: A whole, such as a rhythm from a chord pattern, is not polyphony but homophony . A classical violin has multiple strings and indeed is polyphonic but harder for some beginners to play multiple strings by bowing. One needs to control the pressure, speed and angle well for one note before having an ability to play the multiple notes at acceptable quality expected by the composers. Therefore, even though
672-406: Is a forefather product of frequency divider organs and polyphonic synthesizer. It uses octave divider technology to generate polyphony, and about 1,000 Novachords were manufactured until 1942. Using an octave divider a synthesizer needs only 12 oscillators – one for each note in the musical scale . The additional notes are generated by dividing down the outputs of these oscillators. To produce
720-502: Is not possible to achieve the range of an entire octave in one tube with these instruments. Double zhaleikas (a type of hornpipe ) also exist, native to southern Russia . Launeddas are an Italian instrument, native to Sardinia that has both a drone pipe and two pipes capable of polyphony, for a total of three pipes. The Magnetic Fields The Magnetic Fields are an American band founded and led by Stephin Merritt . Merritt
768-519: Is the group's primary songwriter, producer, and vocalist, as well as frequent multi-instrumentalist. The band is named after the André Breton / Philippe Soupault novel Les Champs Magnétiques . The band released their debut single " 100,000 Fireflies " in 1991. The single was typical of the band's earlier career, characterized by synthesized instrumentation by Merritt, with lead vocals provided by Susan Anway (and then by Stephin Merritt himself, from
816-478: 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
864-504: The House of Tomorrow EP onwards). A more traditional band later materialized; it is now composed of Merritt, Claudia Gonson , Sam Davol , and John Woo, with occasional guest vocals by Shirley Simms . The band's best-known work is the 1999 three-volume concept album 69 Love Songs . It was followed in the succeeding years by a "no-synth" trilogy: i (2004), Distortion (2008), and Realism (2010). The band's latest album, Quickies ,
912-509: The "rock" preset. At first Eddie Cochran 's 1958 song " Somethin' Else " or the Sex Pistols ' 1976 track " Anarchy in the UK " 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 's " Hang On to Yourself ",
960-453: The 8th track on his 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars . 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
1008-630: The Bottom of the Sea , on March 6, 2012. This album, compared by Dan Raby to 69 Love Songs , brought back the use of synthesizers. Merritt told fans on his website, "I was very happy to be using synthesizers in ways that I had not done before. Most of the synthesizers on the record didn't exist when we were last using synthesizers." The song " Andrew in Drag " garnered much attention, receiving play from entities such as CBS News and NPR 's All Songs Considered . In 2012,
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#17328844596961056-508: 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 ) prevailed. Toshio Kashio in particular felt strongly that the company's mission ought to be “bringing
1104-480: 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 used it on a number of singles and album tracks. Post-punk 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
1152-476: The MT-40 was an otherwise identical machine that came in a gray case, sold as the MT-41 beginning in 1983. 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 track, 1985's " Under Me Sleng Teng ". The track's riddim went on to spawn nearly 500 cover versions. This song's success
1200-458: The Magnetic Fields celebrated its new album by launching a North American and European tour. It began on March 6, the release date of Love at the Bottom of the Sea , and continued for two months. In 2016, it was announced that the band's eleventh studio album, 50 Song Memoir , would contain fifty songs, akin to the 69 Love Songs concept, one to commemorate each year since Stephin Merritt
1248-579: 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 plays
1296-474: The case of half the songs' titles, the pronoun) "I", whilst Distortion was an experiment in combining noise music with their typically unconventional musical approach. The liner notes claim the album was made without synthesizers. According to an article, "To celebrate the release of Distortion , Merritt and the Magnetic Fields played mini-residencies in cities around the country, culminating with six shows at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music." Realism
1344-517: The classical guitar, is polyphonic, as are various guitar derivatives (including the harpejji and the Chapman stick ). Multiphonics can be used with many regular wind instruments to produce two or more notes at once, although this is considered an extended technique . Explicitly polyphonic wind instruments are relatively rare, but do exist. The standard harmonica can easily produce several notes at once. Multichambered ocarinas are manufactured in
1392-422: The early-to-mid-1970s, the voice allocation technology with digital keyboard scanning was independently developed by several engineers and musical instrument manufacturers, including Yamaha , E-mu Systems , and Armand Pascetta (Electro Group). The Oberheim Polyphonic Synthesizer and Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 were both developed in collaboration with E-mu Systems. Voice allocation technology
1440-673: The formation of the band, Stephin's friendship with Claudia Gonson, the production of various albums, and Stephin's move to California from New York. It won the Outfest 2010 Grand Jury Prize for Feature Documentary. The band was chosen by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform a rare festival performance at the All Tomorrow's Parties event that he curated in March 2012 in Minehead , England. The band released its tenth full-length album, Love at
1488-502: The group's musicianship, demonstrated by the use of such varied instruments as the ukulele, banjo, accordion, cello, mandolin, flute, xylophone , and the Marxophone , in addition to their usual setting of synthesizers, guitars, and effects. The album features vocalists Shirley Simms , Dudley Klute , L.D. Beghtol , and Gonson, each of whom sings lead on six songs as well as various backing vocals, plus Daniel Handler (who has written under
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1536-638: The keyboard as the only accompanying instrument. Damon Albarn of Gorillaz used an MT-40 to construct the demo and live versions of the second single from the band's 2017 album Humanz , the track " We Got the Power ". Polyphony and monophony in instruments Polyphony is a property of musical instruments that means that they can play multiple independent melody lines simultaneously. Instruments featuring polyphony are said to be polyphonic . Instruments that are not capable of polyphony are monophonic or paraphonic . An intuitively understandable example for
1584-557: The keys that share a single string, only one may sound at a time. The electric piano and clavinet rely on the same principles to achieve polyphonic operation. An electric piano has a separate hammer, vibrating metal tine and electrical pickup for each key. With a few exceptions, electric organs consist of two parts: an audio-generating system and a mixing system. The audio-generating system may be electronic (consisting of oscillators and octave dividers) or it may be electromechanical (consisting of tonewheels and pickups), and it sends
1632-478: The lowest- and highest-note. When two or more keys are pressed simultaneously, the lowest- and highest-note will be heard. When only one key is pressed, both oscillators are assigned to one note, possibly with a more complex sound. Paraphonic synthesizers, such as the Solina String Ensemble or Korg Poly-800 , were designed to play multiple pitches at the same time by using multiple oscillators, but with
1680-407: The maximum number of notes is already sounding when an additional key is pressed. There are several ways to implement this: Modern synthesizers and samplers may use additional, multiple, or user-configurable criteria to decide which notes sound. Almost all classical keyboard instruments are polyphonic. Examples include the piano , harpsichord , organ and clavichord . These instruments feature
1728-583: The multiple synthesizers. One of the most popular polyphonic synth featuring patch memories, also used E-mu's technology. One notable early polyphonic synthesizer, the Prophet 5 released in 1978, had five-voice polyphony. Another notable polyphonic synth, the Yamaha CS-80 released in 1976, had eight-voice polyphony, as did the Yamaha GX-1 with total 18 voice polyphony, released in 1973. Six-voice polyphony
1776-401: 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
1824-458: The pseudonym Lemony Snicket ) on accordion, and longtime collaborator Christopher Ewen (of Future Bible Heroes ) as guest arranger/synthesist. Violinist Ida Pearle makes a brief cameo on "Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side". The band's albums i (2004) and Distortion (2008) both followed the album theme structure of 69 Love Songs : the song titles on i begin with the letter (or, in
1872-581: 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. The MT-40 has also secured a niche in indie music, frequently used by the Magnetic Fields , and featured on most of Emperor X 's album Tectonic Membrane/Thin Strip on an Edgeless Platform . Its thin fuzz can be heard on lesser known Australian indie band Turnstyle 's top 20 single "Spray Water on
1920-408: The sound, often with a keyboard to trigger the oscillators. However, multiple oscillators working independently are a considerable challenge to implement. To double the polyphony, not only must the number of oscillators be doubled but the electronics must also function as a switch connecting keys to free oscillators instantaneously, implementing an algorithm that decides which notes are turned off if
1968-580: 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
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2016-558: The tour). Okuda only learned of her part in "Under Me Sleng Teng"'s global success in August 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. After the worldwide success of Sleng Teng many speculated as to the ultimate source of
2064-421: The violin family of instruments are misleadingly considered (when bowing) by general untrained musicians to be primarily monophonic, it can be polyphony by both pizzicato (plucking) and bowing techniques for standard trained soloists and orchestra players. The evidence can be seen in compositions since the 17th century such as Bach sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied solo violin . The electric guitar, just like
2112-476: Was born. It was released in March 2017. On May 15, 2020, the band digitally released the album Quickies —twenty-eight songs under three minutes long—through Nonesuch Records . The first single, "The Day the Politicians Died", was released on February 25, followed by " Kraftwerk in a Blackout" on April 1, "I Want to Join a Biker Gang" on April 16, and "I've Got a Date With Jesus" on May 8. The band released
2160-477: Was released in January 2010, concluding what Merritt termed the "no-synth" trilogy (following i and Distortion ). The next album produced would feature synthesizers "almost exclusively". In 2010, the documentary film Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields made its debut in film festivals around the world. It was directed by Kerthy Fix and Gail O'Hara . Shot over a period of 10 years, it discusses
2208-856: Was released on May 29, 2020. The band began as Merritt's studio project under the name Buffalo Rome. With the help of friend Claudia Gonson , who had played in Merritt's band the Zinnias during high school, a live band was assembled in Boston , where Merritt and Gonson lived, to play Merritt's compositions. The band's first live performance was in 1991 at T.T. the Bear's Place in Cambridge, Massachusetts , where they were mistakenly billed as Magnetophone, an alias used briefly in that year by Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang of Galaxie 500 . The 1999 triple album 69 Love Songs showcased Merritt's songwriting and lyrical abilities and
2256-401: Was standard by the mid-1980s. With the advent of digital synthesizers , 16-voice polyphony became standard by the late 1980s. 64-voice polyphony was common by the mid-1990s and 128-note polyphony arrived shortly after. There are several reasons for providing such large numbers of simultaneous notes: Synthesizers generally use oscillators to generate the electric signal that forms the basis of
2304-483: Was used to assign the limited 8-voices per manual into the notes. It was succeeded by the portable Yamaha CS-80 (1976), which was successful and became one of the most popular polyphonic analog synths. In 1974, E-mu developed the polyphonic technologies, and in 1977, released the 4060 Polyphonic Keyboard and Sequencer. It was developed under the collaboration with E-mu Systems. LEO used Armand Pascetta's polyphonic keyboard ( c. 1975 ) to control
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