Bad Gear - Casio Rapman - Too Cute???

[Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to bad gear the show about the world's most hated audio tools today we are going to talk about the casio rap one rapman to be honest i feel a bit guilty because i used last month's patreon vocoder shoutout to ask you for additional hate for this 1991 home keyboard in spite of its countless flaws i couldn't fill the infamous bulletin board of the test but i really wanted to have the world's first rap keyboard on the show casio is among other things known for little plasticky instruments that punch above their weight the iconic bleeps of the vl1 had a profound influence on pop music the low-fi crunch of the sk-1 allowed for flatulence-driven mozart covers and the millennium falcon-shaped track former no forget that one while not as popular as its siblings the wrapman did have a certain impact peter gabriel was so into it that he had to be dragged back into the studio by daniel lanois and it inspired a famous youtuber to say i don't want to over romanticize bad gear well why not at the first glance the casio rap man is ticking all the boxes this time for real keys that make the microkorg look like a grand piano a proto dj hero scratch wheel and three buttons for hits and fills the sample based and presumably partly pd-generated soundset is a weird collection of low-fi synth sounds [Music] a pretty nice vibraphone a metal guitar worthy of a 90s new metal album odd sound effects and a misleading but cool sounding vocoder sample just to name a few polyphony is limited to three voices in play mode but is reduced to one voice when you switch the machine to rep this mode lets you choose from 30 different patterns 12 drum only loops with a surprising lack of both bass and treble [Music] and 18 accompaniment patterns some of them reminiscent of hip-hop [Music] and r b classics [Music] no you can't change the snail sound using either the scratch wheel or effects pads will insert a one bar brake [Music] the voice effector it is not ideal for live singing as there are no clean octaves but can be used as an fx unit for line sources as well casio was kind enough to include a microphone and it's adorable it goes without saying that the device has a built-in speaker a battery compartment there's no midi and all connectors are mini jacks the little keyboard was originally sold for 90 pound sterling and can be found on reverb for around 70 earth credits mine was 390 austrian shilling the casio rapman is a toyish and deeply flawed instrument but i still had to take desperate measures to get it on the show is it too cute for bad gear you have already heard the rep one in today's intro tune i cheated a little the unprocessed tones of the little keyboard are sometimes hard to take please bear with me while we listen to the pure and undiluted sounds of the first jam [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] now that's what i call an early 90s cheese fest still a few of these mid-rangey artifact-ridden and somewhat random elements might work in a more diversely instrumented arrangement the wrap man's drum and bass sounds are lacking punch and depth let's crank up the tempo and push them over the edge with some guitar fx [Music] well that escalated quickly the drum loop benefited from the lower octave generated by the electro harmonics pod and the little moog crunch has never harmed anyone things got a little messy but i think you got the idea while working with the rapman i often got the feeling that its strange sounds are almost there but not quite i wanna know if we can make them sound good with the power of the daw in this surprisingly optimistic 70 miles per hour cruise control deep and stubby house construct [Music] [Music] verdict some of you might think that the casio rap man doesn't belong on bad gear first of all this show is supposed to reflect on hate not incited and i think we can all agree that there are already enough weird talking guys on social media sowing the seeds of controversy what is more the little keyboard was originally designed for home use and it's debatable whether it should be judged by the same criteria as a pro instrument i disagree on the latter point flawed and primitive as it is it can bring quite some weird freshness and playful inspiration to the table and i think we know all too well that many flagship instruments of past and present fail in this respect apart from that it's a lot of fun during studio breaks you can keep a little crowd entertained with just the keyboard and a few batteries and toddlers will find a great starting point for a later synth addiction thanks for watching and see you next time hey guys i hope you enjoyed the episode feel free to like subscribe become a patron and leave a comment what other kind of gear you would like to see and hear on the show thanks to all my patrons for supporting the channel and welcome to the monthly vocoder shout outs we're going to start with tier 4. thanks for watching see you next time sorry for neglecting the vocoder of the roland sp808ex in last week's episode i'm really looking forward to giving it a try now carrier signal is the novation scio synth [Music] [Music] this [Music] tiers five and 6 let's stay with the sp808 and use the casio rapman's voice effector as the modulation source [Music] again thank you so much for supporting the channel see you next month

Channel: AudioPilz

Views: 34,690

Rating: 4.9608345 out of 5

Keywords: audiopilz, bad gear, casio rapman, casio rap-1 rapman, too cute???, cute keyboard, kids keyboard, keyboard for children, hip hop, hip hop keyboard, voice effector, casio sk-1, casio vl-1, casio vl tone, the naked gun, leslie nielsen, drive through death valley, memes video, patreon, vocoder shoutout, old school, music production, early 90s, meme keyboard, adam neely, hipster keyboard, home keyboard, most hated audio tools, I'm Rick James, dave chappelle rick james

Id: G5zBoNnP1vk

Length: 10min 13sec (613 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 24 2021