MT-40 Riddim
December 4, 2015 6:34 PM   Subscribe

The Casiotone MT-40, an electronic musical keyboard, was launched on the consumer market in 1981 and discontinued roughly a year later. It was not a particularly powerful piece of gear; it came with 23 fixed timbres and six drum patterns, played on tinny electronic sounds. However, in 1985, one MT-40 ended up in Jamaica, in the hands of a young musician named Noel Davy, where its bass pads and one of its drum patterns ended up instrumental in spawning the new electronic style of reggae and dancehall.

Davy had picked up the MT-40 as a second choice, being unable to afford a Yamaha DX-7, and was playing around with the presets, settling on the "Rock" beat, slowing it down to a more languid pace and playing the ruggedly digital-sounding bass keys over it, when he started working with a reggae singer named Wayne Smith. Their collaboration, Under Mi Sleng Teng, became the turning point at which reggae moved away from its focus on live session musicians and towards more electronic sounds. The riddim (drum pattern and bassline) were copied for many other songs (as is standard practice in reggae) and crossing over into hip-hop and electronica, and consequently, the MT-40 and its Rock 1 beat attained a degree of influence comparable to the Amen Break or various pieces of Roland gear; unlike this gear, though, the MT-40 had been manufactured in large quantities for the home market, and secondhand units remained cheap enough to be a mainstay of garage bands through the 90s and beyond (as evident from that stereotype of DIY rock, the Casio keyboard on an ironing board).

Popular mythology says that the MT-40's Rock 1 beat was modelled, inaccurately, on Eddie Cochran's “Somethin' Else”, though its creator, Hiroko Okuda (who worked on the MT-40's presets immediately after graduating in musicology and joining Casio), says that this is not the case, saying only that it is from “a British rock record from the 1970s”.
posted by acb (23 comments total) 45 users marked this as a favorite
 
Great post! I wondered when reggae tipped from live bands to this "vintage" sounding electronic/synth backing. As noted in Redbull Music's history of the Dembow riddim/loop, these tracks have been re-processed and re-made a million times now, but their fingerprint is still there. Diplo re-processed Dembow in his mega-hit as/with Major Lazer and DJ Snake, "Lean On."
posted by filthy light thief at 8:43 PM on December 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


This is great. Thanks for posting.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:54 PM on December 4, 2015


This is really interesting, thanks.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:57 PM on December 4, 2015


“a British rock record from the 1970s”.

Yes - Heart Of The Sunrise is the first thing that comes to mind with that context, but that might be a stretch.
posted by alikins at 11:12 PM on December 4, 2015


I'm not musical enough to know if it's a casiotone in Casiotone for the Painfully Alone.
posted by esprit de l'escalier at 12:32 AM on December 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


This is one of those post that I read and end up falling into a endless youtube chain of video and come to my senses at one in the morning wondering how I ended up is some sub niche corner of the internet listening to Frankie Paul doing dubplates. Thanks.
posted by jade east at 12:56 AM on December 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


I started a Sleng Teng Riddim FPP a while back but got sucked down a Youtube rabbit hole and never finished it. Great work, acb!

Digging up my old draft though, here are a few more links:
Sleng Teng Riddim Mix blending many of the Jammy's singles that reused the riddim
• A few standout Sleng Teng Riddim tracks: Tenor Saw - Pumpkin Belly, Johnny Osbourne - Buddy Bye, John Wayne - Call The Police (Soundmurderer later did a great Jungle rework of this)
• Fairly recent audio interview with King Jammy about the birth of Sleng Teng
• Comprehensive index of tracks that have used the riddim over the years
• A great excerpt from this book recounting the legendary soundclash where Under Mi Sleng Teng was first dropped.
posted by p3t3 at 2:56 AM on December 5, 2015 [3 favorites]


Oops - That King Jammy interview link is totally dead (and it was a real audio file!), found at least part of it archived here.
posted by p3t3 at 3:21 AM on December 5, 2015


What a great post! I had no idea, and I love things like that.

Might be worth an AskMefi to have a go at chasing down the original song? Although it may be a mischievous joke by Hiroko Okuda, it is disturbingly familiar.

The trouble is, there's an awful lot of music with elements of that rhythm. The one that was scratching around on the edge of memory for me turned out to be Nick Nicely's DCT Dreams, but that's wrong for every reason (still worth listening to, though!).

And I had no idea the MT-40 had become so iconic and so ridiculously modded (although I want that, of course). I did spend quite a bit of my younger hours fiddling with (and bending) a VL-Tone and a larger MT-40-like Casio, the model number of which I forget. You can get all sorts of oddnesses out of them without too much work... (multitracking the VL-Tone's pseudo-white noise 'cymbal' makes for some very satisfying phasing effects). I've got a bit of analogue stuff now, and this is inspiring me to get one of those older keyboards and start mucking around some more.
posted by Devonian at 5:08 AM on December 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


My guess for the source is "Stone Cold Crazy", by Queen, when they were a metal band.

posted by Steakfrites at 6:33 AM on December 5, 2015


Long ago I made a post on the Yakety Sax (or "Benny Hill theme") riddim.
posted by escabeche at 6:46 AM on December 5, 2015


My favorite dancehall era--great post.
posted by box at 7:56 AM on December 5, 2015


... was playing around with the presets, settling on the "Rock" beat, slowing it down to a more languid pace and playing the ruggedly digital-sounding bass keys over it

I was doing this just yesterday, with only a few differences: it was a CT-640, the ‘Pops 1’ beat, and absolutely no one is going to be talking about what I played 30 years from now. Or ever.

p.s. I saw Casiotone for the Painfully Alone when he passed through town a few weeks ago. CftPO is no more; he’s now calling himself Advance Base.
posted by LeLiLo at 8:56 AM on December 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


I have one of those, purchased new, back, back in time. Another guy and I were playing around with it and, on impulse, I ran the output through some MXR guitar pedals I had around (micro amp, dynacomp, distortion+, micro chorus, micro flanger (my Jerry Garcia Special effects setup)), and into a small keyboard amp. The sound went from cheese to ASTOUNDING! Whatever the nature is of the sound chip inside, guitar pedals allowed it to blossom into something exceedingly musical, something not needing any apologies for in a recording studio (except for the little-kid plasticy look and feel).
posted by Chitownfats at 9:03 AM on December 5, 2015


Those old Casios can totally rock. They actually are very simple analog synths, not sample based and can make some great noises. I frequently use a Casio MT65/68 live through various pedals (including a H&K Rotosphere leslie sim) and a guitar amp. It's an awesome awesome thing... The pipe organ sounds like a Farfisa, the cello sounds like you want Juno strings to sound. With a volume pedal and some dirt and delays etc you can totally make compelling and amazing music through it. They rock like a motherfucker when you get some overdrive and volume on them. That and a Fender Rhodes were my main axe for the last 8 years and I couldn't have been be happier.

My Rhodes was starting to suffer from road abuse (and seemed to get heavier as time went) on so I've recently changed my live setup to a Nord C1 for organs through the same pedal chain and I'm using a cheap windows 8 laptop running Usine Hollyhock as a touchscreen host so I can use the top manual for my organs and the bottom manual running GSI MrRay73 for Rhodes and this free Casio MT68 sample set when I need my Casio.

(Slight OT PS... I'm not really sure why using touchscreen Windows 8/10 laptops for making live music isn't more of a thing! It's easy to pick up cheap ones that are just as powerful as an iPad, pretty much the same weight/size but you get all the flexibility of using 'real' plugins only you get to touch the knobs. As a host Hollyhock is fully usable in demo (you only get 4 channels but you can still do loads with that for live performance) and you can build your own touchscreen interface. Like, I know Windows 8 and all that but it's totally working for me... I find them so much more useful for productivity applications as well with a proper keyboard etc and 2 usb ports. Obviously an iPad is more tidy and there are some super instruments (Animoog is a particularly good example) but you get loads more flexibility inside a real computer...)
posted by Mr Ed at 10:18 AM on December 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


Holy crap, I think I have one of MT-40s in storage somewhere. I loved to play that as a kid. My father hated the drum machine. Probably only because I couldn't play that thing worth a damn, rhythm mode or not.
posted by wwwwolf at 2:09 PM on December 5, 2015


They actually are very simple analog synths, not sample based and can make some great noises.

They are not analog synths. They're digital synths. The non-involvement of pre-recorded samples does not make them analog.

They use Casio's "phase distortion" digital synth technology which is basically FM but just different enough to not run into legal problems with Yamaha who owned the FM patents.
My weird 80s band 'Solid Space' made use of an MT-30, which was the model without a drum machine, and the one I have still works like new. Wish my EDP Wasp had been built half as well.
posted by w0mbat at 5:03 PM on December 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


My favorite dancehall era--great post.

Same here. There is definitely some raw energy in the early first digital wave of dancehall that sort of parallels the first drum machine driven house music that was sweeping through underground disco clubs in NY/Chicago around the same time. The fact that there were no common conventions yet for digital/electronic music made it a fun and exploratory time for music.

Listening now is also a refreshing change from modern electronica, much the same way that chiptunes and 8-bit made a bit of a retro revival by getting back to a simpler sound. Later dancehall got a lot faster and aggressive; the early stuff was more similar to reggae in the overall tempo and groove.

One of my favorite new retro-reggae labels is Jahtari, which started off around 2005 combining dub reggae and chiptune, but has since broadened their sound sometimes getting back to early digital dancehall sounds, and also distributing a few smaller labels. And all of this is coming out of Leipzig of all places!
posted by p3t3 at 9:59 PM on December 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


Actually I'm wrong about the early MT & CT Casiotones using Phase Distortion. That was later Casio products. The early ones used Vowel Consonant Synthesis but they are still very much digital. Just listen for the horrible quantization noise in the output.
posted by w0mbat at 3:36 PM on December 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


Are there more details on Casio's Vowel Consonant Synthesis implementation? Has anybody reimplemented it in software (in a VST plugin/a Max/MSP patch/similar)?

Also, how are the drum sounds on the MT-40 and similar produced? Are they just low-bit-rate samples, or some kind of oscillator/filter/envelope arrangement?

(Some speculation: the major economic constraint at the time would have been the price of computer memory, so presumably any “samples” would have been measured in bytes rather than kilobytes; possibly with considerably fewer than 8 bits per sample. So perhaps the digital oscillator waveform looks like, say, 16 4-bit samples, crudely approximating the timbre of an instrument.)
posted by acb at 5:47 PM on December 6, 2015


Was just going to reply (and correct myself!) that the early MT's use Vowel Consonant synthesis. I've seen it described as semi analog. The waveforms are produced digitally but the rest of the signal chain is analog (it passes through an analog low pass filter). There's info here on the excellent TableHooters site. Wikipedia describes Vowel-Constonant as:

"Vowel–consonant synthesis is a type of hybrid digital–analogue synthesis employed by the early Casiotone keyboards. It employs two digital waveforms, which are mixed and filtered by a static lowpass filter, with different filter positions selected for use according to presets. The filters are modeled on the frequencies present in the human vocal tract, hence the name given by Casio technicians during the research and development process."

Some of the machines use what is after refered to as analog drums but I believe it is a similar digital/analog hybrid. Every machine is slightly different in it's implementation! There's some great info here in this history of Casio keyboards and on the TableHooters site which has a LOT of info on various old home keyboards.

Another favourite of mine is the Yamaha PSS380/390 . I describe it as half a DX7 with sliders but designed by a crazy person. Capable of some great noises....
posted by Mr Ed at 4:45 AM on December 7, 2015


Just listen for the horrible quantization noise in the output.

Yes! Just listen to it! When you put that through some form of clipping or overdrive, it gets really interesting - crunchy doesn't begin to describe it. With all that rich, glitchy harmonic content, there's lots more you can do to it after that. And, as I said, if you multitrack this stuff you can get real surprises.

That's before you get inside the box with a soldering iron. I think that for a certain class of fun, a cheap secondhand Casiotone of this vintage is unbeatable at the price.
posted by Devonian at 6:54 AM on December 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


They use Casio's "phase distortion" digital synth technology which is basically FM but just different enough to not run into legal problems with Yamaha who owned the FM patents.

That was the CZ line, which was excellent. Every self-respecting synth nerd should have a CZ-101.
posted by Sys Rq at 2:10 PM on December 8, 2015


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