I was a teenager when I first found it, tucked away in the basement, buried among the misfit toys and forgotten junk of my siblings’ and my childhood. Between broken plastic baseball bats, cabbage patch kid with torn clothes, and a Lite-Brite that hadn’t lit up in years, there it was: a dusty old Casio keyboard. Just sitting there like it had been waiting for someone to take it seriously. I didn’t know it then, but that little keyboard would change the way I thought about music forever. It wasn’t fancy. It had speakers built into the plastic frame, buttons labeled “bossa nova” and “waltz,” and a horn sound that definitely wasn’t a horn. But it was everything to me. Because for the first time, I could hear strings, timpani, maracas, and bells come out of something I was playing. It made me feel like a composer, not just a kid trying to be in a band.
That’s the thing about Casio and Yamaha keyboards, especially the small, consumer ones from the late ’80s and ’90s. They were marketed as toys. But to anyone with imagination, they were golden tickets to an orchestra of sound.
And that’s just one thing we talk about on the latest episode of Discograffiti Patreon only Podcast... Don’t Bother Wearing Seatbelts. Oliver Domingo of Organically Programmed, sat down and talked to Rudy Fischmann Mathew Bell and I. Like me, he grew up on Casios. Like me, he learned how to build songs layer by layer, track by track, sound by sound.. not because we had access to a studio full of musicians, but because we had the illusion of one inside these plastic boxes.
Some kids learn music through formal lessons. Some learn it on stage with a band. Others of us? We learn it by stacking trumpet sounds over drum presets over synthetic strings and slowly, patiently, building a bedroom Wall of Sound. That same spirit.. channeling George Martin arranging for The Beatles, or Quincy Jones conducting Michael’s next masterpiece.. can live inside your teenage bedroom if you’ve got a keyboard and a Tascam 4-track or a computer.
Even now, decades later, I find myself reaching for those old Yamahas and Casios. Not because they're the most realistic instruments. But because they guide the song. When I sit at a keyboard, it doesn’t feel like I have to write the song first. The instrument suggests something. It offers possibilities. And if you follow those sounds long enough, you end up with something symphonic.. even if it’s made with buttons labeled “harp” and “tuba” that sound nothing like either.
When I moved to Ames, in 1999 I really wanted to make a Rock Opera with my friends. Those little keyboards gave me the illusion that those dreams were possible. If I can't find a cello player, no worries this button says, "cello." The music I made at 19 wasn’t polished, but it was ambitious. Sometimes even Grand. Romantic in its scale, if not in its execution. And a lot of it came from these keyboards and all those friends I made with similar ambitions . These are entry-level machines that open the door to thinking bigger, the impossible is possible tonight! Because buried inside those tiny speakers and preset rhythms is something truly powerful: the belief that you can compose music.
And you can.
Listen to the episode with Organically Programmed and hear how this young musician is creating music far beyond his years.. the symphony is real, the sounds are dense and beautiful, and the magic and excitement of those Casios lives on in every note.
Big thanks to Dave Gebroe for creating Discograffiti Join the patreon and listen to this episode and hundreds more here..
By Patrick Tape Fleming