This seemingly worthless synth/calculator hybrid weighing in at under a pound has somehow found fame and fortune despite looking like a kid's toy. Its ultra cheesy sounds have been discovered and immortalized in the hit songs of such artists as Trio for "Da Da Da" and White Town. The Casio VL-1 or VL-Tone as it's also called has 29 little calculator-type button keys, five preset and one user memory patches, built-in rhythm machine (waltz, swing, rock, samba, etc.) and a 100-note sequencer. There is no chance at any external or MIDI control and there are no filters or effects. There is an LFO with vibrato and tremolo effects and an ADSR envelope.

The tinny monophonic blips and beeps that come out of the VL-1 provide a childishly funny accent to your music, if you're into that sort of thing. The VL-1 is analog, it's tiny, it has a built-in speaker and a useless built-in calculator. The synth itself is quite small, light-weight and portable when running on batteries. The keys are unreliable and cheap soft buttons with absolutely no natural feel, response, aftertouch or velocity. The VL-1 was succeeded by the VL-10 (same spec, smaller case) and VL-5 (4-note polyphonic version with a useless bar-code reader). Strangely, the simple cheesy sounds of the VL-Tone have been used by Apollo 440, Devo, the Talking Heads, the Cars, Dee-Lite, Sting, Stevie Wonder, Vince Clarke, Beastie Boys, The Human League, Trio, White Town, and Bill Nelson.

Cerasi

March 31, 2013 @ 3:37 am

VL-1 is everywhere, I just found it in Jakie Cane by Hooverphonic

Walter Ego

March 25, 2013 @ 12:39 pm

If you look at pictures of Minimal Wave artists who were making music in the early 80s, at least half of them have one of these in the pic with them. It was probably a gateway drug for harder synthesis for a lot of kids in the early 80s.

http://minimalwave.com/artists

earmonkey

February 24, 2013 @ 8:36 pm

Here is an example of what I am talking about with this thing running through the EMX: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7whGGUma4s

earmonkey

February 23, 2013 @ 9:56 am

The VS reviewer is missing out on this one (the hint should have been the list of bands that use it). I got one of these and it is a huge bang for the buck. Thirty bucks on eBay and a great little mono synth. So many synths these days let you run an audio source in so you CAN use external filters. I run it through my Korg EMX and can do automated filter sweeps while I play the Casio. Really fun and interesting. Lush it up with effects in Ableton or whatever you use, and it sounds really good. The ADSR mode is easy to pick up and is very useful for shaping new tones.

Analogue Crazy

January 17, 2013 @ 6:31 am

Just grabbed on off ebay and it's just as charming as i remember it! Take the time to learn the ADSR voice and this thing will give you some fantastic sounds. The VL has 10 waveforms (!), the last 3 being pitch modulated with LFO rate governed by the tempo buttons. And there are two sustain parameters, giving the sounds much more movement. This thing is a classic, grab one while they're still cheap!

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