![]() During the 1980s, toward the end of the synth guitar debacle, Casio introduced a number of very interesting guitars. If you’re young you might not know that there were ever anything other than digital watches and you probably don’t know what a calculator is because all that is done for you on your phone.Īnyhow, Casio got into the synthesizer business with a whole range of keyboard synths that ranged from novelty small consumer-electronics keyboards with a few pre-programmed sounds (“piano,” “saxophone,” etc.) to fully professional units. If you’re close to my age you knew Casio as the major purveyor of digital watches and calculators. Nevertheless, I thought I might be seduced by the dark side and picked up interesting guitar MIDI gear whenever it came my way, including this Casio MG-500 MIDI Guitar. As for coordinating between multiple synthesizer machines, that was way beyond my pay grade. I played around a little with the Roland gear, which was OK because the converters had tone generating filters built in, so you could get weird squeaky tones, but I never knew what to use them for. I tried, but I never really got guitar MIDI technology. The Roland GR-500 of 1978 was the first such attempt, a nice Ibanez-Musician-style guitar made by Fujigen Gakki with Roland synth controls that plugged into a large console that converted the analog signal into MIDI signals that then activated tone generators on the console and any external synthesizer machines connected to it.Īs you might be guessing from my explanation of MIDI above, I’m part of that generation that started out writing on typewriters and had to trade them in for a computer keyboard. One approach to answering the problem was the synthesizer industry (if you can call it that) itself: put synth controller electronics into guitars. We know that didn’t happen, of course, but it was a frightening period for guitar fanatics. The guitar press began to get worried and doom-sayers predicted the demise of the guitar. Don a sequined costume and dance the night away to music based on the lush orchestration and insistent groove of keyboard synthesizers. At least they were still playing guitars! On the other side was the disco crowd. For those who wanted to be a rock star but didn’t want to bother honing chops there was punk. In terms of guitar playing, two anti-guitar factions emerged. Hard rock had ruled the roost in the early ‘70s, but what had been a fairly monolithic music industry began to show signs of fracturing. But yes it’s true – they did have a go at guitar manufacturing, and guest blogger Michael Wright tells us more about the Casio MG-500 MIDI Guitar!īack in the mid-1970s guitar players got a bad scare from Disco. Not a name you’d expect to find on a guitar’s headstock. ![]()
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