Keyboards/Synthesisers: Casio WK-3500 Keyboard

When NZ Musician dropped off the Casio WK-3500 to my home in Mt Eden I wondered if I had been delivered veteran promoter Johnny Leech's surfboard by accident.

I currently own a very small Casiotone which I picked up for $2 at a garage sale. To my surprise, its pre-set demo song was "Wake me up, before you go go" by Wham (oh how we danced!). Needless to say, at $1495 the WK-3500 is a bit of a step up in size and quality.

The keyboard looks like something out of futuristic '80s classic 'Tron', and measures 125 cm long with a depth of about 40 cm, similar in size to those life-saving buoyancy devices on Baywatch. I got this image of myself standing before a cheering crowd on a sun-kissed beach, with six tall amazonian goddesses running in slow motion toward me carrying glistening silver keyboards. I swung toward them on my rotating hydraulic platform and then... I realised I had to stop drowning in my own delusions and get on with this review.

Time to switch on. The keyboard has six octaves, non-weighted action and a backlit LCD digital display panel in the centre. Modulation and tone wheels are located on the left, so it's a relatively standard format. To the right is a built in floppy disc drive for storing songs and other data.

Clearly this keyboard is more designed for use in a home or studio environment, it's not really a performers' instrument since it comes with its own built-in 6W speakers, although it has a range of line out options. It can also be run on batteries (six D-size), for the keyboardist on the go. The rear panel has a phones jack, RCA AUX line in and out ,with a sustain pedal input and MIDI connections also.

Despite its slightly bulky appearance it is surprisingly light, so could certainly prove an attractive proposition for keyboardists wanting to add a conveniently carried instrument to their live rig. Or maybe some hi-fidelity busking down Courteney Place in Wellington. I got a kind of Barry Manilow-esque version of Keep On Pushing by The Black Seeds, after toying with the reggae drum loops.

For the serious musician though, I think that the main benefit of this Casio would be as a composing tool. The WK-3500 has 516 tones ranging from reasonably good quality pianos to brass, strings, synth sounds and the usual range of percussion and drum kits.

I particularly liked some of the organ tones which feature nine digital drawbars to whistle, hum and squeal in whatever order you prefer. After a brief period of experimenting, the WK-3500 proved easy to navigate. The comprehensive digital display has a tone and rhythm indicator, a chord name display (which names the chords the auto accompaniment is using), and a staff notation area.

The staff notation shows the notes you play on the keyboard, as well as notes played back from song memory and received MIDI data. The built-in metronome is great too and could help with ensemble playing or if you are learning other instruments. The display keeps an overview of everything from the tones and effects you use, to the notes played, which as well as appearing on the fore-mentioned staff notation area, are set out on the graphic keyboard.

I enjoyed playing with the pre-set drum patterns and auto accompaniment and this keyboard allows you to adjust and customise parameters to your taste.

Soon it was like having my own band. I started thinking how easy it would be to go it alone. No more picking up bits of my broken teeth after bitter band room brawls. I'm riding this silver stallion all the way to Vietnam, to a job in a hotel bar playing Kiss covers wielding this keyboard strapped up like a guitar. All I need is a tongue extension and some gun powder.

The Casio's sound quality overall is good and the WK-3500 would probably be particularly useful in schools, playing with a group of students or a jazz band. You get quite a lot of volume out of the keyboard, although the speakers seem to distort slightly when using some of the more driven organ tones.

The WK-3500 also has flash memory, so you can download tones and rhythms from Casio's website and store them along with your compositions for playback. Also featured is a range of effects like reverb, chorus etc and the parameters of each effect can be changed and then run through the five-band graphic equaliser which is also built-in.

The WK-3500 has General MIDI compatibility which could be connected to a personal computer as a sound source or input device. And along with the SmartMedia card slot allows you to transfer data from a computer and recall it when you need it.

Overall this keyboard has a number of applications for an educational institution or a group music class, is obviously ideal for home use and as an aid in composition. I also thought it would work well in a small church, both for traditional organ accompaniment or a funk reworking of We Will Build Jerusalem.

Although it wouldn't fit in with the kind of keyboards I use, the Casio WK-3500 is a useful beastie and could be a nice tone generator for a small home studio. I certainly had fun with it.

Matthias Jordan plays keyboard for Auckland band Pluto who are currently working on a follow up to their 2001 debut album.