I played a synth gig last night and had to pull an audible. It was a short 20-minute set so I slimmed down my gear to two instruments, a recently acquired Casio keyboard (more on this in a moment), and my girlfriend's Minimoog Voyager, and my girlfriend played the theremin, making us a 2-piece band. We had rehearsed several times, and the set was a sort of "3 act" thing, starting with something hand-played and high energy, followed by a middle drone part, and finishing with a sequenced part.
Well, act 3 hits, I start the Korg SQ-1 sequencer up, and...nothing. The Casio was continuing the drone thanks to my usual drone method of shoving a piece of cardboard between the keys, and bandmate continued with the theremin, so I spent a few moments wiggling cables, but no luck. So time to sequence the old-fashioned way, with my fingers. I am not a good keyboard player, but I can manage a monosynth okay. I was running through a Boss Space Echo pedal, so I had to time my notes to get the dotted 8th note thing and it went well enough. I later found out I had plugged the SQ-1's gate signal into the wrong gate jack on the Voyager. You know how these multi-band shows go, you never have enough time to do a thorough double-check and zero sound check. But in the end we pulled it off.
About the Casio, it's an LK-S250, basically a modern version of the Casio keyboards we had in the 80s (I still have my brother's from then), but it sounds way better. Has 400 sounds, does a pretty good grand piano, has aftertouch and full-size keys, a teaching mode to try and make you learn Fur Elise, etc. Can run on batteries and has decent internal stereo speakers for portable use. I got it for free, my employer has a sort of rewards program for employees who don't suck, and I've been there for quite a few years now so I had amassed many points. They were going to switch to a new system so I had to cash them all in, and that's how I wound up with a badly-needed polyphonic keyboard that is dirt simple to use. It also weighs next to nothing, I think the plastic casing is the heaviest part of it. Probably a single tiny chip inside for sound. There's something to be said for something so simple and easy as a basic Casio.
That said, there is NOTHING like the sound of a Minimoog Voyager in the lower octave cranked up loud with the filter sweeping. Thing weighs a ton and your back hates it, but wow, what a glorious sound.
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