After months of slogging through Tu2's piano roll editor and formulating the keyboard parts mostly through trial and error, we finally got ourselves a real keyboard! Amazing, I know. It's a Casio WK 1300. We bought it used - the model is out of production now. It cost only $170 and included the stand, AC adapter, and gig bag. The WK 1300 is (was) one of Casio's high end models. It actually has far more features than I suspected it did. It has a synth programmer, loads of built-in sounds, reverb, drum machine, pitch bend, touch response, MIDI - loads of good stuff. It's nowhere near as powerful as a Korg or Roland professional synth, but it will work for our purposes. Mainly, we want to use it to sound out melodies (which we'll then transcribe in the piano roll editor) and maybe record it for some lead synth parts. The preset sounds are actually pretty good, so I won't mind using them (after requisite application of distortion, filters, and delay).

Gish is very excited and is learning to play as we speak. I've just finished goofing around on it for about 2 hours. It doesn't have a manual, so I'm trying to figure out all the functions (especially the song memory, which is killing me).

Who knows how much we'll actually end up using the thing. But it's good to have one (finally). And if worse comes to worse, we'll at least be able to use it as a MIDI controller. So enough carrying on. Listen for the Casio's appearance in a song sometime in the near or distant future.

- sohei