I hope today’s post will help liturgical musicians who want to play the Casio CT-S1000V and CT-S500 at church services. I invested a fair amount of effort building patches and registrations which fit contemporary and traditional church music. The sounds would also be compatible with soft pop and gospel-tinged genres, too.

I’ve gig-tested there sounds, having played them at services. So, if you would like to try them yourself, please download the ZIP file. The ZIP contains six CT-S registration files:

1. RegBank01.RBK: Woodwinds
2. RegBank02.RBK: Strings
3. RegBank03.RBK: Horns / Brass
4. RegBank04.RBK: Drawbar organs
5. RegBank05.RBK: Pipe organs
6. RegBank06.RBK: Miscellaneous

The sixth bank is a work in progress. The first five banks cover most of my needs, but there are always a few miscellaneous sounds that pop up.

Each CT-S1000V and CT-S500 registration has four slots (patches). The following table summarizes the registration and patch layout.

       1              2              3              4 
       -------------- -------------- -------------- -------------- 
Bank 1 Horn+Wood      Flute+Cla      Wood Sect      ChamberWinds 
Bank 2 MellowStrings  StereoStrings  SoloViolin     ChamberStrings 
Bank 3 FrenchHorns    NobleHorns     HighSchool     Tp + Tb 
Bank 4 MellowGospel   SoftGospel     BrightChurch   Simmering 
Bank 5 Pipe Organ 3   Chapel Organ   Organ Flute    Bandoneon 
Bank 6 SoftPad        VoiceEnsemble  StageE.Piano   StageE.Piano Trem

I usually pre-select a bank and patch before each musical piece. Then I switch to a different patch within the same bank in order to add a different color. I wish it was a little easier to change registration bank on the fly. Maybe I’ll get better with practice.

Patch details

The CT-S patches are based on combinations which I used on old Roland JV- and XV- series gear. The following tables show the CT-S tones in each patch and the level for each tone. You’re welcome to tweak the levels using the BALANCE menu.

Woodwinds      Upper1            Upper2             Lower           
               ----------------  -----------------  ----------------
Horn+Wood      English Horn 100  Fr.Horn Sect  110  Mellow Str.2 127
Flute+Cla      Flute 1      100  VeloClarinet  100  Mellow Str.2 127
Wood Sect      Flute & Oboe 100  VeloClarinet  100  Mellow Str.2 127
ChamberWinds   Flute & Oboe  95  VeloSopranoSax 85  Mellow Str.2 127

Strings        Upper1            Upper2             Lower           
               ----------------  -----------------  ----------------
MellowStrings  SlowStreoStr 100  Warm Pad      120                  
StereoStrings  SlowStreoStr 120                                     
SoloViolin     Slow Violin   75                     Mellow Str.2  90
ChamberStrings Chamber      100                                     

Brass          Upper1            Upper2             Lower           
               ----------------  -----------------  ----------------
FrenchHorns    French Horn  100  Fr.Horn Sect   80                  
NobleHorns     Fr.Horn Sect 100  Flugelhorn     80                  
HighSchool     Clarinet     100  Glockenspiel   80  French Horn   80
Tp + Tb        Flugelhorn   100  Trombone       80  Tuba          80

B-3 Organ      Upper1            Upper2             Lower           
               ----------------  -----------------  ----------------
MellowGospel   GospelOrgan2 127                     Organ Bass   100
SoftGospel     Rock Organ 2 127                     Organ Bass   110
BrightChurch   Elec.Organ 1 100                     Organ Bass   127
Simmering      Elec.Organ 6 110                     Organ Bass   127

Pipe Organ     Upper1            Upper2             Lower           
               ----------------  -----------------  ----------------
Pipe Organ 3   Pipe Organ 3 100                                     
Chapel Organ   Chapel Organ 100                                     
Organ Flute    Organ Flute  120                                     
Bandoneon      Bandoneon    120                                     

Pads           Upper1            Upper2             Lower           
               ----------------  -----------------  ----------------
SoftPad        Soft Pad     127                                     
VoiceEnsemble  VoiceEnsembl 120                                     

I dialed down the reverb in all cases and settled on the ROOM2 reverb type. These patches are intended for live playing in a reverberant church hall, so additional reverb is unnecessary. You might find the pipe organ patches to be waaay dry when compared with the factory tones. I removed the initial reflections and delay which create the impression of a large space — totally unwanted in a live church.

I added 3-band EQ (ACTIVE DSP) to the woodwind patches to add warmth and to reduce harshness. Feel free to tweak away!

For string patches, Knob 1 and 2 are assigned to attack time and release time, respectively. I had to decrease the release time to reduce a simulated reverb tail. Knob 3 is usually modulation.

For drawbar organ patches, Knob 1 is rotary speaker speed, Knob 2 is scanner vibrato/chorus and Knob 3 is rotary speaker brake. Drive Rotary (ACTIVE DSP) is enabled with ACTIVE DSP HOLD. Here are the Drive Rotary DSP parameters:

                                       BrightChurch 
    Param    MellowGospel  SoftGospel    Simmering 
    -------  ------------  ----------  ------------ 
    Type            2            2            2 
    OD Gain        30           42           42 
    OD Level       30           42           42 
    Speed        SLOW         SLOW         SLOW 
    Brake      ROTATE       ROTATE       ROTATE 
    FallAcel       35           35           20 
    RiseAcel       40           40           35 
    SlowRate       45           45           65 
    FastRate       95           95          100 
    Vib/Cho       OFF          OFF          OFF 
    WetLevel      100          110          110 
    DryLevel        0            0            0 
    Bypass        OFF          OFF          OFF 

I programmed Organ Bass in the left hand because I didn’t care for the sound of the rotary speaker on notes below middle C (or so). Drive Rotary does not have a parameter for the horn/rotor balance — maybe that would help.

I hope these patches help you to get started with your own registrations!

Copyright © 2022 Paul J. Drongowski

A few new Casio CT-1000V tips and observations. Hope they’re helpful.

Portamento

The CT-S1000V (CT-S500) has portamento. Control over portamento is quite flexible. Be prepared to experiment, however, as the interaction between portamento settings is not immediately obvious. Unfortunately, the User Guide is not super helpful as it refers to several terms with “portamento” in the name, e.g., “Upper Portamento,” “Part Portamento”, etc.

All of these tips apply to the CT-S500, too.

There are two different ways to access portameto-related settings: through the MENU button and through the Settings sub-menu.

The MENU parameters allow the following adjustments:

• UPPER PORT: Turn on Upper Portamento.
• PART PORT: Turn on Part Portmento for each part (Upper1, Upper2, Lower).
• TIME: Change portamento time for Upper1, Upper2 and Lower, individually. Each part has its own time.

When Upper Portamento is enabled, you can enable/disable portamento on the Upper part using a front panel button.

Ah, so which panel button is that? If you press the INSTRUMENT button, the CT-S1000V displays five soft buttons: SPLIT, LAYER, TOUCH, SUS and ARP. The SUS button controls sustain. If you want to control Upper Portamento instead, dive into the Settings sub-menu and scross to “SUS/UPPER PORT button”. Change the value from “SUS” to “UPPER PORT”. Now the INSTRUMENT button shows “UPPER PORT” instead of “SUS”. Pressing the “UPPER PORT” soft button applies portamento to the Upper part. This feature allows you to apply portamento selectively during a solo line.

I hope this brief overview helps when reading the User Guide. I recommend reading the fine print about Upper Portamento because Upper Portamento can override Part Portamento. (Surprise!)

Expression pedal

For some crazy reason, I didn’t hook up and configure an expression pedal on Day 1. In retrospect, one should probably tangle with pedal set-up early just in case pedal settings are saved in user memory locations like CT-S1000V registrations.

The User Guide gives good step-by-step directions concerning pedal set-up. The CT-S1000V is vendor agnostic, thankfully. I have three (!) Yamaha FC-7 pedals and didn’t want to buy another pedal. The CT-S1000V supports two TRS wiring schemes as shown in the diagrams below:

To make a long story short, the Yamaha FC-7 is polarity type 1. The FC-7 resistance is 50K ohms and be sure to go through the simple calibration steps in the User Guide. For reference, the FC-7 TRS signals are:

• Tip: Reference voltage
• Ring: Wiper
• Sleeve: Ground

You wouldn’t believe how many forum posts get this wrong!

Roland, Kurzweil and Fata are polarity type 2. The User Guide confirms operation for the Roland EV-5, Kurzweill CC-1, Fatar VP-25 and Fatar VP-26. Type 2 TRS signals are:

• Tip: Wiper
• Ring: Reference voltage
• Sleeve: Ground

The Roland FV-500L should work, too. Be aware that the EV-5 and FV-500L have a “minimum volume” potentiometer (variable resistor) in series with the main control potentiometer. Turn the minimum volume control to 0 before calibrating. The main control potentiometer resistance is 10K ohms; the minimum volume potentiometer resistance is 50K ohms.

Rant of the day: I have a nice, light-weight Boss EV-1-WL expression pedal. Wish I could use it with the CT-S1000V (and others). No device to device BLE, no 5-pin MIDI, no host compatibility. Arg.

Are pedal settings really stored?

I posted this question on the Casio Music Forums site. Even though the User Guide claims the pedal settings are stored in MY SETUP and registrations, I haven’t seen evidence. If you change the pedal settings and load a registration (or MY SETUP), the changed settings remain.

I hope that Casio will clarify.

Drawbar organ tones

As mentioned earlier, I pulled together a bank of drawbar organ registrations. I settled on the following tones:

    Gospel Organ 2    Mellow 
    Rock Organ 2      Mellow 
    Elec.Organ 1      Bright church-y for hymns 
    Elec.Organ 6      Simmerin' for grease 

In all four cases, I split the keyboard putting the “Organ Bass” tone in the left hand. I like the way Organ Bass holds down the low-end and doesn’t sound swirly. Split point is E4.

Movin’ on to pipe organs…

Copyright © 2022 Paul J. Drongowski