EZ-VZ and The Casio VZ-1

Title link takes you to EZ-VZ, a resource site for the Casio VZ line of synths. You'll find the user and service manuals, the Powerplay VZ Book (picutured) and more. I actually have a VZ-1. I got frustrated with it today and went searching for the manual, which I almost never do. That's how I found this site. The VZ-1 is a Phase Distortion synth, similar to Yamaha's FM synthesis. It has eight source oscillators (sine, saw, and noise - multiple types of saw and noise) that you can have either act as a modulator for one of the other oscillators or a sound source, but not both. I had some spare time today and decided to just experiment with it. I rarely programmed the VZ-1 as I did not have a manual and every time I picked it up the interface held me back. Today I finally decided to give it a try and found it has one of the most horrendous design implementations in a synth. If you know of a worse one than this, feel free to comment.

So... It has up down value buttons and up down cursor buttons. Makes sense. You know how in most menu driven synths you select the group or page you want to edit followed by the cursor button to get to the desired parameter you want to edit followed by the value buttons to change the value? Well for some bizarre reason, on the VZ1 when you select the menu for the page you want to edit the value buttons let you flip through pages, and the cursor button does... nothing. Well it skips from page 1 to page 9, but what's the point of that? There is no way to get to the parameters to edit at this point. I spent about 30 minutes frustratingly trying to intuitively figure it out and finally gave up. I actually thought I might have corrupted the memory when I tried to us a PC editor with it. I finally went online and searched for the manual. It turns out, if you really, really want to edit the parameters, you have to select the menu again. WTF? The way it works is you select it once and at that point you can flip through the pages. When you get to the page you want to edit, you hit the same Menu button again and then you can use the cursor to move about the parameters for that page. To flip to the next page you have to back out of cursor mode by clicking on the same Menu button. When you get to the next page you want to edit, you have to click the Menu button again. Absolutely horrid and the most unintuitive design I have ever come across on a synth.

Once you get past this it does get a little better. There are buttons you can select to turn on and off the individual oscillators - one for each and there are buttons to select each osc for editing - figuring this out was a little tricky as well, but once I learned this it actually was easy and intuitive. Like any synth you just have to learn the interface, and unfortunately in some cases you actually have to crack open the manual. BTW, the VZ1, hands down, makes one of the most beautiful sine wave electric piano sounds. It's a bit more like a muted electric piano than a typical one. There's a certain depth to it that I have not heard on other synths. The eight oscillators running at the same time probably has something to do with it. The funny thing is this sound is actually the init patch sound on the VZ-1. Just add a little release and you are good to go. I'll be keeping my VZ1. For now...