Geartalk I (1986/1987/1988): Specdrum and the CASIO SK-5

Although I had been interested in making music, recording vocals and stuff, the first time I actually bought and used a musical device was this one. The Specdrum - this was a hardware addition for the ZX-Spectrum home computer that I had since 1985. My Specdrum was never as fancy as this one on the photo as the company in England that sent it to me (I had send them cash) obviously thought that for that bloody german, a used one without any packaging would be sufficiant. I could not complain legally, after all. Those were the times. 

Here is a nice demo-video for the Specdrum

Anyway I got it and immediately tried it and put it a away and forgot about it. I would like to recall that I had a plan, but I did not have one. 

Then I heard "This Corrosion", I learned, that there are "Samplers" out there, and in one of our computer magazines they had a feature on midi-synthezisers. So I learned that Casio was serious, but there was no way I could afford a CZ-101 (that was featured in the article), but further down, more in the toy section they had the SK-series of home-sampling keyboards. I bought a  SK-5 and immediately tried to samlple stuff and record with it. Then I remembered my trusty Specdrum and got serious with it .I recorded my first song with instruments on a tape deck: left for the vocals, right for the specdrum (it helped that it was in mono - as shown). 

That song was called "Dance the Ghost" and it is the first proper song I recorded. That was 1987. I still have it and have already reworked it for further exploration. 

Here is a video on Casio SK-5

Those were good instruments to try out stuff and learn the basics of playing a keyboard. I gave the SK-5 away in 1990 to some russian rock musician I had met on a night train to Sofia . Today they are used for modding and still have a value of about 100€ (compared to the 300DM I had to pay back then). The specdrum I sold in the early 2000s when I sold all my ZX-Spectrum stuff, I do not recall how much I got for it, it must have been around 20€ (I think I paid around 70DM to obtain it). 

I tend to usually stick to a manufacturer so I later tried to buy stuff from the Specdrum's producer, a company called CHEETAH. They had numerous analogue synthezisers to offer, but could not get them to Germany via a distributor and after my not-so-good experience with buying from there, I decided not to buy one from England. They were at the Frankfurt Mursikmesse, though, once, but at that point of time their gear had become outdated.

As the CZ-101 still was my dream-machine, in 1989 I decided to buy a bought CZ-1 that had been on offer in our local pages. But that is another story.