Casio Mini-keyboards Information

Introduction - The Manual

Recently I have been playing around with the very cheap Casio SA50 mini keyboard.



A nice instrument, and some sounds are excellent when played though an amplifier. Fun to use with a looper if you have one! Anyway, I've found out a few things, and I will explain them here, along with images where useful. It should also be useful for other Casio minis.

The manual is physically very small, not so easy to print larger, so I have enlarged it here with each small page expanded to A4 size. You can download as an image, or with the image in a pdf file. On a phone, the pdf might be easier to print.

One very useful image is the long list of 100 tones (instruments), rhythms, and beats (drum sounds), and in my expanded version, it fills 2 A4 sheets. Useful for annotating as you explore sounds.

SA50 user guide from the Casio site - pdf
and the expanded pages from me:
Tones - part 1 - image or pdf
Tones - part 2 - image or pdf
Here are the other pages, each on a single A4:
Getting Ready as image or pdf
Reference as image or pdf
General guide as image or pdf
Beats as image or pdf
Speed as image or pdf
Pitch as image or pdf

Now, some extra info.

Octaves

The Octave buttons can take you up 1 and down 1, hence 3 octaves for each key. The octave setting is NOT remembered when you switch between tones. The current octave shift is not displayed, so to get back to a non-shifted position, press e.g. + + -

Percussion

There are 56 of them, and a particular note plays one. But there are only 33 notes on they keyboard, so you have to use the octave buttons in many cases. (The shortcut Drums button takes you to a drum keyboard from F3 to C6).
The number after a note is a standard octave number, where middle C is called C4.

As an octave example, the F2-pitched key selects Synth Kick, F3 selects kick 1, F4 selects Vibraslap, and F5, F6 select other effects.
Playing the keyboard back through a better sound system (even a small speaker) is worth trying, and some percussion sounds are quite good. It uses a headphone jack for connection, not Bluetooth.

Selecting Percussion

When you look at the keyboard, which F is F5? (Come on, quickly now!).Tricky! So I use some stickers next to each note (e.g. D5, E5, F5 etc). Here is a photo of my keyboard:



and here is an A4 image with strips of paper to stick on with tape ( as image or as pdf )
Refer to the percussion list for note/percussion table.

Reverb

The reverb is quite mild, and has no controls - only on or off. When you set it on, it stays on, even if you switch instruments. Hard to hear if it is on or off, which is probably a good thing.

Selecting Tones

For me, the writing on the numeric instrument selection buttons is tiny, so I used a marker pen. There are also some shortcut buttons to take you to Piano - 0, trumpet - 50, and a limited drum keyboard - 99 (see above). I'm not so interested in trumpet sounds, so I wrote '50' on the button. The +/- buttons let you work through a section (e.g. synth tones) easily.

Playing a Mini vs Piano

The smaller keys mean that some chords where the notes are squashed together might be tricky to finger properly. The 33 keys mean that your left hand (for example) can't find the right bass notes. So in both these cases, you might have to consider an alternative key and/or inversions. If you are playing single notes only, there is no particular problem.
Good Luck!