casio ct-s1000v Team Test: Casio CT-S1000V Arranger Keyboard with AiX Vocal Synthesis

[D. Gauss]

4 hours ago, RandyFF said:

 Using BT MIDI, transmitted from the WU-BT10 adapter that came with the board, I’m noticing enough latency to use instead USB MIDI to my iPad.  

 

With other boards that have wireless MIDI, I’ve so far found little to no noticeable latency, so it’s surprising and disappointing that the Wireless MIDI from their adapter effectively doesn’t work.  The latency is not as bad as BT audio, I’d guess it’s 20-30 ms of latency, just bad enough to be annoying.

 

 

fwiw, i don't find that to be the case here. casio>bluetooth>ipad min 6>GSI VB3 seems to work fine.  however, i DID have a weird issue a coupla times where it had crazy looong latency, but reconnecting and resetting everything made it revert to normal so i assume it was things just not playing nice together as they should.

[D. Gauss]

1 hour ago, RandyFF said:

 

The other disappointment has been that the 64 Registrations weren’t filled with excellent factory examples of Splits and Layers. 

 

 

The real head scratching, face palming, WTF disappointment is you cannot name the registrations. Jeez Casio!

[Anderton]

It's All About the Cable...

 

If you look around the net, you'll find complaints that the CT-1000V won't connect to the user's smartphone. But then you'll also read plenty of comments that it works fine. Others report intermittent connection problems. 

 

At first, I simply could not get the connection to happen with either Android or iPhone. Long story short, I grabbed every compatible cable I had in the house - 14 total - and settled down for some serious testing. Here are the factors that cause connection problems:

 

• Some cables are just plain cheap. If it can't charge your smartphone, throw it out.
• Some USB cables are for charging only, and do not carry data. These are the cables that come with consumer devices like a rechargeable flashlight, which of course doesn't have any data involved.
• Check for physical compatibility. One cable had a large plastic sleeve around the male connector, and it couldn't make good contact with the Casio's female jack, which is recessed somewhat behind the chassis as opposed to being flush with the surface (unlike some smartphones). The incompatible cable was designed for a smartphone, and the extra plastic around it made for a tight physical connection. But, it couldn't connect with the CT-S1000V.
• Hey, it's USB. Sometimes you need to unplug and plug the connector. As I continue with the review, there may be some particular reason why this happens - like the CT-S1000V has to be turned on before you connect the smartphone, or turned off, or the phone has to be in a particular state, or whatever. If I find something repeatable, I'll mention it. Or, as with other USB issues, it could relate to the phase of the moon.

 

Given how people complain about connection issues, it might be worth it for Casio to offer aftermarket cables to users. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be economically feasible to include a cable that covers all possibilities with the CT-S1000V, because there would need to be cables for Apple Lightning, USB micro B, USB C, and maybe even USB A if using a Camera Kit is the way to go with iPhones (some people on the web say that only the official Apple one works reliably). If offering an aftermarket option isn't feasible, then in the Connection Guide, perhaps Casio could list some approved cables.

 

Anyway, once I got everything working it was possible to transfer a test lyric file to the CT-S1000V and I have to say, it was pretty cool to play the phrase back from a keyboard! So, now it's time to dig into the Lyric Creator software and see what this baby can do.

 

 

[pjd]

29 minutes ago, Anderton said:

It's All About the Cable...

 

Here are the factors that cause connection problems:

 

 

 

 

Amen! I run into all of these problems even when I'm 100% non-Casio. 😀 Combined with occasional  asymmetry issues (A when I need B), I pine for the simplicity, symmetry and reliability of good ole 5-pin. Just had to re-plug everything into my iPad because sometimes it's all recognized, sometimes it's not.

 

And, yes, I keep my working notes in good ole ASCII. 😁

 

Have a super weekend (literally) -- pj

 

[Dave Bryce]

54 minutes ago, pjd said:

Have a super weekend (literally) --

 

 

 

dB

[Anderton]

Success! So, here's how it works. I tried the process with both Android and iPhone. The process is very slightly different with the two platforms, but they both worked as expected, and there were no problems with the transfer. I decided to keep going with the iPhone for now, because the Android has an SD card with as ton of memory (like the iPhone, uh, doesn't). This required an extra step to transfer to the CT-S1000V instead of the default SD card memory. 

 

 

(left image) First, you enter the lyrics. When done, the app will try to parse the syllables, and it does a pretty good job. Each syllable is assigned an eighth note initially, but you can alter this by a long press on the note, and selecting the note value. You can also edit the default syllables, as well as replace letters with phonemes if they more accurately represent the sound you want.

 

(middle image) When you're ready to hear what the speech sounds like in the CT-S1000V, you tap on the three dots in the upper right. That brings up a menu for performing various functions. In this case, Transfer is what's needed.

 

(right image) After tapping Transfer, a screen shows up where you can choose a Preset number for the destination, and a Vocalist. The Attack Balance parameter is set to a default that optimizes playing individual syllables as notes instead of an entire phrase. We'll get into this aspect later.

 

At this point, a screen appears that specifies the transfer destination.

 

 

(left image) You can save the Lyric file to a variety of places, but in this case, I wanted to play it from the keyboard. Who wouldn't, right?

 

(right image) The transfer doesn't take long, and then you're rewarded with a confirmation screen. 

 

Let's listen to the results of my handiwork. Of course, the intelligibility has that typical "machine" sound, but I suspect that's what a lot of people would want from the CT-SV1000S anyway. If you expect something to talk, have Acrobat read a PDF.  The phrase is played four times at three different pitches, with the second time being a whisper.

 

 

Just for kicks, I then took the first phrase and processed it with Studio One's Harmonic Editing. The phrase followed a chord progression of C - Dm - G - Am - F - G - Am.  This pretty much blew me away - I can really see creating choir and massed background vocals with the CT-S1000V, and "tuning" them with the harmonic editing. There's LOTS of potential here!!

 

 

Okay...that's enough for now. So far, we've been in Phrase mode, where you hold a key down to play an entire phrase, and play a different key to alter the pitch. Next time, we'll get into Note mode, where you play individual syllables sequentially on keyboard keys, so you can turn the syllables into melodies.

 

[Anderton]

Jerry Kovarsky made a good point - it would be instructive to give some background on this type of technology. The following are are all software programs; the CT-S1000V is the only product I know of that combines vocal synthesis with a hardware keyboard synthesizer/arranger. If you want to play around with basic vocalist software, Plogue offers Alter/Ego, where you type in words and get vocals out. It's a free download, so it's not as sophisticated as some other programs, but it's a good way to get started in checking out the genre. There's a video demo. 

 

 

Yamaha's Vocaloid technology was the granddad of the genre. Announced at Musikmesse in 2003, Version 6 is available as a download, and features Japanese and English voices. Check out the promo video.

 

 

And if you want to find out about Hatsune Miku, the singing voice synthesizer featured in over 100,000 songs, check out "her" video. I don't think Taylor Swift has anything to worry about...at least not yet 🤔

 

 

The program I use the most is Realivox Blue, from Realitone. There are a bunch of demos on SoundCloud, of which this is one of my favorites because of the innovative way it uses the voice. Following is the walkthrough video, which explains how you string sounds together to create the vocals.

 

 

Finally, Blue is featured in one of my songs from 2021, "One Moment." You'll hear her sing the "One Moment" hook at the very beginning and in other places, with "ahhh" background vocals coming in at 1:23.

 

 

Okay! Now you're somewhat caught up on the history of synthesized signing - back to the CT-S1000V.

[RandyFF]

Cool, some of these voice programs sounded musical and useful- the robotic voice thing can get old quickly!  I esp like the stacked choir type voices-

[jerrythek]

There is a whole 'nother category of vocal sample libraries that can string together words and phrases etc. to try to create convincing vocal parts. They're not going to replace a good lead vocal, but it's another "branch" of the category.

 

3 hours ago, RandyFF said:

Cool, some of these voice programs sounded musical and useful- the robotic voice thing can get old quickly!  I esp like the stacked choir type voices-

 

[Anderton]

7 hours ago, RandyFF said:

I esp like the stacked choir type voices-

 

Blue does that extremely well, "she" does great "oohs," "ahhs," and similar vocal sounds. I often blend the Blue voice with Amanda (from the Nashville QTs, who does most of the female background vocals on my projects). The human/synthesized doubling sounds super-cool. 

[Dave Bryce]

...and now for something completely different.

 

Okay…raise your hand if – like me – you don’t have a lot of experience with auto-accompaniment.

 

In my case, it’s not that I don’t like it…nor do I look down on it.  I’ve just not really found that I have any use for it, as a rule.  I do use the KARMA functions of my Kronos here and there to have a groove to jam over…but that’s about it.

 

Consequently, I was interested to check out the Rhythm and Auto-Accompaniment aspects of the CT S1000v.  I love to dig into things with which I don’t have a lot of experience  - it’s a great learning experience for me, usually.  Please do keep that in mind as you read through this section.  I imagine I may not be the only forumite with this sort of mind set, so I hope more than a few of y’all will find this section to be interesting, and will share your thoughts here as well.

 

So, let’s talk a bit about the Rhythm section.

 

The CT 1000V offers up 243 Rhythm patterns organized into Categories:

Pops

8 Beat

16 Beat

Rock

Dance

Jazz

Traditional

Latin I

Latin II

World I

World II

Country

Ensemble/Orchestra

Ballad

Piano Rhythms

 

A “User” section of empty programs is available to add other rhythms.

 

The names of the categories are pretty self-descriptive, so there’s not really a lot for me to review about these, other than to say that the sounds and programming are more than one would expect from such an affordable offering.  I had the most fun with the Latin and World categories because they were outside the type of thing with which I’m used to working.  I was intrigued by the effects (mostly different reverbs) that were chosen to go along with each pattern; however, for the most part, I found these to be pretty much exactly what I expected from them – a comprehensive collection of all sorts of different styles and sounds, all very professionally and cleanly crafted - no more, no less.

 

There’s not a lot of info on the main Rhythm screen.  The upper right-hand corner displays the tempo (T), current measure (M) and beat (B), while the soft buttons provide an assortment of top level control:

 

 

The primary controls are fairly simple. There are two different Intros, a MAIN groove and variation, two different fills and an ending for each rhythm, each with its own dedicated toggle.  More than enough to be able to assemble and customize a solid Rhythm part in real time.  

 

Tempo can be set a few ways.  There’s a dedicated button to get to the proper edit screen where the edit wheel manually adjusts the tempo (range is 20-255 bpm), or you can tap in whatever tempo you’d like.   A recommended tempo is stored along with each Rhythm pattern, which can be called up by simultaneously pressing the + and – buttons.

 

Pressing the MENU button provides access to a few more of the accompaniment functions such as the Split Point, Chord Mode (pictured below), Rhythm Controller Type:

 

 

The rhythm section can also be used for auto accompaniment, which adds bass and harmony parts to the drum and percussion loops.  Toggling this function on and off is achieved via the ACCMP soft button in the last slot of the RHYTHM menu.  The taste and complexity of more than a few of the intros, fills and (especially) the endings are more than a little surprising, and usually fairly grin-inducing.

 

Tap Start is also offered, which sets the unit to begin playback when you press any of the keys below the split point as opposed to pressing the dedicated PLAY/STOP button.  Sync stop will halt rhythm play when the lower keys are released.

 

 

Pressing single notes below the split points plays major triads.  You can also hold down the notes that make up a chord (e.g. CEG for a C major triad). Voicings like sus4, sus2, dim and aug, 6th, melodic and major 7th are all recognized. This is because the unit defaults to a mode called Fingered 1, where you are expected to play the proper notes for the chord type you want to play. And you don’t always have to play 3 or 4 note voicing: root plus minor third will produce a minor chord, and root and fifth will produce a power chord. There are six different Chord modes (Fingered 1, Fingered 2, Fingered On Bass (bass sound is always the lowest note), Fingered assist, Full Range Chord and Casio Chord) which can be accessed via the SETTINGS soft button found within the MENU selector.

 

Since I already explained Fingered 1, Fingered 2 is the same but when you play any inversions of a minor seventh chord it will always read it as the associated major sixth chord (Am7 becomes C6). 

 

The one I relate to the easiest is the Full Range Chord mode, which reads the notes across the whole range of the keyboard to drive the chord choices while simultaneously triggering the currently selected sound. It works with layered and split modes as well.

 

Jumping to Casio Chord, it’s a simplified way of playing chords when you don’t know the notes that make them up. The lowest note you play forms a major chord. Any 2nd note above it forms a minor chord (doesn’t matter if it’s a black or white note), any two notes above it forms a dominant seventh, and any three notes above will form a minor seventh. 

 

Interestingly, the Fingered Assist mode combines the concept of being able to play your own chord choices and adds something similar to the Casio Chord method but going in the other direction. Play a single note and you get the major chord. Add a black note below that root and you get a minor triad. Add a white note below the root and you get a Dominant seventh chord. Add both a black and white note below the root and you get a minor seventh chord.   

 

I’ve got to ask - does anyone really need this mode? If you can play the chord you can play the chord; if not, why not just use the Casio Chord method?  Brother Jerry came to my rescue: this below the root method of chord triggering is how Yamaha does their simplified method, so it looks like Casio snuck this is to help players coming over from a Yamaha product. Sneaky...

 

There is a also a screen that lets you control the keyboard part while the Rhythm section is in use:

 

 

 

I do need to say that the manual is not the most helpful tool in this case.  I learned an awful lot more by experimenting than I did trying to follow the book….and there are still a few things that are unclear to me; however, by and large, I believe I was able to move around this section fairly well.  I do wish there were a faster way to access some of the rhythm/accompaniment parameters found under the MENU button – there is a fair amount of button pushing involved to get to these and audition the results of selecting the available options.

 

dB

 

 

[AnotherScott]

I haven't played with accompaniment, but I have played with rhythms... and the best feature for me is that you can "freeze" a drum pattern, which means you can pick a beat, and then freely change tones/registrations without interrupting the drums. Sometimes I do "unplugged" trio gigs where it's still nice to have a drum thing going on some songs, and it has been an irritation on other boards that, once you start the beat, you can't freely switch among all the other sounds. Like on a Montage/MODX, if I was doing LH bass and drums, I could only choose from within RH sounds that I had set up for that particular Live Set. Since it's often possible to use one beat for many songs (and you may want to segue seamlessly from one to another), it's nice to not have to be restricted to a small number of RH sounds that you set up in advance to use with that beat.

[AnotherScott]

More on bluetooth: As I said, I was successful in pairing it with an iPad, and was able to get the iPad to send MIDI Program Changes to the Casio. For anyone following along who may need help here, IIRC, I had to use the midimittr app to initially establish the MIDI connection to the adapter, and then everything could see it.

 

But I also have a question, which I think comes down to whether the Casio's adapter is functioning as a BT host, or a BT client, or a BT multipoint client. As I understand it, a host can communicate with multiple devices (for example, you computer can have a BT keyboard. BT mouse, and BT headset all connected at the same time); but a device can only be paired with a single host (i.e. the BT mouse cannot be connected to two computers at the same time); but there are also multipoint clients that can connect to multiple hosts. I think. ;-)

 

The case use here is whether I can have the Casio receive bluetooth MIDI from the iPad (e.g. for patch changes), and also receive bluetooth MIDI from a footswitch (i.e. the Boss FS-1, which is a wireless 3-pedal device where you can program each of the pedals to send a particular MIDI CC). Would that work, or can the Bluetooth on the Casio only be seen by one device at a time?

[D. Gauss]

On 2/10/2023 at 1:57 PM, Anderton said:

It's All About the Cable...

 

If you look around the net, you'll find complaints that the CT-1000V won't connect to the user's smartphone.

 

 

 

It Sure Ain't About The Bluetooth...

  Why on earth did Casio choose NOT to let you upload a lyric file to the CT-1000V via bluetooth? Dumb move.

[RandyFF]

Huh?  Just spent half an hour composing a message and after hitting submit it didn’t- nothing there.  Moderators?

[RandyFF]

@ AS, thanks for the tip, just downloaded MIDImitter on my ipad.

 

No idea about the BT MIDI dongle being multi-point.  Are you able to use your wireless footswitch to advance thru Tones or other sequential items?  It’s always good to have the FS for sustain.

 

Revision of my keybed rating- I’d given a B- for the S500/S1000V, now I give it a C.  For energetic block chord playing it’s quite good.  But it does get noticeably harder to press towards the fall board, and for more agile, softer and nuanced playing, this keybed does slow me down.  For my playing, the PSR EW425 has a better all-rounder keybed, quite good for the price point!

[AnotherScott]

5 hours ago, RandyFF said:

Are you able to use your wireless footswitch to advance thru Tones or other sequential items?  It’s always good to have the FS for sustain.

 

I don't have the footswitch yet, it's something I'd like to add.

 

I never use patch advance on any boards, it's just not the way I work, I never have the sounds I need in order... our gigs are never the same, and I'm not interested in re-ordering stuff for every gig, and stuff changes on the fly anyway.

 

My interest is in wireless sustain, and for the occasional gigs where we play to a backing rhythm, start/stop for the drums, and maybe fill. Hopefully that can be done. It should at least give me wireless sustain pedal, which is a standard CC.

[Dave Bryce]

18 minutes ago, AnotherScott said:

I never use patch advance on any boards, it's just not the way I work, I never have the sounds I need in order... our gigs are never the same, and I'm not interested in re-ordering stuff for every gig, and stuff changes on the fly anyway.

 

dB

[summerinstereo]

What a beast of a thread.

[RandyFF]

Patch advance can be handy when trying out sounds.  My instinct/habit is to use a cabled sustain pedal, and would look to a wireless pedal for things like you said- controlling beats/styles.

 

I like the sustain feature on this board- have never encountered it before and find it very useful.  With most boards I’ve goosed the release on a lot of sounds.  I like a bit more sustain anyways, which is partially cause I’d rather not be riding the sustain pedal all the time.  

> With the sustain feature, you can go from 0 to 10, and the default is a ridiculous 5.  I usually set it at 1.  I like a more legato feel to my playing anyway, and this provides just a bit of glue; I’ll then sweeten it ever so little with reverb and delay so that my base sound is full while still having definition- a little goes a long ways, and with a bigger sound I don’t have to work as hard to have a pleasingly full presence.

 

I do like how you can zip around with this board- the PSR EW425 is nice for having way more control buttons and a larger screen, but I also enjoy the S500/S1000V for basic things like creating Registrations, you’ve got most things a few button presses away, you can get quite zippy with it-

 

Having the PSR EW425 makes life easier with the S500!  It feels cramped trying to do LH bass on a 61 note board, and now I don’t need to do it- having 76 keys is so much nicer for that!  I figured out 2 split points: one of them has the luxury of having an octave for each of the bass notes, and 3 E notes.  The shorter version ends on an A and is an easier span to keep track of with the LH.

 

 

[AnotherScott]

4 hours ago, RandyFF said:

My instinct/habit is to use a cabled sustain pedal, and would look to a wireless pedal for things like you said- controlling beats/styles.

The only reason I care about the sustain pedal being wireless is for taking advantage of the board's strap pegs to sometimes use it as a keytar.

 

[Anderton]

Let's listen to the 23 core voices in the CT-S1000V. We'll ask each one to say "Give it to me," so you can compare the voices using the same phrase. It's a short demo (a little over a minute), but it gets the point across - you have options! The names for the various vocalists are the ones Casio uses, so you can find any vocalists that intrigue you in the keyboard, under the same name. (I almost took the time to make the Death Voice say "Bring the Wookie to me," but we can save that for later...)

 

Check out the Animals vocalist at the end, it's wild. Also, the Whisper voice shows that if Casio gets into mixing a little white noise in judiciously with the robo-singing, it could make a difference with intelligibility of "ess" sounds - that's how vocoders get around the difficulty of making sibilants. 

 

It's worth pointing out that although Casio stresses the unique "type in lyrics, and have the CT-S1000V sing them to you" aspect, the voices are good at doing phrases like "la la la," "ahhhhh," "ooooo," and the like. In Note mode, you can separate these into individual "words," and play them from the keyboard at different pitches. The effect is like android backing singers, and I want to do a demo showing that off sooner rather than later. Meanwhile, enjoy the video

 

 

[AnotherScott]

I wanted to try popping off the big scroll wheel and putting on a smaller knob instead (as I did on the Roland VR-09), but the wheel seems resistant to coming off and I'm afraid of applying too much force and breaking something. Does anyone know, should this just pop off if I pull enough (or pry it with a flat blade screwdriver), or is something else keeping it in place that I should be aware of?

[RandyFF]

On 2/21/2023 at 5:14 AM, AnotherScott said:

The only reason I care about the sustain pedal being wireless is for taking advantage of the board's strap pegs to sometimes use it as a keytar.

 

Most excellent!  Have you figured this out?  I’d like the same- I’ve been using the Sustain capability (typically saving it to 1 out of ten), which means, by simply choosing sustain I’ve got a sound that I can play without a sustain pedal when needed. I wouldn’t have Sustain on saved in the Registration, it’d just be there as an instant option. 

 

Also: have you found a strap that works to ‘keytar’ it up?  I tried my guitar strap, too short for my needs.  Do you prefer being able to use both hands on the keys, or to play it more like a keytar, left hand for the pitch wheel?  I like using both hands.

[AnotherScott]

On 3/4/2023 at 3:14 PM, RandyFF said:

On 2/21/2023 at 8:14 AM, AnotherScott said:

The only reason I care about the sustain pedal being wireless is for taking advantage of the board's strap pegs to sometimes use it as a keytar.

 

Most excellent!  Have you figured this out?  

 

Sadly, I have not been able to get this to work. :-(

 

I've configured the Boss FS-1-WL for sustain. I put it in pairing mode, it blinks. I put the Casio in pairing mode, and the screen says it's trying. After a short while, the blinking light of the boss goes solid... apparent success! At that point, I can indeed use the Boss as a wireless sustain pedal, even though the Casio is still saying it's trying to pair. But after maybe another 15 seconds or so, the Boss (perhaps seeing that the Casio has never "acknowledged" the successful connection and is still in "trying to pair" mode), the light on the Boss starts blinking again, it is back in its "trying to pair" mode, and the sustain function no longer works. And that's all she wrote. I can do it repeatedly, but it will never "take." It just works briefly, then stops, with the Casio never displaying indication of a successful connection, even though briefly, the connection was there.

 

My next experiment will be to see if I can get it to pair if I use a CME uHost instead of the Casio-supplied BT dongle.

 

BTW, I set the three footswitches on the boss for sustain, sostenuto, and a program change to go back to piano. All worked fine, for the 15 or so seconds that the BT connection works. (I had been hoping to use one switch for rhythm start/stop, but there's no MIDI CC for that, the routing of that function to a pedal is apparently strictly internal to the Casio, so that one would have to be hard-wired. It's not too much of a loss, though, since it's a feature I rarely use. And if I can't use that feature on the same gig where I'm wearing the board, I can live with that.

 

On 3/4/2023 at 3:14 PM, RandyFF said:

Also: have you found a strap that works to ‘keytar’ it up?  I tried my guitar strap, too short for my needs.  Do you prefer being able to use both hands on the keys, or to play it more like a keytar, left hand for the pitch wheel?  I like using both hands.

 

I also use both hands, in most cases. I happen to have a strap that works okay, though something longer would be better. One thing to keep in mind is that it is impossible to read the screen when wearing the board. I have a cheat sheet at an appropriates angle that I can read the labels for the sounds I want to switch to, but you can't effectively switch to a different registration mid-song, so any sound you want to switch to within a song needs to be in the same registration bank. If I get the BT pedal working, I was going to try using 2 of the pedals for program changes that switch me to alternate banks, which could go a long way in addressing that. But I haven't gotten to that yet.

[AnotherScott]

Update: I was able to try the CME Uhost instead of the standard Casio adapter.

 

The good news: It pairs with the Boss pedal unit right away, and stays paired.

 

The bad news: Although the CME is seeing the MIDI (its data light blinks when I press a pedal), the Casio is not responding to it. Again, the Casio *did* respond properly when using its own bluetooth adapter, so I know the pedal is sending out the correct MIDI data (the problem was that it wouldn't complete the pairing and the connection would be dropped).

 

So... neither approach is working for me, though they fail in different ways. Still stuck. :-(

[AnotherScott]

The bluetooth sustain pedal works! The solution was to attach that CME WIDI uhost to the Casio's micro-USB "to host" connection (instead of to the device port that Casio's own bluetooth dongle uses). CME does have an option to supply it with that cable, but since that's not one of the cables I had gotten with mine, I put this adapter on it, which worked fine.

[AnotherScott]

On 2/15/2023 at 12:57 PM, Dave Bryce said:

There are two different Intros, a MAIN groove and variation, two different fills and an ending for each rhythm, each with its own dedicated toggle.  More than enough to be able to assemble and customize a solid Rhythm part in real time.  

...

The rhythm section can also be used for auto accompaniment, which adds bass and harmony parts to the drum and percussion loops.  Toggling this function on and off is achieved via the ACCMP soft button in the last slot of the RHYTHM menu.  The taste and complexity of more than a few of the intros, fills and (especially) the endings are more than a little surprising, and usually fairly grin-inducing.

 

The endings are, for me, an unfortunate irritation in this board. As you point out, the rhythms are easily usable with or without further accompaniment functions, with a simple button-press, which is great. However, when you're not using accompaniment, the endings are generally useless. 😞 

 

Those ending can make sense when the keyboard is providing the full accompaniment (i.e. if you are indeed using the accompaniment feature to automate the ending of the entire backing instrumental element of the song), but that's not how everyone uses rhythms (which again points to the nice implementation of how easily you can enable/disable that accompaniment). Personally, while I don't doubt it can be fun in some contexts, I think those heavily arranged endings are gimmicky (what you more generously called surprising and grin-inducing), and have the side effect of making any song you play with a given rhythm sound the same. (It makes me think of the old Honeymooners episode, where Ed Norton could play a ton of songs on the piano, but every one started like Swanee River.)

 

In terms of real-world usability, if you're using rhythm alone as I would (with all other sounds being played live by some combination of players), the rhythm endings (sans automated accompaniment) are too unpredictable to be of any use at all. You don't know how many bars they will last, whether the tempo may change, what beat they will end on, or whether there will be some unexpected tag after you thought it was over. 

 

If you're playing a rhythm without having the accompaniment enabled, I wish it would instead just provide a simple short and steady-tempo ending with a fill to a final hit on the one. That would be useful. I don't expect high-end Yamaha features here, e.g. (if I understand correctly) 3 different ending buttons for different approaches, single-tap for steady-tempo or double-tap for ritardando, for 6 options total that you can choose on the fly (one of which, I believe, is the kind of ending I'm suggesting). But merely an option for something that can actually work when you're not using accompaniment, which could be invoked automatically when you are in fact not using accompaniment, would be a significant improvement in rhythm usability.

 

ETA: This issue is not unique to Casio. Korg has the same issue on at least some (perhaps all) of their arrangers. (Yamaha and Roland seem to be better here.) I think it's a bit more obvious on the Casio because Casio makes it so easy to use just the rhythms (without all the rest of the accompaniment), it's essentially the default. On most arrangers, by default, everything plays, and you have to figure out how to turn off everything but the drums! The Casio is (IMO nicely) more oriented toward those who may simply want to play to a rhythm, but to me, that makes the (AFAIK unalterable) odd drum endings more head-scratching.