🚀 go-pugleaf

I'm not familiar with all the other alternative keyboard/synthesizers, but
I know a little about the CZ-101.

This instrument can be programmed to sound like just about any instrument
you ever heard of and also any instrument you DIDN'T EVER hear of, too.
Some examples from among the pre-programmed sounds:

  Extremely realistic pipe organ.

  Extremely realistic electronic organ.

  Vibraphone.

  Stringed instruments (though I am sure you could improve on their
    parameter definitions).

  Human whistle.

  Church bells.

  Person stomping their foot.

  Wooden xylophone.

  Lots of others, all very different from the above.

Having played around with programming a few new sounds, and having some
background in signal analysis theory, I am convinced that there is almost
no limit to the range of musical instrument sounds you could create with
a CZ-101.  Basically, they break the sound up into four time epochs, namely
risetime, initial decay, hold, and final decay.  You can program the shape
of each one separately.  You can construct, as I recall, up to four separate
waveshapes, with your choice of harmonic relationships and amplitudes, then
program the durations of these four basic epochs separately for each.  You
can add these waveshapes, or (with some limitations) you can use one to
modulate (multiply by) another to produce a more complex waveshape.  Thus,
for example, you can have an initial burst of noise (white noise) to represent
a hammer striking a resonator, a main tone that builds up moderately fast but
dies away very slowly, a secondary tone at, say, the 3rd harmonic, which
builds up more rapidly and dies away more slowly, and a fourth tone at some
other harmonic (or non-harmonic) frequency which builds up and dies away at
still different rates.  You can have vibrato on one or more of these.
Each individual tone can be a pure sine wave, a sawtooth, a square wave, etc.,
so can have infinitely many harmonics of its own.

If you want to be able to synthesize interesting instrument sounds, including
realistic mimics of existing instruments, this synthesizer is for you.

The CZ-101 does *NOT* provide an automated "rythm section" or chords or any
other such musical crutches.  It does provide almost limitless capability to
synthesize new (or old) sounds.

I hope this information is useful.

-John Sangster / jhs@mitre-bedford.arpa