I can recall that many people were impressed by the CT-201, CASIO’s first electronic musical instrument, because that first model enabled musicians to create a variety of polyphonic sounds on the same instrument. I was still a schoolboy at the time, and I was one of those people. CASIO continued to pursue state-of-the-art synthesizer sound production for some time after that. But the Company later extended its operations to electronic keyboards and digital pianos. It was motivated by a desire to expand the population of musicians by making the most of its digital sound technologies to communicate the pleasure of playing music to as many people as possible, including beginners.

Today, more than two decades later, we have realized our potential for conveying new ways of enjoying electronic musical instruments by putting the know-how we cultivated through electronic keyboard and digital piano production back into synthesizers. There’s no doubt that the experience we accumulated in developing these other electronic instruments motivated our return to synthesizers after a 24-year interlude.

As is inevitable in the development of any electronic musical instrument, we had all kinds of ideas concerning functions we wanted to pursue, and the number of ideas kept piling up during the development process. But if we had followed up on every idea, we would have worn ourselves out and ended up with an instrument that was both difficult play and too expensive for our customers. We avoided these problems by eliminating some ideas and concentrating on constructing an integrated musical instrument, rather trying to add superfluous new functions. This selectivity led to an optimal concept for the XW Series.

Everyone involved in the development project brought different experiences with musical instruments and music itself to the process. My own main inspiration was the historical evolution of the electronic musical instruments developed by our predecessors at CASIO. With this history to build on, I sought to realize unique products that would be worthy of bearing the CASIO brand.

XW Series synths are not just instruments for a handful of players with expert knowledge or advanced keyboard performance skills. I want all sorts of people, including beginners who have never played a keyboard before, to make an XW Series synthesizer their instrument of choice. As they play, I want them to experience these unique, powerful synth sounds that are totally different from the sampling sounds produced by other musical instruments — and to enjoy the joy of producing sounds and the fun of using the Sequencer to create their own beats.