"History of Casio Synthesizers" by Throckmorton is AI written gibberish. DO NOT BUY THIS GARBAGE!

We came across this book, and author.
We assumed it was of a low quality, but it turns out it's AI written garbage!
It is continually filled with factual errors, and the types of "Facts" that only an AI would get wrong. Conflating feature sets from similarly named synthesizer models from other manufacturers. Claiming certain models were used on soundtracks several years before that synthesizer/keyboard was released.
This is a piece of made up bullshit. Don't buy it. Do not give this con artist your money.
YOU WILL BE DISAPPOINTED!
This same grifter has a "History of Synthwave" which will be just as terrible.

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

The film allegedly known as "Bladerunner" release date was 10th july 1982 so a full 3 years before the CZ-5000. So Vangelis had a time machine and jumped 3 years ahead to get the phase distortion sound for the movie.

[@return2sender791]

quotes around titles is correct usage. 🤷‍♂

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

​@@return2sender791I am getting some conflicting info when googling but some sources say it should be italicized, only a specific song title or chapter within a work should be quotations. Might be why I thought it looked strange.

[@ozzelot3349]

Sounds like something Vangelis would have

[@kaitlyn__L]

​@@BatteryCoverMissing I guess that's why you see it both ways with TV shows, it's not like an album or a poetry anthology or something where there's clearly parts of a whole. Each episode (for most of history anyway) could stand alone, even though it was also a larger collection.

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

@@kaitlyn__L yes, very insightful. The episode of the series / franchise vs the movie. It has been a long long time since I read a book about movies.

[@gumse666]

The future of literature. I hate this timeline.

[@safetinspector2]

Not literature, but yes I hate this timeline, too. :-(

[@jandocherty5834]

It's not the future of literature, this kind of book has always been around. People are still gonna write proper shiz.

[@JrIcify]

It's pretty much been like this ever since Amazon self publishing started. They had to put a limit on how many new books one person can publish, which was TEN BOOKS PER DAY. And then they had to reduce it to 3 per day, and there's still MILLIONS of new books per year. I used to want everything to be preserved forever but with the current book situation I wouldn't mind if 99% of them got purged from reality.

[@gumse666]

@@JrIcify Wow, I had now idea that it was this bad.

[@paulperry7091]

Reminds me of the AI vegan cookbook that relies on ingredients like bacon.

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

@@paulperry7091 Oh that's what all the writing about it being subversive is about, that really subversive vegans who eat bacon!

[@givolettorulez]

@@BatteryCoverMissing Maybe the recipes are for the enemies of Grendizer.

[@jimbotron70]

Even his name sounds AI-generated.

[@Bagoobe]

I honestly believe the author isn't even real. Everything published on Amazon is AI generated, and doesn't stick to one area of expertise.

[@eidorianaladannet]

Korg O1/W was originally M10, until someone wrote it upside down.

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@Zacabeb]

Instructions unclear: I've now got my Atari 1040 ST connected to my belly button. What scares me about those nonsense AI books is that people may read at least much of them without realizing they're nonsense and believe in those made up "facts". It's a direct threat to knowledge.

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

@@Zacabeb yes 20 years ago the internet was full of misinformation about casios that people had made up or parroted from decades earlier...which was then copy and pasted everywhere...and now we have AI to continue the tradition...of Casio burying the narrative and deleting old product info so leaving a void for people to make stuff up.

[@eidorianaladannet]

Just wait until LLM starts indiscriminately consuming other LLM content en mass - it’s only going to get more and more generic, entropic and inaccurate as the paint spreads and runs together resulting in a uniform brown colour. I’m not worried, it’s going to sort itself out just fine. Also: AI is a misnomer, use LLM (large language modeling) instead.

[@Justin-TPG]

The most incredible knowledge archive in the history of the planet is rapidly being polluted by techbro crap.

[@noobtracker]

*AY-3-8910 intensifies*

[@metatron448]

Reminder: Only human-authored works are granted copyright.

[@andyasbestos]

They don't need copyright when books like this take maybe a few hours to "write". They only need to average a handful of sales per book to make a decent profit. Besides, who in their right mind would bother to copy this slop? Online marketplaces badly need a system for filtering out the flood of pointless AI puke.

[@MePeterNicholls]

Not true tho

[@valcaron]

So the Communist Manifesto can't be copyrighted, because communists aren't people.

[@theblah12]

No need for copyright when you can generate another book-sided portion of AI-slop in a few minutes.

[@valcaron]

Oh look, KZbin censored me again. Let me try again: So communist literature can't be copyrighted. .people not are communists Because

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

"This book is your all-access pass to the subversive party where CASIO crashed in, transforming every aspiring artist into a sonic insurgent." - From the back of the book #sonicinsurgent #casioliberationfront

[@return2sender791]

😂

[@girlville]

🎶 viva la SI y la CLF 🎶

[@ej22_gc86]

what the fuck LMAO

[@paxson2000]

Bro holding the book looking like a flamenco guitarist

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

Fingernails just there to prevent flesh from melting while soldering components...I did have a go on my 93 year old neighbours steel guitar tho.

[@paxson2000]

@@BatteryCoverMissing so i just got into soldering and did my first little DIY kit this past weekend. So do you use your fingernails as like tweezers sort of?

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

@@paxson2000 💯 you got it!

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

@@paxson2000 you follow Ctrix and adam neeley. So cool 🎹🎷🥁🎛️💾🔌

[@brian2590]

This kind of laziness and greed is what will bring about the collapse of modern society. Thank for for exposing this clown.

[@ennayanne]

welcome to the end game of capitalism my friend

[@oraz.]

Or the endgame of our society arrived where the only form of productivity left are scams.

[@SamiJumppanen]

Greed, yes! And the generic requirement of competition. That's what makes companies cut corners, avoid taxes, buy from Asia to stay in competition. Governments are in dept and punish the people who have no way of saying no to any of this.

[@ZeludeRose]

there's way too many of these for any amount of youtubers to reasonably tear down like this, but thank you for making a dent

[@Loscha]

So! I didn't know "Cousin Throckmorton" was a meme. I just found out 5 minutes ago. The Throckmorton I was referring to was a document specialist, George Throckmorton. www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/authors/throckmorton-george He appears in Murder Among The Mormons. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_Among_the_Mormons

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

Just realised the A.I. engine has simply confused analogue with acoustic. But easy mistake to make due to all the voodoo nonsense people believe already about analog synths...maybe it is not too much of a stretch? Lol

[@monumento.f.501]

It's a bubble and it runs on buzz.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Honestly you see humans make that mistake all the time. I've seen some people talk about "analogue guitar" as the opposite to "electric guitar". Sometimes when I politely ask if they meant acoustic, they're like "oh what did I say?" lol. So I think they know the difference but the wires just get crossed a lot.

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

@@kaitlyn__L that is wild.

[@monumento.f.501]

an acoustic becomes analog by analogy.

[@GTMarmot]

The Miami Vice soundtrack on an MT40 would sound so hilarious

[@Pintosonic]

The same fake author has a book The history of Synthwave that is this exact same pile of gibberish and non existent Synthwave artists. Fortunately I bought the kindle version that was only $3 CAD but the book was $42 CAD. When the author was listing prominent artists of all the sub genre of Synthwave, I was looking them up if I didn’t know them. From those I didn’t know, 2 out of 3 didn’t exist on any streaming platforms or KZbin and the rest were not associated with Synthwave by any stretch of the imagination. Clearly this is a scam, the author spots relatively niche subjects and publish these books hoping to make a few bucks on unsuspecting people.

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

Oh my god, thank you for telling us more about how this grift is designed and for confirming the suspicion about the synthwave book. I am so glad you only paid for the E-Book. 🙏

[@Pintosonic]

@@BatteryCoverMissing I checked this author on Amazon and he has a total of 8 books listed, only two are available in kindle editions. The book versions are quite expensive, the price varies from $40 to $140. Now each time we buy a book we’ll have to worry about being feed crappy Ai generated content that makes no sense.

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

​​@@Pintosonicyes the seller on eBay shows 2 of 3 copies sold so at least one other person paid the 45 dollars for a print of the Casio one. Not sure what the margins are for print on demand services these days?

[@mohebbi71]

this is terrorism. I mean, paying printers to take a giant shit in the body of historical knowledge and for WHAT?!

[@Pulchism]

A quick google reveals harkimer is quite the versatile author with many diverse areas of expertise. Of course his work comes at a premium price point…

[@ennayanne]

look at the size of the text and the formatting 😂

[@darkflux]

NIN used theSK-1, but for the production of their FIRST allbum (the only one made in the 80's, which is what it says in the book) Trent primarily used the Oberheim Xpander, which had a sound he liked. in fact, the Wikipedia page does not even MENTION Casio, and you'd be hard pressed to find a cross-reference mention of NIN and the VZ-1 on the same page ANYWHERE on the internet...

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

@@darkflux which tracks feature the sk then? Only the demos? It isn't mentioned in the interviews and gear lists on muzines..happy to be corrected if I missed it tho.

[@return2sender791]

I dunno about that. Pretty sure Trent got a bent sk-1 from Bill T Miller though and that wouldnt have been anywhere close to the 80s.

[@darkflux]

@@return2sender791 read my post again, that is pretty much EXACTLY what i said...

[@jackpijjin4088]

Maybe this AI shit will have real human proofreaders back in a job.

[@MacXpert74]

Vangelis used mainly the Yamaha CS-80 analog synthesizer on the Blade Runner soundtrack. The Miami Vice soundtrack, which was done by Jan Hammer features the Fairlight CMI and Roland Jupiter 8 among other stuff.

[@r.g.thesecond]

I haven't checked but I assume this is Amazon indie publishing? Such a waste.

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

It is coming up on eBay but I assume these are Amazon drop-shippers, so it probably originated there.

[@lawrencemanning]

Yup this is cruelty to fecking trees.

[@theblah12]

@@BatteryCoverMissingThere’s something deeply depressing about the concept of dropshipping an AI-generated book.

[@darwiniandude]

URGH! I hate this so much! And what's worse is I bet you could update a wikipedia entry and use information from this published book as a reference. URRRRGHHH :( :( :(

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

I hadn't even considered this nightmare fuel. Casio wiki isn't even that accurate to start with.

[@jussikuusela7345]

Herkimer Throckmorton sounds like a pseudonym under which Sherlock Holmes could have published esoteric articles while hiding after Reichenbach.

[@Fuzy2K]

It reminds me of 'Torlygid Racihmopt' from The Mysterious Message

[@bobuiux]

Junk books have always existed. Flagship global marketplaces with less standards than drug dealers is the key issue in this trash getting sales

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

@@bobuiux monopoly global marketplaces.

[@delta-9969]

Well that and you can now auto-generate an entire library of congress-worth of junk books in the time it would take one human to manually author a single junk book just a few years ago.

[@michaelmartin9022]

Analogue synthesisers, AKA a brass band, didn't need any power!

[@darkflux]

if they had just copied the Wikipedia page for CASIO, it would have been slightly more accurate. in fact, if they had even READ the Wikipedia article, they might have realized their text was flawed. though i strongly doubt they even read their own book. just copypasted it from the AI interface...

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

#tldr This book asserts that the drawback of digital synthesizers is that they require electricity to run; unlike analog synthesizers... which defy the laws of physics and work even without power connected . #freeenergy

[@keyhoarder]

What a piece of BS. As a Casio psychofan, who had more than 100 Casio synths and keyboards, i am deeply saddened by this "publication".

[@InsectInPixel]

Those fingernails

[@DelmaRaySmithJr]

Unusual narrative, bicker and banter made effective by people that genuinely appreciate the untold Truth this book evidently lacks, lots of viable info, thx guys you earned my subscribe !

[@agingmillennialmainer]

More distracted by those nails.

[@hedgeearthridge6807]

The parentheses everywhere are both closing parentheses. A professional typesetter wouldn't be caught dead making such a stupid typographical mistake. Also some sentences also have two spaces between them, and professional typesetters don't use leftover bad habits from the typewriter age, especially not arbitrarily on only some sentences. It's another reason it's print-on-demand trash, it's someone's LaTeX project copied and pasted into a book. And the lazy writer didn't even bother fixing the parentheses problem with the \dirtytalk package

[@JoseVGavila]

Thanks for the advice. I am afraid it won't be the last one

[@DashGlitch]

Herkimer Throckmorton is talking about analog clocks not synthesizers

[@ChadDoebelin]

LMAO bill has long gorgeous fingernails. do you ever put paint on those?

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

No, they stay unpainted to avoid the microplastics in the paint from flaking off and falling into the battery compartment of the keyboards causing poor electrical contact. Am open to colouring them in with xylene containing pentel n85 markers

[@jimiedwards7876]

The only throckmorton I’ve heard of is a character in the sinking city, an HP Lovecraft based video game. Fairy baroque choice of name.

[@harryjones5260]

outrageous. and probably the iceberg tip. lucky most people dont bother reading books anymore.

[@racso20000]

Love that flavour of vegie chips

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

How good are they!

[@perekman3570]

Herkimer Throckmorton has published a lot of books on various subjects the last year.

[@perekman3570]

The entire publisher _Telephasic_Workshop_ seem to be about scammy AI junk. Check out "Dancing with Dinosaurs" for example. I quote: "Dancing with Dinosaurs: Exploring the Symbiosis of Vertebrate Paleontology and Folk Dancing" is a groundbreaking exploration of the unexpected parallels between the worlds of paleontology and folk dancing, delving into topics ranging from dinosaur movement patterns to the influence of ancient dance on modern choreography. This interdisciplinary study will captivate both dance enthusiasts and science aficionados alike.

[@Visionism]

You can tell it's AI before you open it. Only an AI would choose "Herkimer Throckmorton" as a plausible author name.

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

In my defence I was very unwell when I purchased it and I thought maybe it was just a deliberately terrible alias.

[@NachozMan]

My author name is Tacitus Killgore

[@Friend-]

​@@NachozMan mine's Melvinious Timilton

[@potato9832]

Well, AI or J.K. Rowling.

[@TheFutureRanch]

Holy shit WTF???

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

Holy mountain of...

[@AnonyDave]

Spot on for calling the person a grifter, as that's exactly what they are

[@CaptainProton1]

Yamaha CS-80 or.....Casio CZ5000. I'll take the CZ5000 said vangelis never

[@5minuterevolutionary493]

suggestion to just hold books open on a table to avoid the jittery thing

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

Sorry about that, we would need to dig out the tripod as well. More importantly needed to get info out so less people get scammed. We will sort out some still images later.

[@sauermusicDE]

I'd classify this book belonging to the "parody" genre. Only THEN it would make kind of sense.

[@5minuterevolutionary493]

So we are turning publishing into Spotify. Awesome. I mean, editing was already dead, trust me, but yeah this is appalling.

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

Leaving in classroom exercises to pad the word count and reiterating each point 3 times each chapter shows it was carefully designed to stretch the material.

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

I checked through it today and despite the first ROM PACK model (the PT-50); being on the cover... I cannot find any reference whatsoever to ROM packs or key guide lights in the book. For some reason the entire PT series and the educational variants from other series were totally ignored. Which partially makes sense as the toy models don't have "synth" features...but plenty of toy sized models ARE mentioned in other contexts so this is almost the strangest anomaly of the book as it makes the cover a complete lie

[@max_destro]

I clicked on this video to listen to while getting ready for bed, and it was delightful. I don't know much about synths but I do hate AI. However I gotta say, I have recently done my first circuit bend (a Casio SA-5) and the glitches immediately reminded me of NIN - Things Falling Apart

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

@@max_destro which tracks on that album specifically Sa-5 sounds bent before you even bend it with all the tone variations! Great instrument!

[@croiners4166]

We are living through the end of information!❤

[@return2sender791]

Always thought Throckmorton was a cool name. Theres a town in Texas outside Dallas called Throckmorton. Herkimer Throckmorton sounds like an LPC alias or some shit.

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

LPC MENTIONED ❤🎉🎉🎉. His calls saved me when I was depressed recently. And yes...I agree...it does sound like one of his aliases...only this can't be a prank by him as he is claiming to be from Canada not UPS and I don't recall ever hearing a Casio in his calls... Throckmorton is writing on oddly niche entertainment industry topics tho. it is very much like the bird jargon call or the Tandy electronics products which do not exist calls 🤔

[@DissonantSynth]

Commenting for the algorithm

[@zweispurmopped]

The (sadly dormant) channel magevers has nice examples of what synthies were used for the Bladerunner soundtrack. Obernheim something-something and Juno 60 apparently. There's loads of good analog synth demos on that channel, worth a listen!

[@Picoreefo]

That thumbnail tho

[@gblargg]

1:04 Sounds like AI interprets analog synthesizer as something like a piano or harp.

[@Mnnvint]

Find out who's behind it and make sure everyone knows they're lazy scammers.

[@Loscha]

@@Mnnvint I feel that his video has achieved this. It's visible in search results now for the author and topic. I did not expect as many views as this or as much "engagement" as the algorithm calls it.

[@Mnnvint]

@@Loscha The author's name is false. But Amazon is paying someone.

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

​@Mnnvint perhaps Benn Jordan already has and is making a video about them as we speak 🙏

[@suplerb]

Thank you for the warning!!

[@brzt4256]

Oh you mean my cousin, Throckmorton?

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

@@brzt4256 throcky and the marie casiotonettes

[@russ254]

would buy an AI book about drop bears!

[@kenzieprice6745]

Damn... you gotta wonder how many other books they have slopped out already to have arrived at a half-ass attempt of Casio synth history. The funny thing is, this probably a product of scanning through you two's publishing and comments around the web mixed with the average Joe talking shit about how crappy Casio is 😂.

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

They have published a few other books ..going by this example I assume they are ai also...but they are very expensive so I am not buying them to find out. Ironically one of the books is about how vanity press publishers scam authors, but this ai author has no problem scamming readers!

[@map04wormhole]

Bro bought a book from a man named THROCKMORTON and expected Simon Reynolds

[@CykPykMyk]

eh kurwa

[@StevenOBrien]

Good video, but please cut your nails.

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

#aiscam #aifail #casiohistory #casiosynthesizers

[@aronhidman1]

Blade Runner was 1982. It's not hard to check :)

[@Loscha]

I felt completely embarrassed that I forgot the release date of Blade Runner!!! That's on me, totally. Blade Runner == PRE MIDI! That's the most important fact for this video! I have every damn edition of DVD and Blu-Ray of Blade Runner, I'm a huge fan, which made my fail to remember date worse.

[@saltykraut]

You bought it

[@Loscha]

You state the obvious. We bought it so no-one else has to!

[@MSM5500]

Any book on synthesisers highly likely is a piece of garbage as a it's still unclear how reading can help with use of an instrument unless it's a MIDI Implementation manual by the manufacturer.

[@swordofkings128]

This book isn't about *using* a synthesizer, it's "about" the history of Casio synthesizers. There's plenty of great books on the history of stuff because the authors know the subject and have done tons of research (or even interviewed important figures on the subject). This book is just trash garbage because it's a crap history book.

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

​​​@@swordofkings128 the book does muddy this definition as it mentions sound design exercises like a high school textbook would..(i assume this is what @msm5500 was reacting to). The primary focus is *supposed* to be the history but the AI even got confused or they needed more chapters to pad it out. Also Ai can't distinguish between famous engineers designing presets for the casios and a text book on how to program sounds yourself.

[@eidorianaladannet]

First!

[@GenocidePanda]

why would you buy a book solely about casio and not a brand like roland tho or buchla. casio don’t have a lot under the belt

[@Loscha]

You have clearly never seriously used a Casio keyboard.

[@mickeythompson9537]

The Casio story would be fascinating, if researched and written properly. They opened up a lot of pathways for others to follow, both technologically and musically. I would now cringe at the squarewave bloops of my childhood keyboards like the VL-1, but they were an amazing start.

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

They have thousands of patents for unique synthesis methods, but to be fair, their best ideas aren't always well implemented as they are focused on the educational market .. but the odd performance features that do get implemented are really unique.

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

​@@mickeythompson9537They have thousands of patents for unique synthesis methods, but to be fair, their best ideas aren't always well implemented as they are focused on the educational market .. but the odd performance features that do get implemented are really unique.

[@ParachuteSounds]

You have a lot to learn. Casio is a LEGENDARY synth manufacturer

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

Apologies to @HighTreason610 ...he did get his cz to sound kinda dystopian..but i was speaking generally here...not edge cases.🙏

[@jordan3636]

Who really needs a book about casio keyboards though? Dont buu pointless crap and you wont get pointless crap.

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

They have a lot of patents for novel digital synthesis methods along with cool stuff like Hiroko Okuda's musical tapestry device which they refuse to release to the public so why would someone interested in synthesis and unusual music visualizers not be curious about that?

[@BatteryCoverMissing]

Aphex Twin also used the Casio fz for pseudo time stretching, a book clarifying that he wasn't using the obscure Fujitsu switched capacitor filter chips in the FZ might have been useful to calm down some hype around that filter chip and people paying 800 dollars for a eurorack enclosure for that chip.