Use the Lyric Creator app to type your lyrics, then play them polyphonically from the keyboard.

We’re not sure what we were expecting when Casio started teasing a new keyboard late last year, but it wasn’t quite what we’ve got with the Casiotone CT-S1000V.

Of course, we’ve seen this kind of thing in software before, but when it comes to hardware, vocal synthesis of this sort does feel like something new.

Casio says that the technology behind it hasn’t been used before, while also adding that it doesn’t necessarily sound exactly like a human voice (which, to be fair, no vocal synthesis does at this point).

What you do get is convenience: there are 100 Lyric Tones built into the CT-S1000V, which are billed as phrases that are inspired by familiar songs.

The real interest, though, lies in the companion Lyric Creator app; available for iOS and Android, this enables you to type in your own lyrics and then transmit them to the keyboard via USB.

The CT-S1000V is also a fully-featured ‘standard’ home keyboard, offering 800 AiX-powered sounds and 64 voices of polyphony.

The CT-S1000V comes with a power supply and can also be powered for up to three hours from six AA batteries.

If you’re happy to go without the vocal synthesis, you should check out the CT-S500, which is otherwise pretty much the same but priced lower.