freeta corrective

Firstly, the sound. It sounds nice, really nice. I’m not sure how Korg have done it, but they’ve knocked up some really good virtual oscillators. Having played a real MS20 I know that it in no way compares to the real thing, and obviously for 5000 yen you can’t really expect it too. It sounds like a nice analog squeezed into 12 or possibly 11 bits. Similar to running reaktor at 22khz. I’ve seen quite a few people on the internet dissing the sound, but personally, I like it. It is warm, it has plenty of bass and that ever present high-end squelch of a sound straining to get out of the constraints of its sample rate.

So, on to the goodies. What do you get? A nice clean easy to use interface. I haven’t RTFM’ed because it’s all in Japanese, but I picked it up in no time. There’s a lot going on behind the deceptively simpl controls, but the main window adequately illustrates the signal flow, so you never feel lost. Basically you have two 2oscillator synths and four 2 oscillator drums synths, each driven by it’s own dedicated sequencer. The two sythns are routed into an FX unit containing delay, chorus and flanger, and the drum synths can be similarly treated. The effects are good – no serious FSU fun, but they do the job. Finally everything is routed into a six channel mixer with level, mute, solo and pan for each channel.

The sequencers are nice, and a breeze to use. Each synth sequencer consists of 6 panes. Note pitch, gate time, volume, pan, Kaoss x and Kaoss Y (more on this later). A single on screen button cycles through them. All of the panes are of the XOX style and they are all locked to the master pattern length (between 1 and 16 steps) so sadly there’s no way to creating shifting patterns. maybe Korg will come up with an analogue sequencer in the next version, eh? As for the Kaoss X and Y panes, they can be used to send a precise signal to each synths Kaoss pad. Great idea this, and beautifully implemented. Each synth has 3 dedicated Kaoss pad panes. The first controls gate and note pitch, the second volume and panning, and the third is user assignable (although the default is cutoff and peak). Each Kaoss pad can be played in realtime while the sequencer is running, and the note/gate pad can also be played while the sequencer is stopped. By hitting a record button, your frantic stylus waggling can be recorded and saved along with the whole sequence. Going back to the sequencer, if precision is your thing, then you can set exact values for each step for the user-assignable Kaoss pad, and, of course you can still screw around with it in real time. The user assignable controls range from the mundane (release time) to the exotic (modulation freq, oscilator pitch in and VCO sync – oh yeah, it has snycable oscillators – even on the drum synths).

Another great element is the synth patch section. Each synth is patchable with it’s own LFO (that can run free or be synced to the master clock) that outputs sine, triangle, square and S&H. Destinations for this include master pitch in, VCO1 and VCO2 pitch in, cutoff in and VCA in. Each destination has a knob to control the depth of the modulation. Also you can route the envelope generator to any destination. Best of all the out put of VCO2 can be used as a modulation source for gnarly FM goodness.
Not content with that, the drum synths also have there own patch screens.
My own gripe here is that it’s not possible to dump the output of the various modualtion sources from all 6 of the sythns and route them freely to other patch screens. At least, I don’t think it is – when this beauty comes out in the rest of the world I’ll have to grab a manual off of someone.

Other bells and whistles include – on screen keyboard for finger jamming, the ability to chain four of these beauties together via wireless sync, 16 patterns per sequencer per song and a very easy song mode – just string your patterns together on a matrix grid.

This isn’t a studio that fits in your pocket. Nor is it a faithful reproduction of the classic MS10 sound. But it is truly fucking brilliant – the FM sounds are sick, the basses are crunchy and the kaoss pad jiggery-pokery is scarily, train station missingly addictive. If Mario carried only one (almost) modular synth under his hat, it would surely be this one.