Hack-a-brute!

One of the more interesting things about newer style synthesisers is that their creators sometimes go out of their way to make their products slightly more tweakable and editable for the masses to enjoy. Korg are an excellent example of this, as they are well known for going the extra mile on their recent analogue gear (Monotrons and Volcas) to label the PCBs with convenient solder points to easily add further functions.

As an owner of both the MiniBrute and MicroBrute, in part due to the involvement of Grenoble's Yves Usson in the design as well as the sounds they can make, I am pleased to see that he has convinced Arturia to release PDFs of the internal schematics and is currently curating a list of hacks, modifications and alterations on his Hack a Brute website.

Microbrute Impressions

So having has a chance to get over all the hype and the slightly cheeky party crashing of the announcement, Arturia's new analogue synth the Microbrute is finally upon us. Now after the dust has settled, it's worth taking a quick look at the new bit of kit.

Et tu, Microbrute?

It all starred innocently enough; an Arturia newsletter came in around the Sunday night with a link to some kind of teaser page hosted at their site. It wasn't until I had a look at some of the comments, most notably from Portishead's Adrian Udley, that I realised that these quotes were in relation to a new hardware synth to follow up on the Minibrute.

Music Man Cave + Kaossilator

After my old flat mate moved out to go live with his other half, I've had plenty of time and opportunity to move everything non-music related into another room, which is larger and suits as a bigger bedroom. The practical upshot is that I've now got my old bedroom all to myself as a man-cave and I have completely devoted it to music making...okay, and playing video games as well. This also means I've been able to make use of another table top for more space and can keep my MicroKorg and Minibrute next to each other.

I've also been meaning to take some photos and as the missus is out of the flat tonight, I've finally had a chance to take some photos and get them uploaded. There are plenty of photos available via a Google Plus photo album for your amusement (see link below for more). I knew that old UV light would be useful for something moody and of course the Synth Cat in the form of Hello Kitty.

More photos:
https://plus.google.com/photos/104066085457238286830/albums/5850134231546301009

Korg Kaossilator

I've also picked up a Korg Kaossilator for £50 via Gumtree and a nice chap called Colin even took time out of his lunch break to travel in to town and drop it off for me. Beats the £129 price tag of the new one.

It's a lovely little unit, with some good varied Arp/Gate patterns and very useable synth lines, chords, basslines and SFX sounds are good enough to play around with and make jamming loops.

The retro, plastic exterior belies its powerful synth engine, which seems to be derived from the MicroKorg, complete with reverb and delay effects built in. While you can't edit individual sounds, at least the built in effects give the sounds some depth and the chords in particular are quite pleasant to listen to. You can always hook it up to another effects processor and have more fun - in my case, the Mini KP2 - and do dub style echos and other choppy weirdness.

One of the main downsides is the problem of playing it accurately and I have seen plenty of guides on adding a grid to the XY controller and using a stylus for note-perfect playing. I am in two minds about this: on the one hand, you could make better use of the sounds on the Kaossilator. yet on the other hand the XY controller is all about random expression and coming up with something unique and satisfying by happy accident.

Yes, there is a Kaossilator app for the iPhone which is priced at around £20 that I could have used, but the bigger, clunkier real estate of the original unit makes up for the higher price and it's a cheeky little purchase that won't break the bank.

Oh, and UK owners are advised to take a look at Maplin for third-party power supplies. I don't think Korg would be able to beat £13.50 for a power supply. Just look for a variable power supply that can supply 4.5V and at least 500ma with the required plug connector like this one. I bought two for the Kaossilator and Mini KP2, as both only last for about 5 hours on batteries.

Minibrute Patch cards

I was a bit fed of of finding few resources online for Minibrute patches since I bought mine. Of the few - and when I say a few, I mean literally a handful / can count them on one hand - of sites where you can download patch cards for sounds, nowhere is there a scan of the blank Minibrute patch cards that you get in the retail box from Arturia (not even on their website!). I haven't opened mine yet as I would like to keep them in pristine condition. Whether this has something to do with the 'Brute not being around in such high numbers or lack of effort from the owners, I don't know, however I did want to remedy this.

I've tried to recreate the Minibrute front panel as best I can with GIMP, using the existing Minibrute diagram on Arturia's website that they for one of their patches as a base, so that you can make your markings and share them with other Minibrute owners. While I would have liked to go mad and label everything up on the panel, I thought it would be best to keep it as simple as possible and just add space for a patch name at the bottom. This is not designed to be cut out and placed over the top of the unit, by the way - the intention was to make something that can be edited and shared easily as a graphic file. It's not as fancy as some I have seen, but it should do.

In the end I made two versions; a standard 'Brute panel in its traditional colours and an inverse, printer-friendly (ie: it consumes less ink) version. I didn't bother putting a link to my blog anywhere on the image as I thought it would spoil it, but if you find it useful, do ping me an email at southerntrax(at)gmail.com or post a link back. Otherwise, share it far and wide and I will hopefully be able to share some patches once I get the time to write some down.

Side note: I've reached 100 posts!

Some updates and new gear

It's a right Korg-fest at the moment!

I know it's been a bit sparse in terms of updates at the moment but I've been super busy ahead of the end of this year and furthermore there are a ton of video games that have been sapping my attention.

My Soundcloud account has been looking a bit bare of late, so the plan is to finish a few tracks that I have had banging around for a few months and move on to using my Minibrute and Microkorg for some new music. With any luck I should be able to pipe them through my mixer and record phrases in Audacity for use in Madtracker.

Minibrute and Synth Kitty

In the meantime, I had a hankering for an effects generator to plug my Minibrute into after seeing some lovely videos that used older analogue delay units for playing with and settled on the Korg Mini KP2. It's a smart little unit that has loads of different effects including delay, reverb, filters, panning, LFOs, beat slicers and so on and as it's small and easy to use, it's the perfect thing to add to my set up. I've also been using my Monotrons with it and having a right old jam session or two.

Minibrute

Yes, you saw it right - I am now the proud owner of a Minibrute. After umming and aahing around for quite long enough, when I found one at the Music Production Show last month, I had to get one when I found that a retailer at the show had them for £399. A steal considering what it is and especially as I was given a masterclass in its operation by one of the nice chaps at Source distribution.

So let's get some of the limitations out of the way first. Yes. it's a short keyboard but the keys are nicely sized and come with configurable aftertouch as a lovely bonus (so you can affect vibrato or filter cutoff directly during play). All the knobs bar one (the envelope amount on the square wave is really loose on mine but nothing to get in a hissy fit over) turn nicely and build quality is above par, especially for the price. It's a heavy mother as well and is hardly going to move anywhere once you get it seated on a table or worktop. It's great to have one knob per feature control on a synth as you can really see what you are doing and tweak on the fly. The lack of patch memory really isn't a problem as you begin to get a good idea of the features of your synthesiser and what it is capable of. After a while, I found myself quickly dialing in some favourite types of sounds and remembering what goes where helps in this regard.

So how does it sound? In a word, amazing. Despite the 'brute being a single oscillator, because it's a mixer you can sculpt some really great sounds out of it and not just bass sounds either. An added advantage of having a well designed synth whose pitch isn't limited in software (Minitaur, I am looking at you, sir), it means that you can do all the nice leads and trumpet sounds as well as the thundering, window-rattling basslines that this synth is known for. The arpeggiator is good fun and even things like the swing knob can add some shuffle to a phrase.

I think Arturia have done themselves proud and this is an excellent entry into hardware analogue synthesisers. Yves Usson and the team have made a synth that sounds great but is above all fun to use and I hope I can do it justice by using it in my productions as well.

Note: No, I won't sell it so please don't contact me asking about it.

A bit of an analogue brute.

I am loving the look and sound of the Arturia Minibrute at the moment and I can't get the idea out of my head that for just over £400 I could own my own monosynth that I could incorporate into my existing setup. It not only provides a modern synth with nice, gnarly basses and leads but also a better quality keyboard with aftertouch than the Akai I already have. That being said, it is also cheaper than the Moog Minitaur; nearly £70 cheaper from what I can find online.


In a way, I'm glad that I have been too busy to keep an eye on what is going on at the moment as Arturia have put the release date for the Minibrute back to May 30th; oh shit, that's actually next week - awesome. I have also noticed that the exchange rate for GBP to EUR has also changed even more in my favour, so I'm definitely hoping this will be something I can get a hold of and use.
Arturia:
http://www.arturia.com/evolution/en/products/minibrute/intro.html