Stocking fillers for Christmas 2015 - Noisemakers

As I have been a fan of highlighting in the past, we live in an amazing time where there are lots of different synth and music production products out there to suit all budgets and uses. So with Christmas coming up, here's a quick look at some of the options at the lower end of the market that would suit a budget of under £100 for stocking fillers to make for a noisy Christmas morning!

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.

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.

Monotron Duo Review

The Monotron Duo. I'm blue da ba dee...

Following on from my purchase of the Monotron Delay and after having plenty of fun with the delay function, I wanted to pick up its brother unit the Monotron Duo to complete the set and use them together. So I thought it would be a nice idea to run a review of Korg's other pocket synth as well.

Monotron Delay review

The Monotron Delay

Desperate for something to satisfy my gadget fix, I’ve been ranting and raving about the Korg Monotron to my nearest and dearest as something that she could buy me for my birthday. After dropping enough hints to sink the Titanic, she went and bought me a Monotron Delay, which I have had a chance to play with and thought I would review.