This reads like a promo piece for Teenage Engineering. The credit for the mini-synth revolution really belongs to Tatsuya Takahashi, the designer of Korg's groundbreaking Volca instruments. His Monotron synth was launched nearly five years before Teenage Engineering launched the Pocket Operator series. The Monotron is pocket-sized, fully analog, is musically useful and is supplied with a complete schematic; this last feature sparked a renaissance of circuit-bending and modding.
I think you're missing the point of what Teenage Engineering is trying to do. For as simple as the Korg Vulca series is, it's still an synthesizer first. You need to have some familiarity with electronic instruments to understand the controls of the Monotron that you mention:
Pitch
Rate
Int.
Cutoff Peak
Compare that to the controls on the Pocket Operator:
Sound
Pattern
BPM
FX
Play
Write
If you were handed one of these with no experience making music, which one would you be more likely to get started with? Heck, the Pocket Operator even has cute animations that go with your beats!
I have tremendous respect for Korg, but I think Teenage Engineering is prioritizing fun and accessibility in a way that I haven't seen in my 30 years of making music. This may be a fluff PR piece, but I think they deserve a ton of credit for making something as intimidating as electronic instruments so downright fun and adorable.
If you play with a Monotron, you very quickly learn what those five knobs do. You might not understand on an intellectual level what terms like "LFO rate" and "VCF cutoff" mean, but you develop an intuitive understanding of what they do to the sound. If you then go out and buy a Volca Keys or a Minilogue or pretty much any subtractive synthesiser, you already know how to use several of the most important controls.
If you play with a Pocket Operator, you don't learn very much of anything except how to use that particular Pocket Operator; the interface is too idiosyncratic, the details of the synth engine too effectively concealed.
>If you play with a Pocket Operator, you don't learn very much of anything except how to use that particular Pocket Operator; the interface is too idiosyncratic, the details of the synth engine too effectively concealed.
For me, that's the fun part. I like traditional subtractive synthesis, too, but there are many ways to implement synthesizers, and there's no reason they all have to follow the same standards.
All it takes with the KORG is for one to play. All else follows fairly naturally. And there is a bonus! KORG does introduce one technically, and correctly with the words and concepts of record. That KORG experience adds up. People who explored their fun toys, who happen to encounter a bigger device will find things familiar.
These devices are cool, don't get me wrong, but the people talking KORG up as being early leaders here have a very solid case.
This is a great follow on, and a bit different approach. Fine.
To me, anything in this direction is awesome. Sound is fun. Music is fun. Play! (We probably live longer when we do.)
The Korg Monologue is a brilliant piece of kit with the demo patches and microtunings done by Aphex Twin (who worked very closely with Takahashi on the development).
Although a lot of people would shy away from them, Behringer has all sorts of cheap, interesting synths (read: knockoffs) that would be fun for hobbiests for a while.
While I don't trust their stuff to last, a nice modular or SH-101 ripoff for $300 is hard to compete with.
>Although a lot of people would shy away from them, Behringer has all sorts of cheap, interesting synths (read: knockoffs) that would be fun for hobbiests for a while.
They also threaten to sue journalists for unfavorable reviews and for calling them copycats...
I like it quite a bit but the tuning has gotten wonky, and very sensitive to cold. I've got low confidence it will be working in ten years time whereas my ~18 year-old Nord 3 is a rock.
I've considered making digital audio hardware that "ages' like the analog stuff. Goes out of tune over time, has some capacitors that you need to replace every 10 years, a manual with a trim pot calibration process, etc.
The Monologue is a delight to play and experiment with. After years of using software synthesizers exclusively, I decided to dip my toe into hardware, and after some research, the Monologue became the clear choice.
At first, its feature set seemed very limiting, coming from the world of software synthesis, but I quickly found the Monologue to be a prime example of constraints breeding creativity. While it’s not about to replace Synapse Antidote in my recording work, it’s still a surprisingly flexible instrument.
> This reads like a promo piece for Teenage Engineering.
Yeah. As an electronic music hobbiest, this has a really odd feel to it. TE's stuff is really not all that innovative and while it has its niche isn't really blowing the doors off of anything. I've never personally liked their stuff - it seems so rigid and lifeless.
The Monotron + Monodelay were, admittedly, toys, but still very fun to play with and definitely ushered in a modern age of small, cheap fun synths.
It is a toy. A fun toy, but I've never walked into a studio and seen a producer producing actual tracks on it. Serum + a decent keyboard is the basic setup
I would also love if more software companies adopted its sales model. I "bought" it on a rent-to-own basis from Splice. $10/month for 20 months and then I owned it fully. No subscription, no payments in perpetuity.
I don't think VSTs are a fair comparison to hardware synths. They may be used a lot in the studio but there's a very different niche for real synths and the gap is closing in the opposite direction lately.
It used to be you had a handful of audio units to emulate specific hardware synths. Now hardware is getting flexible enough to handle a lot of different flavors.
Korg Volcas. Arturia also has some fairly affordable analog synths like the Microbrute. It doesn't have any presets, so you have to figure out how to create sounds on your own and the manual that comes with it is great in explaining oscillators, filters, etc.
Had the Microbrute, volca beats/keys/bass. All of them sounded awesome. The only problem is you couldn't really make songs (with distinct parts) without an additional controller (a squarp pyramid would have been cool. ) and the whole point was to not have to use a computer.
If I did it again a I'd probably go with an octatrack or mpc live or something where I could do more in a single box.
>This reads like a promo piece for Teenage Engineering. The credit for the mini-synth revolution really belongs to Tatsuya Takahashi, the designer of Korg's groundbreaking Volca instruments.
And neither TE or Korg has "won over kids and professionals".
They just built some cool products and made decent sales. No groundbreaking phenomenon in either.
The DX7 for example changed the whole industry. Volca's and TE not so much...
I imagine for the generation brought up on an infinite supply of cracked VST waReZ getting ahold of a physical piece of gear, and being forced to focus on a single piece of kit with limitations, is a revelation. Volcas have the right price point to make that happen and the right balance of features/limitations to make it interesting.
This does read like a pure PR piece. TE angered most of its fanbase by increasing the price of the OP-1 after it claimed parts became more expensive due to a new supplier.
The OP-1 is the only device I truly love and want to own but never will. I'm still pissed TE sent out an email after an OP-1 sold for something like $10,000+ on eBay saying "don't worry, we're working on making this affordable, stay tuned" then they announced a price hike! For a 10 year old product that's constantly back ordered!
Or not, since if something fails you have to ship it to TE and pay them IIRC $125 to look at it. I bought and own an OP-1, that still works great, however, the sequence you execute on boot up to get numbered list of options, such as update firmware, or factory reset cannot be reached. So now I am stuck with the last time I upgraded the firmware, and I can't get it back to the original state, so I can mess around with it again. I don't know, but to spend $800 on a synth, and have to ship it to Sweden, and pay that large a fee to simply look at it is a bit much. I then tried to simply buy a new board, so I could pop it in and be done, but they were sold out! I am sticking with Orca [1] and Extempore [2] for now.
Have you checked out similiar devices? The Critter and Guittari Organelle is a fantastic looking device and half the price, but lacking in some features of the op1.
Theres also the sonicware elz1 but it looks to be focused on being a synth.
I suspect TE wanted to outright replace the OP-1 with the OP-z, but the OP-z is not a direct replacement(?) and its initial marketing seemed to me to suggest it is/was going to be a very different device.
For the music hackers out there I'd recommend checking out the Critter and Guitari Organelle M as a more budget (<$500us) and FOSS friendly alternative. The new organelle M has a Raspberry PI compute module under the hood.
Seconding the Organelle as the OP-1 alternative. I haven't got one, but I have definitely considered pulling the trigger.
(The "ultra-budget portable" option is to get a Casio SA and a digital FX pedal. Combine that with a line-in to a DAW setup, and a lo-fi instrumental album is totally within reach.)
Yeah I performed a bunch of live shows in Mojave with just a monotribe I had an op1 but the USB on it snapped off during a show and it killed it. A painfully expensive loss compared to a $60 pocket operator being broken.
While I have never used one, I am such a huge fan of this one particular band Buerak that I had to find out how their beats were made and it was Korg Volca. Buerak is just a guitarist and a bassist, their 'drummer' is the Volca Beats and I think it's also the secret sauce. Many late-soviet bands were into New Wave and made use of synths/drum machines, Buerak - whether they claim this as an influence or not - is clearly influenced by these bands (most famous would be Kino), but the Volca sound is just so much more dynamic - and it is accessible. It's pretty cool that these guys, who ostensibly do not have a lot of money (from kind of a B-rate city in Russia), were able to make such dope music.
Can anyone recommend a good synth that will be fun to play with but not too confusing for 3–5 year old kids? (With adult helpers who have some basic piano experience but don’t know much about synths.)
Just jump on CL or your local equivalent and grab something < $100. Its not like your 5yo is going to appreciate the difference much. They'll pick up whatever you throw at them.
This is a big hit in my household, and also has light-up keys so I can learn the songs my kid likes and play them on the big synths. Likewise, it takes a lot of physical abuse (getting dropped, a lot) and is fine. https://www.amazon.com/VTech-Record-and-Learn-KidiStudio/dp/...
The human voice is one of the most amazing analog synths. Let them learn to speak and sing before dropping what's fundamentally mathematical on them. A keyboard with presents will do just fine once the motor control is good enough and the hands big enough, perhaps. A set of pots and spoons makes for a fun drum kit, too, by the way. You are primarily concerned about creativity, isn't it?
There’s no arguing it - Korg did the mini-synth thing before Teenage Engineering. Actually, Korg, Roland, Moog and Waldorf (among others) all did it before Teenage Engineering.
As a musician and synth lover, I don’t know anyone who uses the TE gear as a serious musical equipment. They’re widely considered to be in the toy or novelty realm, except the OP-1, which is saved by being absurdly expensive for what it is.
Disagree, people went nuts over the Monotron because up to that point all the established synth companies had been saying 'analog is too expensive, be happy with digital' and boutique manufacturers couldn't compete due to economies of scale and relatively high setup costs.
With the Monotrons, Korg made a risky reputational bet on the idea that Pick-and-place assembly technology and tiny modern components could deliver the low costs and satisfying sound that synth nerds expected, selling the same functionality for $60 something that people were used to paying $300 to get. Any toy manufacturer could have done this of course, but Korg recreated the widely-loved MS-20 filter, making it irresistible to analog fetishists - at a price low enough for consumers to take a risk on it not sounding 'as good as the original'. Except that...it did. So then they repeated the stunt with two other Monotrons.
Then they built a larger one for double the price that had a more fully featured monosynth in it, and around the same time started dropping schematics publicly and encouraging people to modify them. By the time the Volcas hit the market the bleep squad was fully in love with Korg after a 30 year cool spell, and they had shifted the entire bottom end of the synth market. Several years on, Even Roland is making analog again and there is an absolute renaissance in terms of both classic synth clones and wild new innovations.
Teenage Engineering in contrast went the Apple route of very high quality industrial design, super-accessible user interface, and a high price - and they did very well with their OP-1 synth, which offers a unique combination of synthesis, sequencing/recording, and portability. The Pocket Operators are fine little synths that have opened up a bridge to the lower end of the market and allowed them to introduce several other products in the middle that don't cannibalize sales of their flagship OP-1, but I don't think it's accurate to say they're 'influential'; they answer the question of 'could you implement a decent synth plugin in hardware for cheap' (yes) and come from a company that's small enough to remind people of the DIY/kit synth designers while being established enough to design and ship a product that's complete without doing any actual work or waiting for software stability from a lone programmer. They also sell semi-modular analog synths whose enclosure is built out of cardboard, Ikea-style, but don't require anything like soldering or component selection - in short, delivering the DIY feel without the possibility of messing it up.
They're cool little synths, and TE is an influential company at the top end of its range, but you're the only person I've ever heard suggesting the operators' have had any impact on the market other than slightly expanding the range of stocking stuffer options during gifting season.
>With the Monotrons, Korg made a risky reputational bet on the idea that Pick-and-place assembly technology and tiny modern components could deliver the low costs and satisfying sound that synth nerds expected
>Several years on, Even Roland is making analog again and there is an absolute renaissance in terms of both classic synth clones and wild new innovations.
So much of the contemporary synth market can be traced directly back to that gamble by Korg - the Volcas obviously, the Arturia Brute series, Yamaha's Reface series, Roland and Behringer's desktop modules, the IK Uno, most of Modal's products, perhaps even the modular renaissance.
Korg proved to everyone else that the market was crying out for instruments that harked back to the heritage of classic synths but at an affordable price and in a portable package. They reinvented the hardware synth for the VST generation - customers who didn't want a full-size keyboard and a tour-worthy chassis but did want a tactile experience and authentic sounds, customers who were used to buying instruments in affordable bite-size chunks. The Monotron doesn't look like much, but it started a revolution in the synth business.
https://www.korg-volca.com/en/
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/12/22/569092364/...