kaossssssssssss
Jun. 26th, 2008 08:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solipsistnationSo, I got me a Korg Kaossilator. I have played with it for one day, and here are my impressions.
- this is the coolest piece of portable electronic music gear I've played with since the MC202.
- this is also the most frustrating piece of portable electronic music gear I've played with since the MC202.
The touchpad control is brilliant. It's totally intuitive. I was able to sit down and make music within minutes of picking the thing up.
On the other hand, limiting it to 3 buttons and a dial (and the hidden button on the bottom!) is annoying. Half the functions require combinations of button-presses. At least they're all labelled on there...
Making loops and playing with them is SO EASY.
On the other hand, you get two measures. TWO? Not four? 8 beats, not 16? WHAT? Would it have cost THAT much more to put in a 128k memory chip instead of a 64k chip? 4 measures means you can pretend it's a song. 2 is just weird.
And no memory. Make 2 measures of music, turn it off, it's gone! Is flash THAT expensive? Or, well. You'd need to add another button to give it the ability to save patterns to flash RAM, and that would mean a case redesign (yeah, they use the same case for the mini Kaoss Pad and the Kaossilator).
99 patches is okay. I suspect they limited it based on the display, though. And how about that display? You know you're using an instrument built into a glorified effects pedal when you get a 2-digit fluorescent display.
The patches are decent, but very generic. 20 sound effects patches (even if they ARE 8-bit video game noises and stuff) is a waste of at least 10 patch slots, too. Give me more instruments. Or more drum loops.
The drum loops are pretty cool, and using the patterns to make more complex loops by sequencing touchpad taps is easy and satisfying. It works pretty well, considering how limited it really is.
And that, I guess, is the crux of it. For 200 bucks, this is a VERY limited instrument. No sync of any kind (MIDI, trigger, nothing), no way to save patterns, nothing. Where the MC202 was a weird little sequency sketchpad thing, this is most like a musical post-it note. A post-it note that falls off the wall and is lost forever as soon as you turn around. It's even bright yellow. But it's so much fun to mess with! Too bad it sounds so much like itself...
So, overall, it's neat. It's portable and cool and a nice pocket music toy, but the limitations are crazy. It's almost like Korg decided to ship a proof-of-concept prototype. $200 is too expensive, but you can't even find them used on eBay for enough less than list price to make it worth the hassle. They're fun! You can make neat noises! I really want to see version 2, though. Right now it's not really mature. That doesn't meant it's not NEAT, it's just that it's as frustrating as it is cool.
- this is the coolest piece of portable electronic music gear I've played with since the MC202.
- this is also the most frustrating piece of portable electronic music gear I've played with since the MC202.
The touchpad control is brilliant. It's totally intuitive. I was able to sit down and make music within minutes of picking the thing up.
On the other hand, limiting it to 3 buttons and a dial (and the hidden button on the bottom!) is annoying. Half the functions require combinations of button-presses. At least they're all labelled on there...
Making loops and playing with them is SO EASY.
On the other hand, you get two measures. TWO? Not four? 8 beats, not 16? WHAT? Would it have cost THAT much more to put in a 128k memory chip instead of a 64k chip? 4 measures means you can pretend it's a song. 2 is just weird.
And no memory. Make 2 measures of music, turn it off, it's gone! Is flash THAT expensive? Or, well. You'd need to add another button to give it the ability to save patterns to flash RAM, and that would mean a case redesign (yeah, they use the same case for the mini Kaoss Pad and the Kaossilator).
99 patches is okay. I suspect they limited it based on the display, though. And how about that display? You know you're using an instrument built into a glorified effects pedal when you get a 2-digit fluorescent display.
The patches are decent, but very generic. 20 sound effects patches (even if they ARE 8-bit video game noises and stuff) is a waste of at least 10 patch slots, too. Give me more instruments. Or more drum loops.
The drum loops are pretty cool, and using the patterns to make more complex loops by sequencing touchpad taps is easy and satisfying. It works pretty well, considering how limited it really is.
And that, I guess, is the crux of it. For 200 bucks, this is a VERY limited instrument. No sync of any kind (MIDI, trigger, nothing), no way to save patterns, nothing. Where the MC202 was a weird little sequency sketchpad thing, this is most like a musical post-it note. A post-it note that falls off the wall and is lost forever as soon as you turn around. It's even bright yellow. But it's so much fun to mess with! Too bad it sounds so much like itself...
So, overall, it's neat. It's portable and cool and a nice pocket music toy, but the limitations are crazy. It's almost like Korg decided to ship a proof-of-concept prototype. $200 is too expensive, but you can't even find them used on eBay for enough less than list price to make it worth the hassle. They're fun! You can make neat noises! I really want to see version 2, though. Right now it's not really mature. That doesn't meant it's not NEAT, it's just that it's as frustrating as it is cool.
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Date: 2008-06-27 12:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-27 03:09 pm (UTC)Brand new. Came out a few months ago.
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Date: 2008-06-27 03:12 pm (UTC)