Musik Indonesia

The Micro's keyboard is a 37-key C-C type, incorporating velocity response, but lacking aftertouch sensitivity, and it's composed of mini-keys, which is a little strange to my way of thinking. Serious players will be dismayed by it, and yet it's not quite aimed at non-players either, as they would surely have been quite happy with even fewer notes?

Korg Microkorg £399 pros Powerful, convincing analogue synthesis. Compact design. Simple, effective real-time editing controls. Flexible vocoder with external audio inputs. Dedicated microphone included. Optional battery operation. Good MIDI controller capabilities. cons Limited polyphony. Mini-keyboard not suited to 'serious' playing. Involved editing can be a pain. Small, sometimes cryptic LED display. External power supply. summary The Microkorg sounds great, and may suit some live applications, but others are going to find fault with the mini-keyboard, four-note polyphony and fiddly in-depth editing regime. It's good as a MIDI controller, though, and the battery operation allows you to use it on the move. Whether you like it will therefore depend on your particular needs, but it's definitely worth an audition.

There are 128 program memories, any of which are available for overwriting with your own creations, though the factory presets can be recalled at any time in future if required. The programs are arranged in two 'sides' of eight banks of eight programs. The two 'sides' are selected by a dedicated button, and you access the eight banks via a large knob which clicks around a questionable series of genre titles, such as Trance, Electro and Hip-Hop/Vintage. I'm not convinced as to how useful these titles are, to be honest — it all smacks a bit of home-keyboard territory, and anyway, once you've edited a few of the programs, the chances are the descriptions will no longer be valid. Maybe simply numbering the banks from one to eight might have been preferable; this is, after all, how the Microkorg's simple three-digit LED denotes the bank and program numbers... Programs within the current side/bank are accessed by eight numbered buttons just below, and using these buttons in conjunction with the Shift key allows you to access various housekeeping functions. Most of the Microkorg's buttons are illuminated, which is useful, though I doubt the panel legending would be visible on a darkened stage.

I was concerned on first looking at the Microkorg that I was in for hard time programming the machine, given its relative paucity of controls (see the 'User Interface' box towards the end of this article). To a great extent, I'm afraid my fears were realised. If you are heavily into sound programming, I'd strongly suggest you find a suitable computer editor, or get used to 'ship-in-a-bottle'-style twiddling. Also, thanks to the absence of any other form of screen, Korg have had to resort to cryptic LED messages to display some of the parameter values, and it will take time to become familiar with these.

The Microkorg's basic synthesis architecture is fairly normal for anyone familiar with analogue synthesis, and is very similar to that of Korg's MS2000. The smallest building-block of sound is referred to as a 'Timbre', this being the result of a pair of oscillators (plus a noise generator), a multi-mode filter, amp, envelope generators, LFOs and virtual patching blocks (of which more later). Either of the two possible Timbres may be solo'ed during editing and Timbres can be swapped and copied to aid programming. The Timbres are then presented to the input of the effects, which consist of a single modulation effect, a delay and an EQ processor, before the result arrives at the stereo output. Although the Microkorg is bi-timbral in the sense of being capable of producing two synth sounds at once, it is not possible to address the timbres separately over two different MIDI channels — so you couldn't have a sequence and bass line playing different notes at the same time.

At best, the Microkorg is four-voice polyphonic, and the voices are allocated depending on the voice assignment set for each of the two Timbres. If both Timbres are layered together in Poly mode, the synth will become two-note polyphonic. Mono mode is provided to emulate a true monophonic synth, whilst Unison mode layers all four Voices together with a variable degree of Unison Detune to create a richer, fatter sound.

Oscillator pitch is variable over a range of four octaves, with fine-tuning to one-cent steps. The range of effect of the bend lever from -12 to +12 semitones is adjustable, as is the vibrato depth imparted by the mod wheel. Portamento is available, and portamento time is adjustable, but unfortunately there is no option to specify a fixed portamento rate, making longer portamento times sluggish over short key spans, and rendering old Minimoog portamento lead sounds a tad difficult to emulate convincingly.

Of the two oscillators, Osc1 has the lion's share of the waveforms, with a complement of saw, square, triangle, sine, vox, DWGS (of which more in a moment) and noise types. Alternatively, Osc1 can be replaced altogether by the signal arriving at either of the two audio inputs. Oscillator sync and ring modulation are also available and both may be utilised simultaneously. A pair of controllers assigned to Osc1 allow for a range of basic sound-shaping features to be applied to the raw waveform — these vary with the selected waveform, but include pulse-width, cross-modulation (with Osc2), and the introduction of higher harmonics into the waveform. These are sophisticated wave-bending features and very welcome in such an unassuming synth.

The 64 DWGS (Digital Waveform Generator System) waves hark back to the days of the DW8000. These waveforms are the result of additive harmonic synthesis, and usually sound glassy, hard-edged and 'digital'. They allow the creation of all kinds of metallic, bell and electric piano sounds which are normally outside the scope of a purely analogue synth.

Osc2 is an rather simpler affair, capable of generating only saw, square and triangle waveforms. Independent tuning is available to generate detuning or musical intervals in semitone steps. Once both oscillators reach the mixer they are joined by a noise generator, independent of Osc1. Finally, each of the three signals may be individually attenuated before passing to the filter.

The Microkorg is supplied with its own mic for vocoding purposes, and although it's a little physically flimsy, it makes a fine job of it.

The filter is again surprisingly advanced, with options for a full-blooded 24dB-per-octave low-pass filter, in addition to 12dB-per-octave low-, high- and band-pass variants. In addition to its basic cutoff and resonance controls, the filter has its own dedicated ADSR envelope generator and key-tracking, both with variable positive or negative depth controls, and it will happily go into self-oscillation when the resonance control is turned up sufficiently high. Both the filter and amp envelope generators are of the ADSR type, with the option to force the envelope to reset to zero amplitude each time a new note is played, or to pick up from the release level of the previously played note.

In the amplifier section, there's a simple level control to determine the overall patch level, although this acts as a balance between Timbre 1 and 2 when a layered patch is created. A pan pot determines left/right balance and variable key-tracking will increase or decrease volume level across the keyboard. The amp section also offers a useful distortion processor, a simple on/off control which relies on the levels set in the mixer to determine just how much distortion is applied.

The Microkorg's two LFOs are near-identical, with the exception that LFO2 offers an triangle wave rather than LFO1's sine wave, and also contains an unusual 'positive-only' square wave in place of LFO1's more usual positive/negative square wave. A positive-only wave can be useful, for example, where you might want a pitch warble to flip between the played pitch and a higher interval, whereas the more usual positive and negative wave would warble the pitch at above and below the played pitch. There's no positive-only equivalent for the sine or triangle wave, though, which could have been useful in simulating guitar vibrato. Key sync of the LFO is possible, as is tempo sync, so modulation can be synchronised to either the internal arpeggiator tempo, or an external MIDI Clock source at a variety of cycle values, from four beats per one cycle to one beat per two cycles.

As mentioned earlier, four so-called virtual patch routings are available, and it is here where much of the Microkorg's strength lies. Each Patch allows the selection of a modulation source and its application to a modulation destination, with a variable positive/negative intensity. Modulation sources include both LFOs, both envelope generators, velocity, keyboard tracking, and the mod and pitch wheels. Destinations include pitch, Osc2 tuning, noise level, filter cutoff, amplitude, pan and LFO2 frequency. As you might well imagine, this gives you scope for a whole world of modulatory mayhem, and some of the factory presets show what can be achieved with a little thought and application.