Review: Korg KO-1 Kaossilator

Aug 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By David Battino

           
 

HEAR THE SOUND OF ONE HAND GROOVING

BONUS MATERIAL
Download the Spec Sheet as a pdf

Within five minutes of touching the Korg KO-1 Kaossilator at Winter NAMM, I knew I wanted to play more. This palm-size, battery-powered synth and audio looper sounds fantastic, and its one-finger interface delivers musical results right away. But the Kaossilator also offers far more range and expression than you'd expect from a nonprogrammable synth under $200.

The Kaossilator is the latest in a series of touch pad-driven products from Korg, starting with the original Kaoss Pad effects processor, a 2000 EM Editors' Choice Award winner. When I reviewed the flagship KP3 Kaoss Pad (see the July 2007 issue, available at emusician.com), the synthesizer patches were one of my favorite parts, so I was eager to see how synthesis translated to the smaller package.

Top-Panel Tour

FIG. 1: With rich sounds derived from the Korg Radias, the battery-powered Kaossilator is a one-finger party to go. Its onboard audio looper lets you build 4-bar grooves through endless overdubs.

The Kaossilator looks like a yellow version of Korg's smallest Kaoss Pad, the Mini-KP (see Fig. 1). The metal top panel wraps around the front and back, covering a sturdy plastic body. A 2.5 × 2-inch x-y touch pad dominates the top face. As you slide your finger around the pad, the 3-digit LED display above it lights segments to roughly indicate your finger's location. The pad's smaller size relative to the KP3's makes it hard to hit specific notes, but the Scale function can help.

Above the touch pad are three buttons and a detented knob to select programs and adjust values. The buttons do different things depending on whether you click them, hold them, or press them in combination. Nonetheless, I quickly got the hang of using them, because all their basic functions are clearly labeled on the panel. In fact, the entire Kaossilator manual is printed on a single sheet of paper. Beginning electronic musicians would have benefited from definitions of the jargon, but this is an instrument that rewards experimentation quickly.

Kaoss on the Side

A fourth button, Gate Arp, lives on the case's front edge. It turns on the Gate Arpeggiator, which applies one of 50 rhythmic patterns to the note that you're holding on the touch pad. The patterns range from simple quarter notes to swinging grooves. A tiny card shows the rhythms in piano-roll notation; I scanned it and enlarged it for easier reading (see Web Clip 1).

Next to the Gate Arp button is the headphone jack and volume knob. Two holes let you attach a string or strap so you can hang the Kaossilator from your neck, Flavor Flav-style. The left side of the case holds the power switch. Although it's marked On and Standby, the Kaossilator resets to default settings and clears the loop-recorder memory when you switch to Standby.

FIG. 2: Other than a 3.5 mm headphone jack, the Kaossilator’s only outputs are two unbalanced RCA jacks.

On the back of the unit are the power jack, a pair of holes for attaching a security cable, and a pair of RCA jacks for line-level output (see Fig. 2). I didn't hear hiss from the outputs; this is a clean-sounding little synth.

Touch Pad of Genius

The 100 preset sounds are divided into 7 categories (see the specifications chart online and Web Clip 2). In general, left-right pad movements change the pitch, and up-down movements control the filter, volume, or LFO. But many patches, especially the drums and effects, have more unusual routings; be sure to peruse the manual for details. You can set the x-axis to one of 31 standard or exotic scales, or turn pitch quantization off for smooth sweeps.

The sounds tend toward the electronic, with lots of thick sawtooths, rasping pulse waves, and mournful squares. I particularly liked the theremin lead (program 03), although having the pitches quantized through the Scale function made me wish for a third controller to add vibrato. Here's hoping a future Kaoss instrument adds pressure sensitivity to the pad.

The ten acoustic patches — piano, trumpet, sax, and so on — are a mixed bag. They're not terribly realistic, but they do add an organic contrast when layered in the looper. Basses — again, with the exception of acoustic emulations — are excellent: big, bold, and cutting.

I really enjoyed the chord patches. Vertical pad movements tease out harmonics or even change chord quality from major to minor.