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

The Kaossilator furnishes a walloping big collection of sound effects, ranging from a cutesy Pac-Man gobble (program 74) to a spooky drone you can drive into raging feedback with a trip up the y-axis (program 60; see Web Clip 3). I asked the Kaossilator's sound designer why he included so many sound effects at the expense of more organic sounds. You can read his interesting reasoning in Web Clip 4; in short, it's because sound effects are easy to layer over other music yet difficult to control from normal keyboards.

The drum and drum-pattern programs are especially fun. With the latter, a groove starts playing as soon as your finger touches the pad, and subsequent movements change the timbre or bring individual drums (or synchronized echo effects) in and out. Once again, though, I would have liked some more natural sounds such as jazz and rock drums.

Looping, from Pad to Verse

What makes the Kaossilator especially engrossing is its infinite overdubber. Hold down the Loop Rec/Play button, and the instrument records everything you do on the pad, up to a length of eight beats. It even does some crossfading at the loop point, so you can wrap sustaining sounds around (see Web Clip 5).

Eight beats — two bars in 4/4 time — is disappointingly short. Even a 4-bar loop breathes much better, because it gives you time to set up tension and release. Luckily, Korg included an “Easter egg” that doubles the loop memory (see the sidebar “Secret Hack” for details).

The performances are recorded as audio, which means you chop into the loop (or create a gap) if you change the tempo; the audio does not time-stretch. Holding down the Loop Rec/Play button allows you to set the current recording so that you can undo subsequent overdubs. Unfortunately, playback stops during the setting process, which breaks the creative flow. You can also spot erase the recording; again, set tracks are not erased. All is lost on power-down, though, so you'll need to record the Kaossilator's analog output in real time if you want to save your loops. I got in the habit of carrying a tiny flash recorder for that purpose (see Web Clip 6).

Finger-Flickin' Good

Fun, affordable, well built, rich sounding, and unique, the Kaossilator is an instrument I constantly find myself looking forward to playing. I even kept the Kaossilator on my car seat for a while so I could play it through the stereo during red lights and traffic jams, but that got a little too distracting.

Any criticisms must be tempered by the prospect of having this much sonic goodness in such a small, affordable package. If I were to spec out a Kaossilator II, it would have longer loop time, buttons for both thumbs, pressure sensitivity or a mod wheel for times you want vibrato and volume control, and many more percussion sounds and acoustic models. I'd also want an SD card slot to off-load loops and jams. Of course, those upgrades would bump up the cost, so I think Korg made some good trade-offs, especially considering the hidden loop-length feature.

Touch pads can be remarkably intuitive and expressive, and I'm looking forward to more great things in the Kaoss series. Korg now has mini Kaoss devices in red and yellow — how about some Kaoss in every color of the rainbow?

David Battino (batmosphere.com) is the coauthor of The Art of Digital Music (Backbeat Books, 2004) and the audio editor of the O'Reilly Digital Media Web site (digitalmedia.oreilly.com).

Secret Hack

My biggest wish for the Kaossilator was 4-bar looping, but it turns out that it's already there. Holding down the Loop Rec and Tap buttons while powering up will temporarily double the maximum loop length from 8 beats to 16 (the display will show DLY to confirm the new mode). This hack works by disabling the undo buffer, which means you can no longer fix overdubs, but the extra musicality of 4-bar phrases is well worth it.

PRODUCT SUMMARY

PROS: Fantastic sound. Extremely portable. Solid construction. Nice price. Easy yet deep.

CONS: Maximum loop length with undo is eight beats. Locking overdubs pauses playback. Cutesy sound effects may grow tiresome.

Korg
korg.com