Korg Kaossilator

What is a Korg Kaossilator?

It does what it says on the tin: "dynamic phrase synthesizer". Korg's website explains it a little better using unashamed marketing-speak: The next innovation in the highly acclaimed line of Korg DJ tools has arrived! The KAOSSILATOR is a new pocket sized instrument that packs Korg's world renowned synth sound along with innovative performance features into an ultra-compact unit. Anyone can instantly play musical phrases by simply tapping or sliding their finger across the KAOSSILATOR's touch pad - no previous skills required! The KAOSSILATOR is a portable, travel friendly device that runs on batteries, so you can have fun creating music anywhere your life takes you, with seemingly endless possibilities.

So, in essence, it's a cut-down synthesiser and a basic sequencer packed into a device that you can slip into a large pocket.

And why would I want one? Umm .. I'm not really sure - it seemed like a fun gadget and I've often imagined myself as a musician frustrated by a lack of manual dexterity. In truth, the Koassilator will probably be of limited value to a proper musician, but it does give the musically inept an opportunity to make some interesting loops with the minimum of effort and talent.

Where to buy?
For the record, I bought my Kaossilator from decks.co.uk. I mention this because they're cheap, they offer free next day delivery by courier and they were extremely helpful when I called them to arrange delivery to Fort Ottaky. I don't receive any commission, kick-backs or any other form of payola from decks.co.uk, I just want to spread the word about their excellent service.

What's it do?

The Kaossilator comes with 100(ish) preset patches. There are 20 Lead instruments, 10 Acoustic, 20 Bass, 10 Chord, 20 Sound Effects, and 10 Drum sounds along with 10 percussion Patterns. You cannot edit the patches, and you cannot load new patches - what you hear is what you are stuck with. Luckily, the supplied sounds offer quite a bit of variety in themselves, the touchpad offers a fair amount of control over the sound and the gate arpeggiator adds another dimension to what are already very good quality patches. While it would be great to be able to have even more control of the sounds from the Kaossilator, I guess there's a limit to how much Korg can squeeze into the little box for 100 GBP.

You play the Kaossilator by means of the large touchpad on the front, either tapping it or stroking your finger across it. Exactly where you touch the touchpad determines the nature of the sound produced - usually the tone of the note is controlled by the X axis, and an audio effect by the Y axis. The touchpad takes a little getting used to and, I guess, is more suited to improvisation than trying to bash out a melody precisely. I don't have particularly fat fingers, but I still find it a little tricky to hit a single note without activating those either side of it too which is quite noticable on some of the lead instruments, like the piano. In such cases, a stylus of some sort (I've used a biro cap) is very useful.

The sequencer defaults to 8 beats, but you can adjust that downwards if you like. You record into the sequencer by pressing and holding the "LOOP REC/PLAY" button and using the touchpad - and that means using two hands on the touchpad while recording an element can be a little tricky. When you release the "LOOP REC/PLAY" button you have the option of cancelling the phrase that you just played or "fix"ing (saving) it to the previously recorded sequence. In this way you can build up sequences of instruments to overdub one on top of the other.

It's worth noting that you cannot save the sequences that you create on the Kaossilator across power cycles, so you need to have some method of saving your music over the twin RCA jacks on the unit. This, to me, is the one major failure of the Kaossilator - especially as it's a portable unit - that you cannot save what you've created unless you also have a portable recorder with you, or you're sitting next to your PC.

The battery life is not too bad considering that you get about 4 hours worth of use out of a set of alkaline batteries, but rechargeable batteries are a no-brainer if you're going to use the Kaossilator a lot while away from a suitable power supply. The headphone socket provides plenty of volume and a clean output, and the RCA phono jacks mean that you can plug the device into anything that will accept a line level input.

Other neat features include being able to set the key of the instrument that you're playing, adjust the tempo and choose different scales. Being able to change the key is very useful for eeking just a little more out of each of the patches and is definitely worth experimenting with.

Overall, the Kaossilator is a neat toy rather than a serious musical instrument. If somebody as musically hopeless as myself can get something arguably useful out of it, that has to be a good thing. About 20 years ago I splashed a grand on a synthesiser which I sold shortly afterwards because I couldn't coax anything useful out of it - the Kaossilator is a fraction of the price and infinitely more fun.

Some rather poor samples:

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