The Synthesizer by Vail Mark

Author:Vail, Mark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2014-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

For hands-on, realtime control of an effects processor, you can’t beat the Kaoss Pad series from Korg. The original came out in 1999. This is the Kaoss Pad Quad, introduced in January 2011. Whereas other Kaoss Pads provide multiple memory locations for different types of effects, the Quad delivers four different effects sections—looping, modulation (distortion, flanging, phasing, and ducking compression), filtering/pitch-shifting, and delay/reverb—that you can enable, disable, and freeze independently. It’s really quite fun, powerful, and greatsounding. (Courtesy of Korg)

In 2007 Korg introduced the miniKP, a small processer that has ninety-nine different effects, a tap-tempo button, a three-digit LED display, and one hundred presets. It’s missing MIDI output and the mic input, but it does an excellent job of processing sounds as you control what it’s doing from the pad, the tap-tempo feature works effectively, and you can use it anywhere since it will run on batteries.

The Korg Kaoss Pad Quad (KPQ) arrived in 2011. It lacks MIDI and presets and requires AC power, but it has a 1/4″ mic input along with RCA I/O. One aspect that makes the Quad special is that you can independently engage any of four types of effects at once, and you can independently freeze a pad position for any of them to maintain what that particular effect is doing. Available effects are a looper, a modulator, a filter, and a delay/reverb—each of which can produce five different effects. Among the outstanding effects are reverse loop, which allows you to vary the loop length by moving your finger vertically on the pad; the loop slicer and grain shifter, both of which repeat part of the incoming audio and break it down into different sections as you move your finger around the pad; the decimator, which reduces the sampling frequency and the length of the data bit to make the audio grungy and lo-fi; the pitch-shifter; any of the filters—low-, high-, and bandpass; and tape echo, which simulates different anomalies of tape-echo machines as you touch different parts of the pad. Another effective KPQ feature is auto BPM detection, which does a reasonable job of sensing a tempo and synchronizing its clock to beats per minute—a convenient function when you’re focusing on performance, and it’s relatively easy to click a few times on the KPQ’s tap button if auto-sync strays too far from the true tempo.

While you can certainly accomplish much of what the Kaoss Pads do using other devices and technologies plus a considerable amount of thought and work, Korg’s already done all of that for you and served up the functionality in reasonably economical forms.

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