With the rise of the modern technology, industrial sectors were not the only sectors where technology began to dominate. It was virtually everywhere as much as it could be when the technology started its rapid development. This permeated into the world of musical instruments as well.
Musical instruments has gone through various stages of changes throughout the history. One of the most noticeable pieces of instrument that has also appeared to be one of the most wanted pieces of instrument in the history of modern instruments. This fantastic device is called a synthesizer which is widely known for its design comprised of various electronic circuits and transistors and other electronic components that produce sounds. With such an instrument, various sounds can be created and simulated and Korg M1 is one of the most notable instruments when it comes to its unique sounds.
Korg M1 coming to the market
Korg M1 is an astounding piece of synthesizer/ workstation that was the most demanding and was used by lot of late 80s and 90s music stars including bands like Pink Floyd. But what is a workstation? A workstation is any musical instrument that is made up of a combination of a sound module, keyboard and musical sequencer. This concept was not first invented by Korg but rather been there with the coming of Fairlight CMI.
Nonetheless, what could be done with Korg and the standard of sound quality was quite discreet than others. Which led to the sale of Korg M1 around 250,000 units. This helped Korg M1 to gain the reputation of the most highest selling synthesizers in the history.
This creative madness was released in 1988 and stayed in production until 1995. The prices for this instrument ranged around 2,100 USD which made it quite affordable with that amount of features and sounds available for work.
The functionality of Korg M1
M1 features a whole 16- voice polyphony. Meaning you are able to play 16 note simultaneously, without the keys cancelling out each other until 17 note is hit. Who is going to do that for you?
Not only this is a crucial feature of Korg M1 but also a whole range of 16 oscillators it has as well as 4MB of a PCM waveform ROM. With this, the level of sounds you can already create is beyond enough. Moreover, Korg M1 was able to give you brighter and high in harmonics.
This piece comes with a full blown of 61 keys. This would allow you to play the lows and highs, jam on with various leads, attack sounds and perform many other tasks. Of course, each key comes in with a velocity and aftertouch sensitivity to be expressive as possible. This gave musicians and players an extensive ability to express their feelings through Korg M1.
Each of the note is programmable with one oscillator or an 8-note polyphony with two oscillators. There is also a sleek joystick to express and alter the pitch, commonly known as pitch bender and modulation control. This one is needed for having an opportunity to modulate sounds or to wiggle them adding vibration. This is done of course by adding the amount of salty Lfo or Low frequency oscillation you want in the sound. For programming such parameters, you can use the help of the LCD display that is sitting on the top middle of the interface. There is a bunch of buttons that is there which is not so difficult and complex to understand but rather simple to program.
The sequencer of Korg M1
M1 comes in with eight track midi sequencer. This allows you to record or create your tracks and play the sections of tracks in loop while you are jamming on it or alter the sounds and do some other fun stuff. What you can do is absolutely unpredictable unless you have solid sounds in mind.
Along with this, there are extra LFOs for various vibrato and filter modulation effects. Definitely, an ADSR is there to give you the ability to control the sounds over time. M1 also comes in with built-in effects such as reverb, delay, phaser, tremelo, exciter, ensemble, flanger, chorus and many others.
Needless to say, it is worth getting your hands on one of the M1 synthesisers so that you could see and hear the potential roar of this beast.