Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hello! Ujiie here again.
The Korg M1.
Say what you will, but the M1 is
undeniably the original Workstation.
It was a big hit too. I had one!
And just recently,
I got my hands on one again.
It's back! The M1 sound!
And how good is it? It's great!
Playing it brings back memories of back then...
Uh, it must've been the latter half of the 80s?
That sparkly, shimmering kind of sound?
Very characteristic of the M1 sound.
Another thing that amazed the world was this piano sound.
Compared to the gorgeous piano sounds we have today,
it's a bit lackluster,
but boy does it work well with dance music!
No complaints!
How's the brass?
The level of perfection achievable
with a PCM sampling based tone generator
was realized with the M1.
AND it's a workstation, AND the on-board FX are good...
The first thing that hit me was the beauty of the reverb.
That was it.
Of course, editing is possible. Let's try the filter.
Open it up, or close it.
Being able to do edits quickly was a good feature.
Let's edit the effects.
It was SO easy to edit sounds.
The user-friendliness of the interface was a big plus.
The guitar sounds…
You could play like that, or you could give it a hip hop twist.
Just play it like a keyboard arpeggio.
I sure did. Fantastic!
I used that patch quite a lot too. And this fretless bass.
I can't tell you how often I used that…
This kind of orchestral sound too,
the effects are so high quality,
it gives this kind of sound a special presence.
This sound sits somewhere between a synth pad
and a real orchestra ensemble sound.
Really impressive sound design. Pan flute next.
Another sound with M1 written all over it.
The drum sounds were good too.
So sharp.
We threw in the towel when we heard this.
These ethnic sounds were great too, this one is Pan Mallet.
I'm sure there are lots of you watching this and feeling pretty nostalgic right about now.
Next, electric piano. You've got to remember, prior to the arrival of the M1,
the DX7 just dominated as far as electric piano sounds go.
I used the heck out of this sound too. Seriously.
Like I said, the M1's ethnic sounds were SO good.
I used this sound a lot too.
Next, organ.
This is basically a Hammond type organ sound,
but man was it popular in house music.
I remember using this one a lot too.
Kind of an exciting sound.
These were nice too. Dream Pad.
Another one I used a lot.
Choir sound next.
Now this next one is such a famous M1 sound.
Slap bass.
It's that kind of sound, but without using it AS a slap bass,
say you have a live bassist, and instead play the higher register like so.
Kind of like a clavinet phrase.
I have memories of playing it like that.
It's interesting to think outside the box sometimes.
Ah this! This is another famous sound.
Now, let's look at Combinations.
A Combi is a sound made up of a number of individual program sounds.
Like this brass sound.
That's got two sounds layered, so it's really fat.
Or how about this one?
So you've got split sounds like that,
and orchestra sounds too.
Percussion, brass and a string section.
Three sounds layered. Or how's this?
Another split. You can make a variety of sounds.
This next one is like a stack of synths all MIDI'd together, thus the name Midi Stack.
You can layer synth brass sounds like so...
Massive sound.
So you've seen (heard) single programs and combinations, but there is one more
more thing about the M1 that was revolutionary, and that was its sequencer.
With the onboard sequencer, you can put songs together, this was the
birth of the workstation.
Everyone was ecstatic: "You mean with just an M1 I can make songs?! I can perform?!"
Big excitement. Here's how it works.
Drums.
That'll work. Ok, assign drums to track one,
Ok, there's your click.
That's that.
Perfect. Ok next, on track two,
let's go with a bass sound.
That's good.
Track two recorded.
Next, on track three...
That's how you do that.
Spot on.
Just keep going.
Let's use this next.
You just keep adding songs,
uh, parts, I mean. Absolutely brilliant.
So, whatever is said about the M1,
it was the starting point for the continuing evolution of synthesizers,
especially workstation style synths,
no question about it, this is what started it.
I really recommend you try one out,
if you see one at a vintage shop, fire it up!
Very simple front panel, not a single ***!
There's only this one slider to change values.
But the screen is easy to navigate,
and you simply press a button and then edit that parameter. The insides are all digital.
The Korg M1!
Translation & captions by:
SWCreativeJapan