ShortScale.org

picked up one of these up, the guy selling it lived 5 mins away and i got it for a Very Good Price, my thought was to flip it immediately and nab myself £150. but stupidly, i plugged it in and played it, now i want to keep it.





(aplogies for huuuge pics, photobucket is bust on my phone and i couldn't resize them)

it sounds GREAT, i think it must have the Korg35 filter chip in it, it sounds different to my MS20 kit which is currently set to the later version. the resonance on the 10 is wilder and has weirder harmonics. had them both hooked up to the SQ1 sequencer for some bleeps and bloops...

the only things wrong with it are missing rubber feet (replaceable) and the master tuning being slightly flat. short term that just means tweaking the tuning knob to concert pitch, but it's an easy fix anyway.

niiicccccce!

boner town.

do want all of it

damn son

Nice swag, do you have to tune it every time you switch it on?

lorez wrote:Nice swag, do you have to tune it every time you switch it on?

Nah, I just turned the master pitch knob fractionally right and left it at that.

sweet.

I haven't looked at the MS10 before. What's your take on it and where would you be using it?

It seems to have a "poor man's MS20" vibe attached to it slightly, because, well it's basically a single oscillator version of it- except there's a bit more to it than that. I find the MS20 pretty complicated, the patchbay is a fucking mystery sometimes and it can also sound a bit one dimensional. The 10 is wayyy more intuitive to use (certainly for a dumbo like me) and it has a really nice patchable PWM, which immediately makes it sound fatter. (the MS20M module has patchable PWM, and the others can be modded for it).

I think I'll use it for gigging as a nice monosynth without risking damage to my MS20, which feels a bit more 'fragile' if I'm being honest (plus I'd use that way more in the house, it's already integrated into my setup, has midi & USB, etc).

(This also cost about the same as a 2nd hand MS20 mini, although they tend to go for 450-500 on ebay)

I’m tempted to buy a new synth atm.

Also, how do you find the SQ1?

Great find man. Totally underrated yet great wee synth.

I wish I knew anything about synths, I've always wanted to dabble. Looks cool nonetheless

lorez wrote:I’m tempted to buy a new synth atm.

Also, how do you find the SQ1?

oops, didn't see this, sorry!

i find it really useful, although it's by no means as flexible as a beatstep pro or anything. it's really handy for coming up with random-ish patterns and, dare i say, just having fun without drowning in a vast sea of possibility. i've heard folk complaining that it only works in one key, but that technically isn't true, you just have to play about with it and (maybe) understand a wee bit about scales.

you can sync it to volcas, which i find extremely useful, because i can set a master clock out on my MPC, send that via midi to the volca beats, sync that to the SQ-1, then take midi out back into the MPC so i can record the pattern and chop it up in the MPC sequencer. it means you can alter start points and loop stuff in different ways. probably the sort of thing you could do in seconds in a DAW, but there's no fun in that.

here's a quick phone vid (for chris's benefit, mainly) showing the SQ-1 controlling the MS20 and 10 simultaneously via CV (i didn't do much fiddling with the sequencing as i was trying to hold the phone steady)

it has gate on/off which tells it which notes to play, so if you turn any off it just misses them out but still plays a 4/4 bar, active step lets you play around with time signatures more, and you can get ployrhythmic stuff that way, then there's slide which is pretty self-explanatory, just adds a portamento between what ever notes you tell it to, and step jump which will trigger the start of the sequence from wherever you tell it to. you can also adjust the length of time the note will triggerfor (to make it more stuttery or smooth) and adjust the pattern itself in various ways, back, forward, up and down, random etc... you can also change the scales from major/minor/linear/chromatic (think this was on major on both rows).

(apologies about the phone mic sound, i just couldn't be arsed recording it through the interface and editing a video together, i'm a lazy, lazy man)

[youtube][/youtube]

Thanks Stewart that’s really good to see and hear. The ms20/10 sound great also. I could get lost in a simple sequence like that and just messing about with the synths

Thanks Stewart that’s really good to see and hear. The ms20/10 sound great also. I could get lost in a simple sequence like that and just messing about with the synths