This playlist of videos, by Gattobus, is a series of Korg MS-20 tutorials, offering tips and tricks on getting the most out of the classic 70’s analog synth design and its modern recreations.
The tutorials cover paraphony, overdrive, drum synthesis, synthesizing natural sounds and more.
Excellent!
This excellent series has been around for a few years now. I am an experienced synthesist but Gattobus is very resourceful, so I definitely learned some cool tricks. I couldn’t help but look at the MS-20 a bit differently after watching.
Gattobus’s videos are critical for any player in order to enjoy the MS-20 to the fullest, alongside the great 20Patch site. There’s another great video, if I recall correctly, focused on pads, which gives you another hint at how that synth actually works. That said, despite being the Korg MS 20 one of the greatest analogue synths of all time, I sold my Mini after less than a couple years. The problem wasn’t even the programming phase itself (hard, but not unapproachable) as much as the low flexibility of that synth: I tried using it in rock, prog and pop-rock contexts, and it failed big time. I can only recommend it to electronic music enthusiasts (or just analogue’s), because its strong point is the uniqueness of its sound (some paraphonic patches, especially, are incredible), which also happens to be its weak point. For 500€, though, it’s worth a shot, especially if you already have a Moog and want to complete your analogue sound park (and want to enjoy the ’70s gear).
MS-20 is my favorite fate of all time, I really use it for many musical styles, including rock and pop synth, a truly organic analog sound and very adaptable to real instruments, it sounds raw, hot and aggressive, its whispering sounds as subwoofers are great, the best analog percussion sounds are here thanks to their noises and their 2 filters, fill in many aspects in a song, funky bass are also very good, lead sounds and duophonic pads are impressive, with this synthesizer I do hiphop , techno, house, pop, rock, jungle, uk garage … it is certainly unique and playing it with my guitar is the biggest experience that a synth can offer me, it is also a great processor to filter external sounds like a box of rhythms or sampler.