These videos capture a presentation by Korg’s Tatsuya Takahashi at the 2020 Most Wanted: Music ‘hybrid music conference’.
Most Wanted: Music (MW:M) was held Nov 3-5, 2020 as a hybrid online/offline music event.
Takahashi is known to Synthtopia readers for his work as Chief Engineer at Korg, where he helped create some of their most popular recent instruments, including the monotribe, the volca line and the monologue. He is now CEO of Korg Berlin.
The first video is Takahashi’s Powers of Ten – A Synthematic Journey. The video – taking inspiration from Charles and Ray Eames film Powers Of Ten and Kees Boeke’s 1957 book, Cosmic View – is described as “a journey into the depths of some of Tatsuya’s instrument design highlights.” The film features images and sounds of the Takahashi’s Minilogue, Monologue, Volca, Triggers and Granular Convolver.
The second video, below, captures his presentation at the MW:M festival:
“Making a living from designing musical instruments is a funny business. On one hand they are commercial products. On the other, they are forms of expression,” notes Takahashi. “From the big hit volcas to the personal projects that are painfully close to my soul, each project has a different story to tell, but there’s also a continuum that runs through them all.”
A man with many strings to his bow- musician, engineer, linguist; a natural communicator. Well done.
As a LONG denizen of the synthesizer world with a resume that includes Roland, Serge, Con Brio and Wavemakers, as an electronic music educator for 11 years, early in my career and as just a synth geek, I can say with some objective grounding that Korg is probably the most innovative major Synthesizer company in the world. As a product specialist for Roland who had to compete with Korg back in the 70s and 80s, I might cringe to hear myself say that, those many years ago. But today, its just obvious. And the reason is, they have guys like Takahashi on their team.
There are tons of amazing things going on in synthesis right now, but of the big manufacturers, Korg is the one that’s doing the most interesting synths, by a large margin.
They’ve got three of the most interesting digital synths with the modwave, opsix and wavestate.
The prologue/minilogue xd synths are the most interesting hybrid synths currently available.
Their reissues are expensive, but are true reissues, like the new Prophet 5 or the new Moog modulars.
Their volcas are cheaper than anybody else’s entry level synths and are all pretty cool.
And they’re no slouches in the software department. Gadget is especially cool!
Takahashi was a big part of this, but they’ve obviously got a culture of attracting and keeping people with his type of talent.