Korg Z1

I have to start off by saying that I have owned this bit of kit for quite a while now and I am still really pleased with it. It has more than justified it's cost. I dunno - somehow it just makes songs - if ever I need inspiration - or a shattering bass line - or really sexy choirs etc etc it comes up trumps."

Every moment I have spent on this synth has been wonderful. I don't ever remember actually enjoying demoing kit in a busy London shop but in this case I found it really hard getting away!

I think the main reason for this is the extensive controllers all over it allowing you to get right into the sound and also that lovely 4 way joypad which offers great control:

In one corner you are playing a subtle pizzicato sound and moving your index finger to the center the sound swells into something big and amazing. At this point you can take the sound in either of 3 directions (or back to where it started) each sounding totally different.

Another nice feature is the arpeggiator which is included, something which none of my other gear has and it has inspired (and sometimes made) countless tracks, one of which the arpegiator is played manually, so each version is different! See tunnel journey for example.

First glances reveal that this beast is going to take some getting used to as there are so many combinations available using many different synthesis and every parameter is assignable in several ways.

One problem I have encountered is that it was not playing notes properly into Cubase when used as a mother keyboard - notes were hanging. One call the the Korg helpdesk solved the problem, to use external clocks from Cubase and the problem went away. If you have a similar problem with the Z1 mail me.

One thing that has hampered my creation of new sounds is that I was eating away the presets overwriting them with new sounds. I have now got the PCMCIA flash card slot up and running.

The Z1 can take 2M and 4M PCMCIA ATA flash memory cards which were quite common a while ago but with all things memory related, as prices fall, the smallest you can by goes up. In fact at present you can't seem to get less than 16 meg. Another problem was that dedicated cards were rare and I went to many places to find some - the only place I could find them was ebay (I would be buying a used product for a PC with no guarantee it would work my Z1!)

I came across the PCMCIA carriers which you slot compact flash cards into and have been using that along with 8M and now 16M flash cards with no problems :) Both were ordered from Dabs.com

I have also heard from Dimitris in Athens, Greece, who has kindly let me know that he has had similar success with a 16M compact flash card and ATA reader from http://www.transcendusa.com/ - codes TS16MFLASHCP and TS0MCF2PC

Now I have lots of space (16*banks (128 * 2) ) to store new sounds in. Lovely :) I'll include pics soon...