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The MS-20 was one of Korg's first major successful portable analog
monosynths and even today it is still a great machine! The MS-20 is
the big brother to the MS-10. It is an analog two-oscillator monophonic
lead and bass synth with hard wired and patchable connections. The hard-wiring
can be overridden however, using patch-cords. This type of hard-wired
but patchable design was similar to the ARP 2600 of the late seventies.
Of course the 2600 was much bigger. But the MS-20 offered a lot of flexible
control, great sounds and most importantly total portability with it's
small and compact design!
In addition to two analog oscillators, the MS-20 features two resonant
VCF filters, two VCAs, sample and hold, a noise generator, an assignable
mod-wheel and lots of knobs! The VCF filter section is capable of high-pass,
low-pass, notch and band-reject which is unique and different than your
basic lowpass style filter. External sound sources can be routed through
the filter section as well. In fact William Ørbit uses the filter
in his MS-20 relentlessly to filter and tweak his samples, beats, delay
returns, vocals, etc.
There's also a Pitch-CV converter for triggering sounds from external
sources. Aphex Twin makes quite a bit of use of this, feeding the input
stage of his MS-20s with drum sounds and other untrackable audio to
get the synth to make a wide variety of crunch/squawp/screech noises
by mistracking the filters, etc.
As for its sounds, the MS-20 sounds great! It makes a great alternative
for Minimoog-seekers. The MS-20 is great for just about any type of
analog synth sound you could want! Fat round bass sounds, percussive
bass or sounds, noise effects, squiggly-bubbly sounds or sinuous-worm
leads are all waiting to be unleashed from inside this classic beast.
The MS-20 is not only a great sounding instrument, but a great learning-synth.
It is fairly easy and intuitive to operate but in doing so you can learn
and understand more about synthesis and signal-flow.
It is used by William Ørbit, Aphex Twin, Hardfloor, Air, SkyLab,
Stereolab, Vince Clarke, Astral Projection, Biosphere, Apollo 440, Mr.
Oizo, Jimi Tenor, The Prodigy, OMD, Freddy Fresh, Luke Vibert, Einstuerzende
Neubauten, Add N to (X), Daft Punk, Coldcut, Die Krupps, Skinny Puppy,
Electronic Dream Planet, Jimmy Edgar, Front 242, Front Line Assembly,
The Legendary Pink Dots, KMFDM, Severed Heads, Royksopp, The Faint,
The Shamen, Jean-Michel Jarre, and Portishead just to name a few
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