Korg DS-10 Review

by November 9th, 2008 - Culture » Video Games »

Developers, officially licensed and otherwise, have been making music tools for Nintendo handhelds for a long time, and I am sure that the folks at AQ are aware of them. So, I am a little disappointed that AQ didn’t integrate some of the better features of these existing applications into Korg DS-10. I’ll talk about some of the better-known programs:

LSDJ:
I don’t want to talk about LSDJ too much because I don’t use it. I’ve played with the demo version a bit on an emulator on my PC. It is WAY different than Korg DS-10 in purpose, as it was designed to turn the (original) GameBoy itself into a synthesizer, rather than to emulate some other piece of hardware.

One thing that I do know about it is that you are not limited to 16 steps in a pattern, nor are you limited to 16 patterns in a song, as is the case with Korg DS-10. My only serious beef with the DS-10 is that you are tied to creating 16 step loops and then sequencing those loops. I would like to be able to sequence longer phrases, which would allow me to make more interesting music.

NITROTRACKER II:
Nitrotracker II isn’t a synthesizer, it’s a sample sequencer. I have only used it with a DS-X cart, which it was never really compatible with, even after some DLDI patching. Consequently, I rarely had a glitch-free experience with it. When it did work, I still found that it didn’t sound great because my samples would get corrupted. I don’t know if this was because of Nitrotracker or the DS-X cart or the limitations of the Nintendo DS hardware or some unfortunate combination of the three.

That being said, the Nitrotracker interface is excellent. Like Korg DS-10, it has a touch-screen keyboard, so you can play your samples on the keyboard pitched up or down by speeding them up or slowing them down. You can record sequences in real-time using the touch-screen.

Like LSDJ, Nitrotracker has a (surprise!) tracker-style interface, which allows you to create musical phrases as long or as short as you want. If you want to repeat a sequence, this is done quite easily by cutting and pasting. The tracks are independent; you can loop a phrase on one track and go crazy-pants non-repetitive on another.

NANOLOOP:
In Nanoloop 2.0.1 (I cite it because it’s the only version I’ve used), which takes the form of a GameBoy Advance cartridge, you have eight tracks, and can use a different instrument/sound for each track. It is, as the name indicates, loop-based, and I have often been frustrated with the limitations of the loop-based editing environment.

But even Nanoloop offers more sequencing versatility than Korg DS-10. It allows you to record up to seven 16-step loops for each track, and in the song editor, you can apply any of those seven loops to each step in the sequence of the song. You can make a less repetitive song with a little more variety by mixing and matching the different loops for each voice.

Features I would like to see in a future Korg DS-10 release:

1. A non-loop-based sequencer. Why not at least give users the option of a tracker-style interface? I hate having to copy an entire pattern and use up one of my 16 pattern slots just to change one note in a sequence. I understand that if you present people with a tracker interface, a lot of potential mainstream users, especially those who were not alive in the 80s, will pass it by. But couldn’t they let me record a sequence with more than 16 steps?

2. The ability to change parameters over the course of a song. With KAOSS pad sequencing it is possible to, in effect, automate nearly any parameter of a voice within a pattern. I would love the ability to affect any parameter of a part over the course of an entire song, without having to make a new pattern to do it.

3. The ability to interface with non-Nintendo devices.

Number 3 is the important one. If Korg DS-10 is a serious music tool in a modern sense then it should have the features of other serious music tools, namely the ability to play well with others.

This is the main thing about Nitrotracker II that is totally cool and that I neglected to mention earlier: it can send and receive MIDI messages. To and from your computer.

Watch this video.

Don’t you want that? Of course you do.

Korg DS-10 is stuck in a kind of digital limbo. On the one hand, it is a cool, versatile, undeniably awesome portable electronic music generator and song sequencer. It is not a game, nor merely a toy. It can be used as a serious music tool. But it will not be widely adopted as such until it has MIDI capability. It can be done.

Let’s do it, AQ! You, too, Nintendo!

Pages: 1 2

Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.

The Sporadical skeptically promotes the following:
SKEPTIC Reason Penn and Teller Frank Zappa