I could buy a software version of the Korg M1? Cool! Well, cool enough, anyway. I don’t know what made it seep through, but when it did I was excited. I’d sort of heard of the Korg Legacy Digital Collection, but it had apparently never filtered through into my consciousness. But honestly, because the M1 is such a legendary synthesizer, everyone who sells one on eBay seems to think they’ve un-earthed part of an Egyptian Pharoah’s riches and the world will pay accordingly. What I decided was that I’d buy an old M1 off of eBay and use it as a controller to play software-based synthesizers and samplers (such as GigaStudio). I could never re-record Proteus or Grandview without an M1, because the sounds those songs are based on come directly from the Korg M1. I’d always intended through the years to buy another M1, if for no other reason than to nail down a couple of my old songs. But I never lost my affection for some of the M1 sounds. There are much better synthesizers and samplers available today (GigaStudio largely replaces what I wanted an M1 for in the first place). Any M1 owner would instantly recognize some of those sounds.įor my own part, I loved my M1. Many of the musical passages were clearly being played on a Korg M1. I remember the first time I encountered an Cirque du Soleil performance on HBO. Still, there’s a reason the M1 wound up in the hallowed halls of the classic instrument pantheon. You wouldn’t be faking an orchestra convincingly any time soon. What that meant was that it did a lot of things very well, but it still had its limitations. For all of the advances that it represented, it was clearly a synthesizer and a product of its time. I just couldn’t see how I could do what I wanted to do without keyboards. What made me want to pay more for a keyboard than I’d ever paid for a guitar? Maybe it was just my desire to make music that was a little different than all the hair bands my musician friends and relatives were playing in. Looking back, I’m not really sure what led me to buy a synthesizer. I bought my first Korg M1 in the late 1980’s.

Korg m1 software review