Korg’s Monologue is a monophonic spree

My fingers are keen to get on-board, but my brain doesn’t know what to do.

Well, you aren’t going to learn by distant hand-wringing, are you? You’re going to learn by slapping down £300 on a Korg Monologue, getting it home and pressing all the buttons. Whaaarp! Boink! Yeeep! Etc.

Yes. Or, I could spend £30 on the Korg Gadget app for my iPad.

Piffle. No-one ever learned anything of worth from an app. When you interact with an analogue instrument, the movement of your fingers and the resulting noise write a program in your mind. A muscle memory brain symphony, which can never be erased.

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Very poetic. Look, what is this thing?

It’s a 25-key monophonic synthesizer, with a 16-step sequencer and an OLED oscilloscope. For ‘monophonic’, read ‘easier to get on with than a polyphonic synth like the £500 Minilogue.’

That’s quite a precise translation.

Just trying to keep things at your level, bro. Admittedly, you’re going to get more out of this if you have some grounding in electronic music – knowing the difference between monophonic and polyphonic, for starters – but you’d be surprised at what you can create with a few hours of experimentation. And, preferably, no-one else around.

So, a one-person party? What’s the point?

Well, once your confidence has increased you can output your binkety-boink via USB or MIDI ports to a computer, match it up to some tasty beats, upload it to Soundcloud and wait for the music labels to get ring-a-dinging. Remember: never accept the first offer and don’t forget to share your wealth with your friends. Hint-face.jpg.

Optimistic.

Perhaps. If not, you can just let your choice of black, red, gold, silver or blue wood-backed Monologue give your lounge an an air of creative, geeky joy. If anyone asks you to crank it, just tell them the oscilloscope’s on the blink. No-one’s going to know any different. We don’t.