Far From Home

The Quest for the Korg DS-10 : part II

Home at last.

I have succesfully acquired a Nintendo DS and the Korg DS-10 software!  All of the items remain unopened on the couch next to me.  It was quite a journey (not really) to get this stuff (maybe for a Sunday morning)... follow me on twitter to see the play-by-play as I open this stuff up and give my first impressions uncut. :)  I'll be back to summarize in a post in a bit.

First Impressions.

Quick update.  This could be the best ~$200 I have spent on my musical career in over a decade.  The interface is extremely intuitive, and I was able to sit down and create a tight little groove with incredible control over the sound of the elements.  The touchscreen is implemented brilliantly.   Now, for the first of my gripes-  I wish the pattern length could be greater than 16 beats.  It will take some getting used to breaking up musical ideas into 16 beat chunks mentally without getting distracted by this thing's bells and whistles.  Second major gripe - you have to stop the audio to tweak the settings on the drum patches... and you can only use up to 4 drum patches per pattern.

But, the DS-10 isn't intended as a full-blown production studio, obviously, and given how much you can do, and how quickly you can do it, I am blown away, I must say.  I'll post some recordings of what I've thrown together later tonight.

Links.

http://korgds-10.blogspot.com/ - This blog seems to be devoted to describing the various features of the Korg DS-10 software.  They are explained very well so far... Check it out for an idea of what this thing can do!

History of Xenoc

There are quite a few interesting old links from my dorky youth still kicking around the net, and often it isn't clear to others whether the 'Xenoc' in these links is actually me or not, as there are quite a few imposters around the net.

And when I say imposters, I mean imposters.  I've been using the screenname Xenoc around the net for over 15 years, and I have proof as far back as 1994.  If anyone out there has been actively going by "Xenoc" for a greater length of time, I'll eat my hat.  I certainly don't see any evidence of this, at any rate.  (No, I am not implying that these people are actually posing as me, so maybe "imposter" is the wrong word after all.)

Anyway, getting off track here.  The point of this post is to share some links from my past, but first, a bit of background info... after the jump.