Russ,
It's funny you've posted about buying a Korg Kaossilator today. At the January NAMM show, my Korg rep showed me one and said I would sell a ton of them just because they are fun to use. He said he sat on an airplane from NY to Ca and played with it the whole trip. So, I ordered 5 of them in January. They arrived the beginning of February and I started learning how to use it. I tried and tried to like this thing but decided that with no memory (once you shut it off you loose anything you created) this was not a product for my store. Maybe, if I had a lot of hip hop customers who could record somthing as a loop and then transfer it as an audio source over to their computer, it would be useful, but for me, no thanks. So, about 3 weeks ago I asked my rep to pick them up and he said he would be happy to because the stores that do sell them, mostly GC's and Sam Ash's were all out of them. If they were $49.00 I could see selling some, but not at $200.00! I just don't see the point in them.
For those that don't know what these are, they are touch pad synth's which have some drum patterns, acoustic sounds and crazy synth sounds. You can create a loop of so many measures, start with a beat, and then keep overdubing as much as you like. My problem was that if I want to play notes, it is very difficult to control what pitch you are trying to play because of the small touch screen and you have to guess where the notes are to be found. There are many templates to choose from to get different intervals for your recording, but just too much work for this 58 year old music store owner!
Russ, I hope you find it more usefull than I did! I think most musicians creating more loops then actually playing instruments might find this very cools, but it needs some memory and the price needs to be lower.
To be fair to Korg, the reviews of this thing in some of the magazines have been great. Most of the younger guys thought it is very cool.


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George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California
818-881-5566
www.kayesmusicscene.com