KORG opsix 🧻🧻🧻🧻🧻

A quick update – there’s now a software version which works and sounds exactly the same – with a little more pleasant interface. You no longer need the hardware but -unusually- I like it better.

It’s customary to begin a review of any new FM synthesiser with a mention of the ‘legendary’ Yamaha DX-7. Okay then – fuck the DX-7. It was a pain in the ass to patch anything with a single damn slider and those squishy pads. It wasn’t even FM, it was PM, Yamaha were full of BS. Boing, clank, sizzle. (Anyone else read that book The Complete DX7 cover to cover?)

In 1984 I chose a DX-7 instead of a Jupiter-6 because it was a new and exciting way of making noise. However it’s not been 1984 for quite some time, and in an amusing turn around you can now make the same kind of noise on the System-8 without any of the fuss and bother of algorithms and operators. There’s not much reason for going back to old school FM. If that was all that Korg had done it would be worth one toilet roll. Instead Korg have come up with something quite new and refreshing and I’d like to concentrate on the ‘altered’ bit of their ‘altered FM’. I’m describing the 2.0. version which has taken on some crazy shit that you won’t find on other hardware.

You probably can guess that each of the opsix operators can work in one of six modes:

• The first is FM which is the old standard. The carrier is phase modulated by a modulator. But here each operator can be one of 23 waveforms – the standard sine, triangle or saw both pure and bit restricted, stacked sines a la the TX81z, some noises. In each case you can reduce the width of the waveform which brings about extra harmonics.
• The second is Ring Modulation, or AM. This is quite subtle on sine waves and only really kicks in with rich harmonic sources.
• Third is Filter. Any of your operators can act as a resonant filter, so for example a saw wave could pass through five different filter operators before reaching the main filter. There is potential here for stacking up modulated notches and peaks. Z planes!?
• Filter FM is a bit like a wah pedal, but one that modulates up into audible frequencies, where it screams.
• Wave Folder is kind of like passing the modulator through a guitar amp, adding warm harmonics that way.

Version 2.0 adds the Effect mode, by which each of your operators may be an effect unit. For example a noise wave can be passed though a comb filter, which applied to each individual note emulates physical modelling. The wave shaper effect alone has 60 different functions it can impose on your poor sine wave to twerk it into odd shapes – which can then be applied to the next operator.

What was in 1983 a system of six inter-linked sine waves is now a full modular rig.
It is by far the most adventurous synthesiser in quite some time – much as the DX-7 was 38 years ago.

Compare it to the Hydrasynth or the MicroFreak, which for all the cleverness still follow the tradition of oscillator to filter to amplifier to effect. By the time you have got to the filters you’ve done your waveforms and you’re trying to mould them with cut off frequencies. Here that path doesn’t need to be obeyed – a whole range of paths are open to you.

Sounds good – but not that easy. You will have flashbacks to the early days of FM. Each of these techniques seems to leap from too subtle to too violent in an instance. 0 – 40 something … nothing … a little more 45 – 50 … I think I can hear it … a little more …. BLEEEURGH! I’d also have to say that sometimes the idea is more pretty than the noise it makes. But with some practice you will make sounds that are very curious and clever indeed. Six complex oscillators/effects each with an envelope has such latent power that you learn to be subtle, just pushing or pulling a little here and there.

Korg is onto something with their recent small keyboards. Each takes on a form of contemporary synthesis and lead the conversation. They are not without fault but they have youth and vitality on their side. They may be the future legends.

This guy demos it better than me.