Arturia Microfreak v5 🧻🧻🧻💩

More updates – now with three and a half knobs.

Before anything else – thank Arturia for actually trying out ideas not the regurgitation practised by Behringer and Roland. In contrast Arturia is one of the leading brands of the moment because they are prepared to try, and perhaps fail. There’s many smaller brands I could mention here but let’s examine the Microfreak, which represents the risk taking that I’d like to celebrate.

It’s partly my problem. I get excited when I see a process to explore and then the process turns out to be three knobs, switching through vowel sounds, or adding more hiss. The three knobs are your limited conversation with someone’s recipe for a sound. I can’t quite grab anything and strangle it. It feels like owning many houses the size of a dog kennel.

The launch oscillator types were interesting but not exciting. Superwaves are not exciting. Detuned virtual analogue is not exciting. And Speak and Spell voices that speak numbers and colours and who cares what else – are meh. Some of the newer modes have potential but I still can’t fuck them up the way they need to get fucked. The Microfreak is like one module of a modular system, lacking the community that a full modular would allow. You can LFO very quickly, that’s kind of useful. There’s a cycling envelope. The modulation matrix is an excellent piece of work for a small machine. The sequencer is also fun, but not anything that you haven’t seen before.

The white keys extend up to run next to the black keys. Why on earth would you do that? There’s absolutely no need for it and it causes me endless mistakes. I will probably put sticky tape over the top. Or just play it on a real keyboard.

The four digital voices share an analogue filter. That promises that the filter is going to do wonderful things that four digital filters wouldn’t offer. The reality is I’d prefer the modelled filters on the MS2000. I’d like to drive the signal to cause heat and pain. That’s usually the only reason for analogue anything – but it’s not there. Four voices drop the level to politely avoid that overdrive. That is not freakish.

Now for the good news

It’s quite sweet actually, about the footprint of an iPad and very light. The standard machine has an engraving of flowers and peacocks on the front and a special version has planets – who could fault that? Even though it’s like a big KORG Volca it has elegance that KORG haven’t managed in their lifetime. If this is your first synthesiser you’ve done well – you will find much to explore across a wide terrain of sound. If you got it second hand on the cheap, you’re on the path of profound fleacore – your future is bright. My first synthesiser was very simple compared to this – but then it is a real freak.

I must compare it to Novation’s Bass Station 2. The BS2 burns, it feels pain, it is very much analogue where it’s needed. It was introduced as a simple bass keyboard but Novation have since added in all kinds of bitter and twisted features – the latest of which allows every single key to make a different noise. Arturia are on the same path having just reached the fifth upgrade – and this augmentation is the best thing about the Freak.

• V2 added a vocoder. Fuck vocoders, no one makes music with vocoders since Daft Punk flew up their own funky 70s ass and it’s the unwanted Christmas gift of the 21st century. The kids think they are cool but it’s just a mouth organ.
• V3 update added more sound sources from Noise Engineering – a very welcome sign of vitality. Added to the set from Mutable Instruments and Arturia you now have 17 kinds of sound to work with. But the three knobs are still between me and the sounds I want to make. I was on the edge of selling … and then …
• V4 brought user wavetables. This is a big move. Sure – everyone is doing wavetables these days but it moves some of the synthesis design outside of the little box. You can create 16 different morphs – or just pack 32 waveforms into each for an extensive library of single cycles. That’s a great boost to the range of sounds, but more than that – it means Arturia is prepared to open the box. Would it be possible to exchange sources – get rid of the damn Speak and Spell voices?
• V5 adds audio that can be addressed as traditional looped samples, or different kinds of granular playback. That all this storage has been available since launch is a feat of forward thinking! The three knobs again are the limitation on your imagination. But the algorithm knob can be shift+twiddled to select a sample – we might will see more control available for other modules via the shift… please?

I’m very curious if the MiniFreak will get these updates – e.g. the highly limited sample memory would seem strange for the virtual MiniFreak V – but the hardware would need be in parity with software. Perhaps a good reason why no MicroFreak V.

At this stage the MicroFreak is a versatile little thing, able to perform numerous tricks. But I still can’t see it as a workhorse – you’re going to need something else to flesh out your performance. Maybe you could have a couple of them. Maybe (shock horror) a rack of them – a eurorack of little keyboards … or just a eurorack module of a keyboard that was itself a eurorack?

Discussion about vocoders has been moved to a new page.