Rhythmic Robot Audio Vault 770 [KONTAKT]

FULL INFO BELOW:

All 24 InstaSet presets faithfully copied from the Korg 770s original manual?

?plus a further 16 ?Mongo Specials faithfully copied from the sweltering, febrile brain of Mongo Simple but powerful control set including Tilt EQ, Filter and Amplifier so you can craft your own sounds Velocity-to-volume and Velocity-to-cutoff retrofitted for even more expressive options Classic sounds for 20c per !

The Korg 770 may be small, but its mighty ? not in a MiniMoog way, more in a BBC Radiophonics Workshop synth-puppy way. From a handful of wires and diodes comes all manner of frankly amazing and wonderful sounds, thanks to some pretty barmy topology and a whole load of unusual surprises: the Chorus wave on Oscillator 1, or the two forms of ring modulation built right in, or the musically brilliant Scale Noise which were now nicking and building into all our new synths. (Why doesnt Scale Noise turn up everywhere? Its amazing!)

So any chance to fiddle with the 770 is a chance we happily take, and when we finally got our hands on a copy of Korgs original manual for the machine, we were instantly grabbed by the fact that it had presets. Yes indeedy, at the back of the manual are sheets for 24 factory sounds ? or, as Korg called them back in the day, InstaSets. (They turn out to be not all that Insta, cos you have to dial them in yourself; but whos complaining when you get sounds like Funky Cat and Banjo as a result?!) And thus a Vault was born.

Well, almost ? because, lets be honest, synth tastes have changed a bit since Korgs programming engineers came up with the wonders of Funky Cat and Banjo. As we programmed them in and played them, we couldnt help feeling that a few of the factory InstaSets were rather at the niche end of the spectrum (Foghorn and Wave, for example, is really only useful if you, erm, want the sound of a Foghorn and Wave). With that in mind we decided to go a little further ? so as well as the more musically-useful InstaSets (Violin, Electric Bass, Tuba, the really brilliant Gambang, and others) we also decided to let Mongo loose on the 770 and let him hammer some es out of it. This Vault, then, is in two parts: the original Factory sounds and a batch of Mongo Specials. Its really pretty easy to tell them apart, since one lot sound like they were programmed by a bespectacled Japanese engineer in the mid 1970s, while the others sound like the 770 is being tortured but somehow enjoying it. Its an odd (but we feel oddly compelling) contrast.

The original InstaSets really are a little bit of synth history encased in amber; you get to hear and play exactly what Korgs engineers imagined the end-users of their new machine would be keen on. Orchestral emulations yes; but also some endearing strangeness and peculiar sound-effects. Who knows what these might spark in your next track. Mongos es, meanwhile, delve deeper into the instrument, making particular use of the modulation options that push it into more snarly, aggressive territory. It may look small and cute, but it can sound kinda scary! Start layering the two together and its a weird, wonderful world of possibilities ????

(All our Kontakt instruments require a full copy of Native Instruments Kontakt v4.2.3 or higher (including all versions of Kontakt 5). Kontakt Player is not supported.