Did you get anything fun over the holidays? While many of us might have had visions of finding a Tempest beneath a giant bow, I've been lusting after the far less complex Korg Monotron, a pocket-sized analog synth that's more toy than instrument. And, although I didn't receive a Monotron, I did get a little money, so earlier this week I managed to pick one up.
If you haven't played around with one, the Monotron is a lot of fun. It has a membrane style keyboard for tapping out a few notes and five tiny knobs for molding your own sounds from its analog synth circuits. It's instantly accessible and I was literally tweaking "patches" within a minute of opening it, still sitting in the parking lot outside the shop.
One of the first noises I created was a very basic synth bass and I found what seemed like the most obvious use for the Monotron. A few days later, I took a turn at twisting the knobs again, but took the time to record the result which I've given the uninspired name of Monobass.
The Monotron has an interesting little LFO circuit which can be used to adjust the pitch or the cutoff, so I recorded my "patch" twice, using both settings. Both of those recordings are provided below, essentially clean, but normalized. The headphone out (and speaker) is pretty noisy, but I did what I could to minimize that noise by cutting the sample down to minimize any dead, but noisy air.
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