Review: Korg DS-10 (DS)

Written by Marc DeAngelis

Friday, 16 January 2009 07:09

WARNING: Korg DS-10 is not a game. Rather, it's a Korg MS-10 synthesizer shrunk onto a Nintendo DS cart. And it does a damn good job emulating its big brother. Advanced electronic musicians and newbies alike are bound to have a blast with this cart.

So here's how it works. The DS-10 has two independent synthesizer channels. Each can produce it's own sound. Controls and parameters include pitch, level, drive, and two Voltage Controlled Oscillators with sawtooth, triangle, pulse, and white noise settings. You can modify the tone of the synth further with attack, decay, sustain, and release controls. These are all physical synth mainstays which allow for a vast amount of different sounds. If sculpting your own sound feels too daunting, you can always select one of the 24 pre-programmed patches. The synth that the software is based on, however, is pretty retrotastic, so don't expect anything too fancy.

korg_ds_10 As far as controlling your sound, you can play the touchscreen keyboard or the koass pad in real time. For anyone unfamiliar with electronic music, a kaoss pad is a touch screen controller that manipulates a sounds - check out this video for a good example of what one of these things can do. While playing live is useful for writing melodies, it's probably not very useful when recording your tunes. That's where the sequencers come into play. You have a grid onto which you plot your notes accord to pitch and time. Even if this is the first time you've programmed music, it's rather self-explanitory. After you've programmed your melody, you can always go back and add some fire with the kaoss pad or keyboard on top of the main sequence.

So you've got two instruments playing a melody, but something's missing. Time for some drums. You're supplied with four drum pads, each of which can be modified. Bass drum, snare, cymbal, and tom are the default four skins you have to work with. Again, you can play the drums live or program them.

Once you've got a groove going, save it to a pattern bank. You've got 16 of these at your disposal. For a handheld synth, that's a shitton. Now, just repeat the entire process - continue your song by picking up where your first pattern left off.

Once you've got a bunch of pattern banks filled up, hit the "song" button. This is similar to the sequencer you're familliar with by now, except now you're programming chunks of your song rather than single notes of said chunk. Now you've got a song - it's that easy!

Korg DS-10 also features all the general options one would expect such as the amount of steps per pattern, a mixer, a BPM slider, and a swing adjuster.

The applications for the DS-10 go beyond the program itself. I've used the kaoss pad feature by connecting an audio cable between my DS and my laptop's line-in. Hit record, thrash on the thing for a bit, and you've got a sample you can use inside a full-featured music app, like Logic or Ableton Live.

While the DS-10 may not be an exact representation of the MS-10, it does offer a full featured, surprisingly efficient way of creating music. Electronic music vets will feel right at home - I found my bearings almost immediatly. Newcomers may find the layout of the program a bit daunting at first, but a quick read through the manual goes a long way.

Korg DS-10 is available exclusively for the Nintendo DS and has a retail MSRP of $39.99.

Comments (9) Add Comment

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written by Bojy, January 16, 2009

So Want this! Nice review, told me everything i wanted to know but was to afraid to ask...

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written by Ryan Hewson, January 16, 2009

That thing is so rad. Reminds me of the first time I saw Reason.

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written by Daniel Lloyd, January 16, 2009

As a chiptune musician, I've been using this for a while. It has great potential, but requires lots of tedius work to get something composed and put together well. I love it to play with on the train, and then save whatever melodies I write and use them on a more comfortable software (NTII, FLStudio)

The Kaoss pad is awesome for live stuff though. You can really make this thing wail.

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written by Marc Deangelis, January 16, 2009

@ Bojy - I'm glad my review was helpful!

Dan, I do find one part of the software tedious. I have to pretty much memorize the patterns in order to continue a melody or form a new motif. Either that, or I have to constantly switch between patterns to keep reference. Hey it easier to use than LSDJ though! (And way cheaper)

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written by Axl Rose, January 16, 2009

If I had the DS-10, Chinese Democracy would have been done back in '04!!! Wait... Who am I kidding, I bought the N-gage =(

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written by Scott, January 16, 2009

Awesome review, would be sweet if it were patched to work with the DS-i's SD card slot!!! I might actually be able to create music now!!!

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written by Bryce, January 17, 2009

The price is pretty competitive. 120 + 40 = 160. I don't think you can get ANYTHING from Korg for under that except maybe a cable smilies/tongue.gif

And the novelty of using this thing as a dj at the club would be pretty kick ass. Good job Korg.

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written by Daniel Lloyd, January 17, 2009

i use NerdTrackerII on my pc. it's similar to LSDJ.

LSDJ isnt bad...just a huge huge learning curve. i much prefer NTII.

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written by TheBBPS.com (Bits, Bytes, Pixe, February 11, 2009

[...] me in the direction of reacTagon. It’s not exactly a game, and it’s not exactly a musical instrument in the traditional sense, but it might be somewhere in [...]