Daniel Fisher
You may be thinking a keyboard this small and light would have to be more of a toy than a serious musical instrument, but I’m here to tell you otherwise. Inside this micro marvel beats the heart of a professional Korg synthesizer/workstation. It has 360 multisampled instruments and 484 drum samples - all recorded at 48kHz, with room for 512 Programs, 384 Combis, and 48 Drum Kits. It also has an additional 256 GM Programs and 9 GM Drum Kits. All of these samples are played through Korg’s EDS-I (Enhanced Definition Synthesis – integrated) engine and can play a staggering 120 notes of polyphony! And the effects section is incredible. For each Program you can use five simultaneous Insert Effects (stereo in/stereo out) plus two Master Effects (stereo in/stereo out) and then all that goes into a stereo Total Effect. That's eight effects at once! There are 134 effect types available, from the expected Chorus, Flanger, Phaser, Leslie, Reverb and Delay types, to the otherworldly Grain Shifter, Ring Modulator, Pitch Shifter, Decimator, Doppler, and Auto Reverse effects. There are even six Guitar and Bass Amp models with parametric EQs. But it wouldn’t have the word “STATION” on it unless it was also a full-blooded workstation. Combis can have up to 16 programs, each with their own MIDI Channel, and dual polyphonic arpeggiators let you create drum/bass/chord grooves on the fly. A high-performance 16-track MIDI sequencer allows you to record up to 128 songs for a total of 210,000 notes! You can even save your sequences and programs to an SD Card. At this point, some of you may still be wondering why you would need a Korg microSTATION. Here are some of my reasons: (1) It’s the ultimate emergency backup keyboard. There’s nothing worse than driving an hour and a half to a gig only to discover that your main keyboard has died since the last time you played it. Now you can just reach under your car seat and pull out a fully-functioning spare. (2) It’s a killer keyboard to connect to your computer. I’d far rather have a full five octaves of slightly smaller keys than only two or three octaves of regular-sized keys. Connect a USB cable and the microSTATION’s editor becomes a powerful plug-in that supports VST, Audio Units, and RTAS formats. That’s 120 notes plus effects with no additional strain on your computer’s CPU! (3) Now you can pack a serious-sounding instrument every time you leave the house. Sure, it drives my wife crazy, but I define myself as a musician. It kills me when we go on a trip and there’s a jam session but no keyboards. I can tuck a microSTATION in my suitcase and be ready for any musical opportunity that awaits. (4) It’s so convenient to set the microSTATION on top of your favorite stage piano (or even a real piano) to add both modern and classic sounds to your arsenal.