So I Went A Little Gear Shopping. . .

And bought a Korg Monotribe



A Stylophone Retro Pocket Synth



and the Stylophone Beat Box



I also threw this in the mix



The Stylophone synths can be had at $20 bucks, the Thumb piano was for $18 and the Monotribe was $199 at Amazon.com. I just was gonna cop the Monotribe until Amazon barraged me with all these unique little musical toys for so cheap, I couldn't resist. I have a lust for midget gear.

Good pickings, Green.

Monotribe is a ton of fun....the others, not really sure about but at least they were cheap.

Just to let you know, Stylophone Synth was used by the legendary Kraftwerk as well as the Beat Box. These are just pocket replicas with minor upgrades. They also can be modded. I figured why not combine these with the monotribe for a night of tweak-out madness.

Ill-Green wrote:These are just pocket replicas with minor upgrades. They also can be modded.

unfortunately not. They're pretty much just a black blob of epoxy on a PCB. Nothing to mod. The aux input/amp circuit has like 10x the discrete components as the actual sound generation PCB.
(I dunno about the beat box, but I'd guess it's pretty much the same)

Still a bunch of fun, and cheap.

Original stylophones, those were analog...

the white stripes also had a track with a dope stylophone solo...

Damn, its Columbus, so no delivery today. Besides all the electronica madness you can ooze out of the Monotribe, you can do boom bap. . .

Monotribe came and it really sends nostalgia of when analog synths rule. Even updating it to 2.1 was old commodore64 of playing a wav file into the Sync In slot. Remember updating the C64 with cassettes? Simple but effective and should remain standard. If you have a Monotribe from 2011 I suggest to update it because it now can do complex masterpieces than it was capable before like 8 step sequencer was raised to 16 step.

This box got so much flavor and the little drum kit is not bad at all, it sound really good and grimey.

I love the box instantly. You can just sit down and create a labyrinth of soundscapes for hours and hours. I almost came to work late because of the analog enchantment.

It does boom bap quite well. This is my new toy indeed.

Wow you really learned it quick , nice beat u rocking.

I have an ESX and its kinda the same lay out but more SP303-like. Not saying I mastered the Monotribe, but it gets you in the zone of creating. Thing is like Jimi Hendrix in a box.

All the tricks and secrets of the MPC500 that I found were from my experience with the ESX too.

Ill-Green wrote:I have an ESX and its kinda the same lay out but more SP303-like. Not saying I mastered the Monotribe, but it gets you in the zone of creating. Thing is like Jimi Hendrix in a box.

All the tricks and secrets of the MPC500 that I found were from my experience with the ESX too.

so is it a drum machine or a synth?

Dabblerobb wrote:

Ill-Green wrote:I have an ESX and its kinda the same lay out but more SP303-like. Not saying I mastered the Monotribe, but it gets you in the zone of creating. Thing is like Jimi Hendrix in a box.

All the tricks and secrets of the MPC500 that I found were from my experience with the ESX too.

so is it a drum machine or a synth?

Its 100% synth but they added a three piece drum kit to keep you in the groove which is one kick, one, snare, and one hi hat. Its limited but sounds proper, not cheesey at all. You can get freaky with the drum patterns once you figure it out. They can be mechanical but you can pull off some Purdie if you want too. I usually lay the snare on the 5th and 8 step for loose drums. Its got 16 steps now thanks to OS 2, so you can pull off some Hip Hop shit. I wish Korg made a seperate processor for the drums so you can freak the sounds, but the drum parts are unaffected by any knob except for its own volume.

Korg Monotribes are circuit bendable, so if you don't mind voiding your warranty, and you know what you're doing, you can get multi-outs, midi in/out, or something else that I'm not aware of. But you can also hook these up to Volcas if you don't want to mess with it.

If you have an iOS device, there is a free Korg utility app, SyncKontrol, that sends out a sync pulse signal for the Monotribe to sync to. It has a swing setting, and can be synced to other Korg iOS audio apps, and also via some sort of wireless MIDI to Apple Macs (I think)...

https://itunes.apple.com/app/id438617344




We have 3 Monotribes at work, and have recorded the Monotribe sync output pulse into the MPC as a sample,trimmed the start right up to the edge of the sync pulse, then used that sync pulse in the MPC sequences, to drive the Monotribe sequencer steps, sending it out of an individual MPC output, to sync the Monotribe to the MPC with MPC swing and other modified Monotribe sequencer playback timing depending on the pattern of the sync pulse signal that you send from the MPC to the Monotribe.


Some of the additional internal patch points mentioned above are already available as solder pads, and marked on the PCB, just need wires/connectors soldered to them...




And you can connect up MIDI in and out to the Monotribe serial connector, to play it with a real keyboard/knob/fader controller if you want, or to sequence the notes and controls.

^ wow!