Noobie first impressions with the Korg DS-10 Synthesizer
First I want to be clear that I’m a total noobie to synthesizers and I have very little music background. I just have an ear for music, and enjoy good techno and electronic music. So I’m coming to the Korg DS-10 (for the Nintendo DS) with no prior experience, only a knack for using and learning software.
The interface of small text and lots of little knobs can be slightly daunting to start with, but watching a few videos on YouTube (the official tutorials) and just playing around helped me to quickly feel at home with the interface.
I got comfortable on the couch with my Sony headphones and spent about 2 hours last night literally just playing with the synthesizer to see what everything does. I now have a general understanding of how to work it, but it will take some reading of the manual and perhaps some online synthesizer tutorials for me to understand exactly what every knob does; especially the “Synthesizer Patch Panel” that is used for more advanced tweaking via virtual “routing plugs” (no idea what they are really called).
In my 2 hours of play I managed to create some cool sounds, and could have easily sat there for another 2 hours having fun just playing if wasn’t already time for bed. I wasn’t quite to the point where I felt comfortable attempting to make my noises into a real song, but I have a feeling it will be only a short matter of time. The possibilities are almost endless, and if I ever wanted to do something more advanced I could record my tracks into GarageBand to do mixing and editing.
As a music and synthesizer noobie I don’t regret my purchase one bit, and can’t wait to play with it more. At the very least the Korg DS-10 is a fun “toy” but has the potential to be a full blown instrument. Hopefully I’ll get to the point where I’ll be recording songs on a regular basis.
I suspect the Korg DS-10 might be a bit too hard for some people who aren’t very computer savvy, I think being a geek gives me a bit of an edge. If you are wondering if you should or shouldn’t buy a Korg DS-10, I think you should watch some of the example videos to see if you can even get the slightest grip on what they are doing on screen. If you don’t feel too overwhelmed by the videos and are willing to learn I suggest you give it a try.
Here’s an awesome example video of what can be done with the Korg DS-10.
LittleBigPlanet retail: first impressions (day 1)
So after getting a week with the beta and then the week long delay I finally got my retail copy of LittleBigPlanet yesterday. So far I got to play through some Story Mode levels with my girlfriend last night.
The Story Mode levels are outstanding and provide great examples of what can be done in the Edit Mode with enough time. There are tons of objects and costumes that can be found in each level and encourage replay. The variety of esthetic themes in each grouping of levels is also very impressive right down to the music.
Offline co-op play, just like in the beta, is outstanding. The only slight annoyance can be when each player get too far separated; players who stray too far off screen “die” after a 5 second countdown and they get re-spawned at the next check-point. You have to work together a bit let everyone keep-up. Besides that, it’s seamless. I also look forward to trying online co-op.
The only really bothersome thing I’ve noticed in the retail version of the game is the load times. I don’t know if this is just my copy, (I hope so; so I can return it) when levels are loading (50% of the time or more) the screen freezes for a few seconds, even the load indicator…
Also transition animations like; zooming into the “level patch” on the planet can get really choppy. I don’t know if it’s just the frozen screen, but the load times feel really long. Loading saved costumes and pictures can also take a long time even impeding the gameplay because you cannot close the “poppit” until it’s done loading.
Note/Update: I’ve seen it suggested on forums etc that the slow load times may be due to the launch rush overloading the servers that track stats etc. I sure hope so because it’s almost unacceptable.
Update 2: The servers crashing was apparently the cause of my offline load issues, (thank goodness). Apparently the servers were turned-off later so they could sort-out the issues and fix the load times.
LBP Servers AWOL, Media Molecule On It [kotaku.com]
I’ll post more about the game after I have more time with it.
