Korg ARP Odyssey vs others synths for beginner

[Roboscott]

Hi. Just need some advice. I am a guitar player that has just taken up playing electronic music. I've been very inspired by playing synth. My problem is that I do not have any music stores near me that carry any hardware synths. So I'm limited to ordering online.

I purchased a korg arp Odyssey and I like it but it seems so complicated to make sounds and remember how I got there. Being a beginner, would it be better if I sent it back and got something else? I've been looking at the roland boutique series and the aira system 1, also the korg minilogue looks cool.

Since I can't compare the arp odyssey to the others I've listed , I'm afraid of sending it back and trading it only to realize it was way better sounding than what I traded it for....so should I just get past the learning curve or get something simpler?

Thanks! :-)

[Karma1]

I'm also primarily a guitar player although I'm very into synths and have about 10 of them - hardware keyboards and modules, I've never played an Odyssey, although I'm a little familiar from reading about it and remembering the original version. I could be wrong but it doesn't seem to me to be the best choice for a beginner. Partly it depends on what kind of sounds you are looking for and what kind of music you want to create. From what I've read, it seems like the Odyssey is monophonic or duophonic and only plays one or two notes at a time, which is fine for leads, basses, or certain sound effects, but I don't know how it would be for strings, pads, etc.

 

If I were just starting out I'd probably want something with a wide range of preset sounds, an arpeggiator, and at least some real-time controls. One recommendation I would make would be the Novation UltraNova or the smaller version, MiniNova. I'm not real familiar with the other ones you mentioned, although I know that some of them have a lot of knobs and sliders which are good for learning the basics of synthesis and how the different parameters work.

[koolkat]

You might want to look at the Roland Gaia. It comes with a bunch of presets (to be honest, I'm not a huge fan of them bu there are still some useful ones in there) and is extremely user friendly to program. There are also a bunch of free patches (and pay patches) that can be dl'd which sound much better than the stock sounds.

 

There are youtube videos and demos of it.

[moogerfooger]

korg arp Odyssey is a deep and very capable awesome sounding synth. you may want to study up on synthesis to get the most out of it. it has all three filter types use in different versions of the original which is a great feature. the midi implementation isn't all that great but considering the original didn't have midi its a plus.

[Phil O'Keefe]

 

The basics of analog synthesis are pretty "transferable" from synth to synth. Once you understand that sounds are created by oscillators, modified by filters and envelope generators, etc. that knowledge can be applied to creating sounds with other synths.

 

The Minilogue also looks rather interesting. Like the Odyssey, it has a bunch of controls, which most people find a lot easier to come to terms with than menu-driven interfaces. Both are analog synths, but the Minilogue has presets that you can recall and save... I'm not sure that the Odyssey does - the originals didn't.