I’m a jazz keyboardist from Philly but I’ve always been a fan of Mac DeMarco and I want to get a synth to emulate is synth sounds. I was originally going to get an vintage 80s synth (Casio CZ 1000, Yamaha DX7, Roland Juno 106, etc) but I’ve been thinking about critter and guitari. So my few questions will be: is there a learning curve to patch downloading? Can I get sounds similar to Mac’s on songs like “On The Level” “Chamber of Reflections” etc.? Am I able to Midi it through a Korg SV1? Can someone make sounds, and if so what’s the price? Found a used one and I just my spring for it.
It depends on how much you want to grow with it. The Organelle can ABSOLUTELY cover the sounds of On The Level and Chamber but the beauty of the device is that it can do MUCH MUCH more. Downloading patches is simple, once unboxed you could have 100+ new patches on the organelle within the hour. I would suggest buying an organelle if you want something to grow with and to change the way you write and record. For example, my drum beats have always been relatively rigid and straightforward but now I often use the patch BashBASTARD to give them more chaos and fluidity. I think Shreeswifty does custom patches for $50 as well but many of the patches that exist are capable of being edited (swapping out WAVs etc) with little to no puredata experience. If you want a simple synth, the organelle is not the one for you. But if you want one capable of emulation and effects processing to a near limitless way, yeah dude! Pick that used one up.
Personally, the Organelle is easily my favourite thing to make tunes with and it’s the first thing I go to when I do - but as a keyboardist you are probably going to miss having a full keyboard with lots of knobs and sliders. Although there is a Juno-106 patch for organelle which is very very good. If you have a midi keyboard with enough knobs, you could - with a little time - CC map these to all the parameters within this patch and have the same kind of immediate control. A bit of sticky tape and a marker pen to label each of these on the midi controller - you’ve got yerself a 106 for less than a third of the price (not to mention tonnes of other amazing musical potential through other patches) and money left for a volca FM (the motion sequencing on this is super cool) and a weeks vacation
I definitely bought the Organelle for a few select c+g patches and have been nothing but blown away with what the community has done with it, especially in the past few months. If you buy it for one reason, you’re gonna find 10 reasons you hadn’t thought of that you’ll love it for. I recommend it to everyone.
