10 Stupidly Fun Toys Every Musician Needs

3. Korg MicroKorg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHtc67hDPLo Now this is a fun piece of kit. The MicroKorg is a full blown synthesiser and vocoder in a tiny little package for a price that is a fraction of what you would expect to pay for it. It's the kind of device that even if you only use it a handful of times over the years it'll pay for itself in spades. For your money, you get a very powerful synth with a lot of options, presets and bonkers noises for you to play with. Built in are the same dual oscillators that you can find on some of Korg's bigger and more expensive synths, as well as hundreds of combinations of waveforms for you to mix and match till your heart's content. Added to that the always fun Arpeggiators that Korg are known for with more effects than you can shake a stick at, and you have a very powerful synth on it's own. But it's the vocoder that really stands this apart from the rest of the crowd. For anyone who wants to have that 'Mr Blue Sky' voice, the vocoder is where it's at. Most synths with built-in vocoders can be prohibitively expensive but the MicroKorg keeps it cheap as chips for anyone wanting to give it a try. The fact that it comes with it's own microphone to capture your voice is a bonus as well. You would be surprised at how much modern music is made using just the MicroKorg.