Return of the Sigma

Published on Jan 5, 2013 spacemusicuk·7 videos

"Utterly shameless synth noodling.

I did this a few months back after digging my old Korg Sigma out of the spare room and dusting it off. I bought it secondhand in 1989, it was pretty old and beaten up already then, and it's never been serviced and has sat completely unused for the past 6 years or so. At first it didn't make any sound at all, but after leaving it on a while and wiggling all the pots a bit, it started to cough and splutter back to life. I really liked the noisy, slightly broken sound - the crackly filtered hiss makes it sound very woodwindy and reedy, like some weird alien durduk.

The Sigma is a marvelously expressive beast. Two X-Y joysticks, one controlling pitchbend and noise/vibrato and the other controlling high and low pass filters, and, unusually for a synth of this vintage, keyboard aftertouch controlling vibrato."