Korg Monologue and Pocket Operator PO-35 Speak jam - Brian Leahy

Published on Jun 5, 2018 Brian Leahy Art

"Monophonic Melody Makers / Battery-powered Buddies

Instruments:

Korg Monophonic Analogue Synth
Teenage Engineering Pocket Operator PO-35 Speak

Backstory:

The PO-35 Speak and the Korg Monologue play very well together! Bonus: they're both able to be powered by batteries. Had a blast jamming the other night and this tune appeared. (Love the weird breakdown midway through). I think these guys might work so well together in part because melody-wise, they are both monophonic, creating a great complement for playing live (a situation where us humans only have so many hands).

Monophonic means that only 1 sound can be played at a time. (In the case of the PO-35 Speak, technically, it has a monophonic drum track that is separate from the monophonic melody track- they can play at the same time, but individually those tracks are restricted to playing one note at any given time).

So, what you can do with this setup in the video is program a melody (and beat in the PO-35 Speak) to play in the sequencers of both instruments. I leave the sequencers going throughout the song. Whenever I play something on top of the sequencers, the sequencers are temporarily silenced because the instruments are monophonic. As soon as you stop playing the new part the sequencer comes back on. This results in the ability to have 2 separate parts to a song without switching things manually."