Plenty of third‑party companies provided support of this kind - I've listed them in the 'M1 Variations & Add‑Ons' box. The other takes PCM cards containing alternative waveform data. One slot accepts RAM cards for storing and directly accessing Programs, Combis, and sequence data. Two card slots are provided as a means of quick and simple memory expansion. A Combi (Combination) consists of up to eight Programs, allowing you to assign different sounds in layers or split zones, or set up voices on specific MIDI channels for multitimbral sequencing applications. User memory can be flexibly allocated, between program, combination, and sequencer storage: you can choose to store either 100 Programs, 100 Combis, and 4400 sequencer events, or 50 Programs, 50 Combis, and 7700 sequencer events. Perhaps none of the M1's basic facilities was completely unique to it, but they were specified and combined in a way which obviously gave it an edge.įor its time, the M1 had a very good feature list, and it's not bad even now: a 61‑note keyboard that senses both key velocity and aftertouch, a joystick for pitch‑bend and modulation control, 16‑note polyphony, eight‑part multitimbral operation with dynamic voice allocation, and 86 16‑bit sampled waveforms within that 4Mb ROM memory I mentioned earlier. This sequencer might not be as user‑friendly as the slightly earlier Ensoniq ESQ1, but it's enhanced by the inclusions of pattern construction and drum machine‑style loop recording. In addition, the M1 has a built‑in eight‑track MIDI sequencer with battery‑backed memory. The M1 also has onboard effects, which are more diverse and of better quality than those found in the near‑contemporary (and very successful) Roland D50. Included are superb drum and percussion hits - a first for a sample‑playback synthesizer - and exotic instruments that previously hadn't been heard by many in the mainstream.
Although the M1 isn't a sampler, its ROM (Read Only Memory) contains four megabytes of musically useful and downright stunning 16‑bit PCM (pulse code modulation) tones. Sampling, that mainstay of modern music, was growing in popularity at the time of the M1's gestation, but DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) chips were very expensive, which helped to make samplers quite expensive too. Why such enormous success for this particular instrument? As you'd expect, there was more than one reason.
Although Korg won't verify the quarter of a million figure I've just mentioned, they do tell me that 100,000 were manufactured during the first two years of the M1's life, serial number 100,000 having rolled off the production line in November 1990.
Released in 1988 at a UK retail price of £1499, it was manufactured until 1995 - and seven years is a very long time in music technology. Such an instrument was the Korg M1, the widely‑beloved Sample + Synthesis workstation that can rightly be called the most popular synth of all time. In a marketplace where a synth that sells a few tens of thousands of units is considered a success, one that reportedly sold 250,000 surely exceeds a manufacturer's wildest hopes. We go behind the scenes to reveal the secrets of its success.
The all‑time best‑selling synthesizer, Korg's M1 laid the groundwork for synths that followed.