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The Kaossilator is built on the same chassis as the Kaoss Pad Mini

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Over the course of the last few years we've gone absolutely entertainment-crazy, with distractions packed into ever-smaller boxes and with ever-bigger specs. It's no surprise then that part of the music technology industry has seized on this combination, with Yamaha's Tenori-on being a superb recent example of a (premium-priced) hand-held, portable music-making machine.

Korg's Kaoss effects pads have been around a little longer but the idea is largely the same - to provide a tactile surface that can be used to 'play' or manipulate noises in real time. Now the 'pad is back and this time it's ditched the filters in favour of its own sounds. Welcome the Kaossilator with pad control over note and phrase generation, which puts the fun back into making music.

Design and features

The design of Kaossilator is simplicity itself and will be immediately familiar to anyone who's had the joy of tinkering with Korg's Mini-KP. The front panel bears the touch screen, used to trigger notes and phrases, with separate parameters map-able to the X- and Y-axes (of which more shortly). Above this main screen, a silver rotary dial allows you to step through different sound or arpeggiator programs, while a trio of buttons to the right variously control BPM, the track-pad's notes 'Scale' and the ability to record and play back looped phrases.

The unit can be powered either by a 4.5V DC power adaptor (supplied separately) or from four AA batteries, which are fitted on the unit's underside. Along the bottom strip, you'll find the headphone out port and the volume slider, which only affects the level at the headphone out. The main audio out, provided by a stereo pair of phono jacks (DJs rejoice) supplied along the top panel, has a fixed output.

In use

Once the batteries were fitted and the power switched on, we promptly lost all track of time having enormous fun meddling about with this box. 'Immediate' is, quite frankly, not persuasive or descriptive enough a word to describe just how instantaneously joyous it is to play with the Kaossilator.

Choosing a program is as simple as dialling the rotary, and sounds are organised into banks according to style. Thankfully, the guys at Korg have usefully tagged these, allowing you to soon get used to their abbreviations. 'L' sounds, for instance, are leads, while chord programs are preceded by 'C' and so on.

In almost all cases, note generation is mapped to the X-axis, and so moving your finger from left to right across the track pad increases the pitch. The Y-axis, meanwhile, provides access to one of several possible parameters, with cutoff frequency, LFO speed and decay time just three of the many treatments you'll encounter. Crucially, though, you're not free to choose these assignments yourself, as they're built into Kaossilator and saved with each sound, so if you'd rather that Trance lead sound controlled effects sends on its Y-axis, as opposed to cutoff frequency instead, then it's bad luck, I'm afraid.