Books, Movies, Music & Entertainment - I Found an old KORG Synthesizer -- Now What?

(Mods -- if this belongs over in Foo or elsewhere, please move it.)

I wandered into a 1980's vintage KORG DS-8 Digital Synthesizer at a thrift store for $10 a week ago. It didn't have a power cord, but I got one from Ebay and the synthesizer works.

I'd like to give it to my cousin who can play some piano and is a 1980's-90's music fan when synths were popular. He's not very technical though, and I don't think this was an entry level model.

I've found the manual on the internet, but it seems confusing to me, and I'm not sure my cousin can figure it out.

Anyone know of a good book or internet site that would be a good primer for learning what the functions and controls on synthesizers do? If we can hook it up to his computer with a MIDI cable that would be cool, but I'm sure we would need some software for that too. Any ideas for easy to use software would be appreciated as well.

This is the beast.....

http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z249/BlankCrows/CIMG4343.jpg

Garageband is even better than you think, but you would need a MIDI-to-USB converter.

MIDI back in those days always had a bit of a learning curve (and still does now), but if your cousin at least has the patience to read the manual, s/he will learn a lot and be able to fly through that thing.

Remember that hooking the keyboard up to software via MIDI will only give you the ability to control other software instruments. If you're looking to record the actual sounds coming from the synthesizer itself, you'll need audio cables.

Short explanation: MIDI only sends information including, but not limited to: pitch (what note), velocity (how hard you hit the note), duration (how long you held the note), etc. Then the synthesizer receives all of that info and makes a sound correspondingly. MIDI cables will allow you to send that information wherever you want, audio cables will allow you to capture the actual sounds coming from the synth.

Those are really great examples of FM syntheses along with yamaha's DX 7.

If manual is too confusing for you, you should definitely learn about some basic synthesis concepts and how midi works and such.

http://www.vintagesynth.com/korg/ds8.php general page about korg ds 8

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_modulation_synthesis FM synthesis ,,,, Tutorial for FM synthesis http://www.sfu.ca/~truax/fmtut.html (http://www.sfu.ca/%7Etruax/fmtut.html)

MIDI tutorial http://www.midi.org/aboutmidi/tut_midimusicsynth.php

FREE music software http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/freeware/

Synthesis from wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesizer

http://tweakheadz.com/ A lots of tutorials and guides on that site for beginners , including the forum. Specifically here
(http://tweakheadz.com/guide.htm)
Those are just some examples. Tons of great info on the web.

That KORG is a complex beast until you get some basic hang of it and then it just becomes fun and sounds really great.

I know a thing or 2 about this subject and if you have any specific questions, I'll gladly answer them for you if I can.

Spock rules. I was too lazy/tired from work to dig up those links from my old bookmarks :p

Thanks for all the info and the links to the web pages. I'll be checking those out. I think my cousin is going to like this thing!