Tatsuya Takahashi
In his ten years at Korg Tokyo, synthesizer engineer Tatsuya Takahashi brought us the Monotrons, the Volcas, the Minilogue, and many more before leaving on a three-year hiatus from mass-produced synthesizers to work on smaller-scale productions. Takahashi now returns to KORG to set up and run its newly established lab, KORG Berlin.
Born in Shizuoka, Japan. But moved to London early in his life. He wanted to become a geek, starting to make speakers when he was 13/14. Furthermore, got into electronics and creating amplifiers, speakers and circuit boards. He went to university and studied general engineering. In his spare time, he made a portable sequencer synthesiser because he believed synthesisers should be everywhere. Leaving university he started working at Korg, creating multiple synthesisers; including the Microkorg, Monotron, Monotube, Volcas, Little bits, Arp odyssey and the Minilogue. After this, he found another job at Yadastar, Cologne. Working with Ryoji Ikeda to create a car orchestra, utilising a sine wave generator to control 100 car horns at once. But, he started working for Korg again and built the Korg Berlin studio. He is currently working on some new projects for this brand new branch.
Q: For analogue synthesisers, where do you see the future of them?
A: The future of music production and synthesis is growing, you have deep learning, neural networks, AI all this stuff that I don’t think will affect music making personally. there are a lot of incremental developments because the market is so lively now, there are so many synthesisers all with different techniques, it’s hard to think of a synth that’s worth putting out. if you’re a company you have to put them out, not because they deserve to be made, that’s when industries go downhill. I personally don’t make bi speculations on music but I am very strict on instruments that we put out, only putting out if the world needs it. But id say transformative instruments will be the future.
I found his talk interesting, mostly due to my satisfaction with my minilogue and volcas. Hearing one of the main designers of these products speak was intriguing.