The instrument
The Korg MS-10 is a monophonic analog synthesizer released in 1978. It holds an important place in techno history as it was the first synthesizer of Juan Atkins, one of the genre's founders. Over the decades, the MS-10 has been used by renowned artists like The Orb, SkyLab, The Chemical Brothers, Autechre, Underworld, Luke Vibert..
"During the summer of 1980, I bought myself a Korg MS10. I messed around with that synthesizer all summer and I'd got to the point where I was making up all sorts of drumbeats on it. I had two Kenwood cassette decks and a little Yamaha four-channel mixer, and I'd make up my drum beat and record it on one deck, then bounce it across onto the other and overdub another part at the same time. [...]"
Atkins' summer-long recording experiments produced a demo tape of five or six tracks, which he proudly played to his classmates when he went to community college in Autumn '80. They caught the ear of one such classmate, Rick Davis aka 3070, a musician who'd already released a record of avant-garde non-danceable electronic music. The two decided to join forces as Cybotron. (Music Technology, December 1988)
Details
The MS-10 functions are reduced to the essentials, with only one oscillator (unlike its more popular "big brother" the MS-20, which has two), a filter, an amplifier, an envelope generator, and a modulation generator assignable to the oscillator pitch (varying the pitch of the note heard) and the low-pass filter frequency (varying the filter opening).
However, its main asset lies in its semi-modular architecture, with a patchbay that allows reconfiguring the order of interactions of its elements and connecting the MS-10 to external signals and other synthesizers and effects. Upon release, the instrument presented itself as both an autonomous instrument and a vast source of sonic experimentation and interaction.