1st Synth - Is £300 good for an Alesis ION?

[Lebow]

Hi Guys / Gals,

Firstly let me give y'all a little background as this is both relevant to my question(s) and it's my first post (hi!)...

I'm in my early 20's, have been playing / writing / recording / performing music for years & studied it at university. I'm interested in a diverse and eclectic selection of music & my songwriting reflects this. I would predominantly consider myself a guitarist / bassist / singer although I play quite a few different instruments... I used to play piano but I was too young to appreciate it so I quit & now cannot remember a single chord (I intend to soon relearn)...

I'm looking to purchase my first synth and have done some pretty exhaustive reading + watched a fair few demo vids... Like many folks, I was initially drawn to the Korg MicroKorg and Alesis Micron because of their great sound (for the price) and portability (I live in London and use train / tube / bus to get to 99% of my gigs)... I then expanded my horizons a little and have been drawn to various options like the Clavia Nord Lead 2, Korg MS2000, Alesis ION to name the main ones... I like the idea of having a synth with more of a WYSIWYG interface where things are laid out plainly as I don't see myself digging through menus for hours to create sounds... but similarly I'm a tad put off by the size - especially as I may get into a position where I want to play guitar + synth at gigs so I'd be taking a guitar / bag (for effects / leads), synth + keyboard stand...

I'd like it if my synth was quite flexible (whatever that means) but I'm not really sure exactly what these synths are capable of:

I've seen a great video of a guy playing on a Micron who has drums going and I think a bass part + lead part all at the same time & he does something to change to different beats / synth sounds which is quite impressive.
I've also seen a video of a guy playing an ION doing a cover of Kids by MGMT where he has the synth keyboard split and he plays two parts of the song at once which I liked & another video of a guy playing an MS2000 (IIRC) covering Muse...
I'm not sure which synths are capable of what and I'm not sure what is pretty standard across the board and what isn't... like can all synths play the really fast appregiation which I can hear in MGMT's "Weekend Wars" at around 2:30?

I'm full of contradictions right now, obviously due to a lack of knowledge and experience in this field - hence me coming here for advice!

Anyways, the main two things that spurred me on to post are the facts that I'm really not sure what I'm doing & clearly need some advice - and also that I've been offered a second hand ION for £300 and want to know if I should jump at this (especially as things like MicroKorg's are on eBay all the time)...

I'm considering the possibility of getting a couple of synths and then maybe selling on one that I don't get on with - but I'd rather not do this if it's not really necessary as I'd rather not spend the cash / waste the time...

Anyway I think this is rather long and confusing so perhaps I should let you guys have a say!

Thanks,

Leo

[OriginalJambo]

I'd say that £300 is pretty much the going rate for an ION and has been for some time (I say this since its only about £30 over what I paid for mine back in 2006) . Providing there are no issues with it, I think that's a very fair price.

Oh and just so you know the ION's arpeggiator is one of the worst I've ever used - almost all the preset patterns are obscure. Even though the MS2000s arp isn't anything special it's way more usable IMO. Also be aware that there is some light menu-diving on the ION but given it's incredible flexibility, it's really to be expected.

Just make sure you are happy with the sound of the ION/Micron - ended up not being my cup of tea, but I wouldn't let that put you off.

[Lebow]

Thought I'd copy / paste what I wrote in another forum:
***************

Hmn. Well the thing is I'm not really 100% sure exactly what features I'm looking for or what features hold more weighting than the others! The Microsynth has got a lot of great reviews but then so have all the synths I've mentioned.... To make things a bit easier for you guys, here are some examples of what I'm looking for that you can probably listen to on we7, last.fm or youtube... can most synths cover this territory?

Mystery Jets: Hideaway
The dirty (square wave?) synth used for the start + verses

Mystery Jets: Two Doors Down
The VERY 80's sounding synth that follows the melody line in the chorus (heard from around 0:40ish)

Mystery Jets: Hand Me Down
The oscilating part during the instrumental breakdown at around 2.27

Mystery Jets: Veiled in Grey
The beautiful / emotive instrumental at around 2.50

MGMT: Kids
Both the introductory hook & the underlying octaves or whatever that come in shortly after

MGMT: Electric Feel
The main hook / soft sound

MGMT: Weekend Wars
The short part that appears for a few seconds around 1.17-1.19
The arpeggiated part during 2.28

Those are just some examples of synth sounds I'd like to be able to do at the bare minimum, but I'd like to be able to do a lot more interesting / weird sounds too for some of my experimental projects...

Cheers folks!

[Composition86]

What about a novation supernova rack + master or supernova keyboard?
I bought the supernova I rack model about 2 weeks ago, very powerful and fast to program. It's a chamaleon, it can sound very moogish (deep basses) or jupiter/juno style (pads and leads), 80s or 90s, analog emulations or pure digital.
I also own a waldorf pulse: the supernova is not as deep on basses, but I think it's much more musical.
It has got 3 oscillators, 16 voices of polyphony, an arpeggiator, a 12/18/24 dB LP/BP/HP filter, a huge memory, great possibiliets of modulation, 2 lfos, very good effects and... many knobs and buttons! In fact there are tons of parameters to edit, the definitive synthesizer. I chose it for its possibility to reach a vintage sound in a modern digital machine and its ease of programming.

Also the nova model is good, it's a supernova with a few limitations.

Here's a lead I did: My secret garden

[Lebow]

add Muse: Bliss to the list

would also be cool if they synt could cover some chiptune stuff too... can all synths do this? 8-bit sounds awesome for some things.

[killedaway]

i had an Ion for years, but finally sold it last December. it's an excellent VA that is just absolutely jam-packed with versatility; it's really one of the few VAs where you can route things almost any way you can think of, and constantly come up with new ideas, far beyond those of your bread and butter VAs. the third oscillator puts it in a whole other league and being able to filter and route the oscs so wildly is really refreshing. the two filters were almost too much for me to get my head around, but i managed to get some interesting ideas going with them.

however, my biggest gripe would be that while it's capable of so many bizarre and chaotic sounds, it can be quite time-consuming and laborious to coax typical sounds from it, or at least typical sounds that meet your expectations. when you just want a round, unison bass, or a simple analog brass, or a string patch, you'll end up doing a lot of fiddling to get it where you want vs. almost any other VA where it's the opposite. because of this, it had to go, and it's sort of a Catch 22: if you want a lot of realtime control, you need the Ion because it's got all the knobs and buttons, but then you're stuck with the keyboard. if you want something with a smaller footprint, you buy the Micron, only now you're screwed 'cause you've lost all the lovely knobs! it is my opinion that if Alesis had released a rack Ion, many more people would have one in their studio -- i know i would.

like Jambo said, the arpgeggiator is worthless. and i'll add to that the keybed; the keys on the Ion (and i think also the Micron? not sure...) are miserable. yeah, they're keys, yeah, they work, and yes, they're better than mini keys (but the Ion's keys are shorter than the "standard") or no keys at all, but that's it. they are very similar in construction and feel as cheap, home/toy keyboards from the local "big box" store. i'm not a keyboard player, per se, so it was never mission critical for me, but if you plan to play out or spend a lot of time really working out the keys on it, you might long for a controller after a while.

i know it sounds like i don't like the Ion, but that's not the case: i like the Ion a whole lot. i just want to make clear some things that for me were quite noticeable, and affected how (and how often) i interacted with the Ion.

oh, and as for chiptunes: you can evoke some video game-y sounds from the Ion using FM, PWM, and/or the basic oscillators, but the lack of bit crushing means everything is always gonna sounds pretty clean and "full", and would benefit from some external effects to "weaken" its sound in this regard.

[Lebow]

Hey man what a great post - thanks!

The good thing is i'm not set on the ION or any particular synth for that matter - I mean I've heard a lot of good things about the Micron - and if there is a decent app for patch editing on a Mac then I wouldn't mind doing things that way and having things pretty rigid for live use perhaps... but it would be great to have some knobs to play live + also, it's obviously going to take a lot longer and be a lot less fun to work out new sounds + learn synthesis without a nice WYSIWYG / lots of knobs interface...

I'm not massively fussed about keys as I'm not currently used to any type of keys! I'm also not really bothered about getting a rack synth + a controller... I've already got a controller but it's a tad on the large size for live use (if I intend to play guitar at the same time) - although could be manageable I suppose......or I could take the easier option and buy a decent / smaller controller.....


Hmmmmm

[goober]

Thought I'd copy / paste what I wrote in another forum:
***************

Hmn. Well the thing is I'm not really 100% sure exactly what features I'm looking for or what features hold more weighting than the others! The Microsynth has got a lot of great reviews but then so have all the synths I've mentioned.... To make things a bit easier for you guys, here are some examples of what I'm looking for that you can probably listen to on we7, last.fm or youtube... can most synths cover this territory?

MGMT: Kids
Both the introductory hook & the underlying octaves or whatever that come in shortly after


Cheers folks!

[Lebow]

Hey goober thanks for that link, yeah I'd already seen that one thanks! - I'm curious about how many of those kind of sounds / split keyboards etc are standard fare and how much are more individual-specific...

A little update - I was too long and the guy sold the synth for £340 (doh!)... so... advice please!! - Do I wait, hunt around try and get an ION for £300 (or less!) - or do I get something else?

Maybe the Micron and just have to put up with programming it on my mac?

- or do I maybe get two versatile yet different synths to cover as much ground as possible? (obviously this option is less favourable as it involves spending twice as much!)...


Arrrgh I feel a bit lost still... but thank you so much so far for all of these excellent responses - I can only hope that when this is all done and dusted and I have a big, synthy smile across my face, that other folks will find these posts as helpful as I have!