Berlin School Synth Music With Budget Gear

Sunday Synth Jam: It’s not uncommon to see synthesists with massive modular synths take musical inspiration from some of the pioneers of the so-called Berlin School style, like Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream.

This video, via Sequentonal, demonstrates that you don’t need the massive modular rig to work in the Berlin School style. He does it using relatively affordable gear, including a Roland JD-Xi, Arturia MicroBrute, Korg Volca Sample and Volca Keys. 

Here’s what he has to say about the technical details:

The JDxi is taking care of the Bass Sequence for a change, and imho it seems to be doing it cleaner than the Brute, so I might stick with that for the future.

Another first, No Stereo Delay! 🙂 Instead the MX200 is being used in Dual Channel mode, Mono Delay on one channel and Pitch -12 on the other.

8 thoughts on “Berlin School Synth Music With Budget Gear

  1. MicroBrute is manufactured by Arturia, not Korg.

    Pleased to see this extended example. Helpful and inspiring to confidence!

  2. Huh?
    It is very common for synthesists not to mention the manufacturer of their gear. Instead we talk about D50, JD-Xi, Brute, Prophet12 or whatever you like. Of course you’re right: JD-Xi is manufactured by Roland and any brute is manufactured by Arturia, Odyssey was manufactured by ARP and is now manufactured by Korg.
    Who cares, when it is about music?
    By the way, what’s Yello doing in this?

  3. This tonalities of this style of music you can get with any decent-sounding synth, which includes all these cheap and very cheerful machines. The immediacy of a simple synth is a great joy. I use an old Korg MS2000BR for Berlin School sounds. OK it’s digital but I don’t care – it sounds brilliant and I always find myself reaching for it. I can get lovely sounds quickly, and if something more complex is called for, it’s got a motion sequencer. By contrast machines like the DSI Pro 2 and Access Virus are amazing, but take bloomin’ ages to get the best from!

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