I made good progress setting my keyboards up yesterday. Earlier this year we had all our aviary birds living in my office (the Green Room) while we made renovations in the aviary (a remodeled garage). When I brought the birds in, I packed away all my instruments, cables, power cords, user’s guides, music interface, etc. We moved the birds back out to the aviary in June and the Green Room was cleaned up and ready for our house-sitters to use. But I didn’t unpack the boxes of music equipment til now.

I tried connecting the Fatar 88 key controller to my newest Korg, the Microarranger. This has a wonderful array of patches and “band in a box” type accompaniment settings, and so lightweight you can sit it on your lap, but has very small keys.

When I connected them, sound came out, but I was unable to change the patch. No matter how I manipulated the Microarranger, midi signals from the Fatar only produced sounds from the piano patch. However if I played the Microarranger directly, the different patches were available as usual. This is annoying, but not a big deal. I guess I don’t have the midi input set up properly on the Microarranger.

Next I connected the Fatar to my oldest Korg, a little sound module called the 05R/W.

It is a half-size rackmount and we purchased this (and the Fatar) with money we received after my husband’s mom passed away. This was right after I graduated from college (1995) but before my son was born. When I plugged it in and turned everything on, the sounds took me back 23 years.

Cool, part synth part Tardis.