I just watched the cool video with Alessandro Cortini the synth master from NIN and he has a very expensive impressive cave of gear!

He has tons of Buchla and vintage synths. What would be a good setup for me to get to learn and not go broke to get those sounds? Right now I have an Elektron Octatrack, Elektron Analog 4 and Make Noise 0-coast that do sampling/sequencing and some basic patches. Looking to expand this on a budget that won't cost me a fortune.


If I understand Mr Cortini right you already have anything you need. He said he can just use the Octatrack to create a song. The 0-Coast is your Buchla. The Analog 4 your EMS Synti AKS (o.k. that is an exaggeration).

If you want to expand: your sources are more on the well behaved clean side. Maybe you can add something more raw analog. A vintage VCO mono or a small Eurosystem (this is ModularGrid for a reason).

And you need of course a stompbox style larger than live fx unit, like BigSky, Mercury 7, Space, Bam ...


He does have tons of gear in his studio and many computers! I'd love to have a synth cave like this guy.


Takes time...you can't just roll up to Synths-R-Us with a panel truck and a briefcase of cash (well, you could, but what would be the point?) and haul off everything in one shot. It's good to have a routine schedule for acquiring gear, but trying to build Alessandro Cortini's studio in one shot would result in an unusable studio.

solitud's big-time right about one thing, tho...that rawer, early piece. Like I said, MS-20 Mini + SQ-1. True, there's people who carp and moan about how the Mini doesn't sound like a 'vintage' MS-20, and there's some truth there: it certainly doesn't sound quite like a 30+ year old box full of 30+ year old components with 30+ years of power cycling, usage, etc. But being one of the few people that I know of to have unboxed a minty-fresh 1st-gen MS-20 back in 1980 when they were still rolling off the production line and then being able to compare/contrast what I vividly recall of that synth with the minty-fresh 1st-gen Mini replica, let me assure you: it's a VERY faithful replica.


Agree no rush as I am super busy getting up to speed with the Elektron and Nocoast gear. I will keep eyes out for a used deal on MS-20+SQ1