MUSIC GEAR
OCTOBER 21, 2021
Korg Company History
The Korg company history started when the company was founded by Tsutomu Kato and Tadashi Osanai in 1962, in Tokyo, Japan. At first the name was Keio Gijutsu Kenkyujo Ltd which became Keio Electronic Laboratories. The name came from their office location, near the Keio train line in Tokyo.
Before that, Kato ran a nightclub where Osanai, a Tokyo University graduate and an accordionist used to perform at his nightclub. It began when Osamai dissatisfied with a Wurlitzer Sideman rhythm machine and convinced Kato to finance his plan to produce a better one.
The company’s first product was the Disc Rotary Electric Auto Rhythm machine, Donca Matic DA-20 in 1963. Followed by a solid state version Donca Matic DE-20 in 1966.
In 1967, Fumio Mieda, an engineer who was building keyboards met Kato and Kato was impressed. He asked Mieda to build a prototype and ended up with a programmable organ.
Keio sold the organ using the brand “KORG” from the combination of the first letters of the founders : Kato and Osanai and RG from emphasizing the letters R and G in the word “organ” as their target market.
The organ products were successful during the 1960’s and early 1970’s, Due to the competition from other organ manufacturers, Kato decided to build a keyboard for the synthesizer market. The first synth from the company is the Korg miniKORG released in 1973.
Korg created their synths with a number of innovations such as the “key transpose” function. It was Kato’s idea after a singer at his club needed her instrument players to play in a lower key, but her accompanist wasn’t able to do so.
Another feature was the “sample + synthesis” sound design and onboard effects on their synths. A good example is the Korg M1 workstation released in 1988 and sold over 250.000 units. The M1 was the bestselling synthesizer at that time and still considered as one of the best workstations today.
Since 1990’s Korg has diversified into digital effects, recording equipment, tuners and electronic instruments. In 1992, Korg bought Vox, a British manufacturer of guitar amplifiers and was once the exclusive distributor of Marshall Amplification products in the US for decades which ended in 2010.
Kato died on March 15, 2011. The Korg current headquarters are in Inagi, Tokyo. Some famous musicians used the Korg keyboards as their main instruments such as Keith Emerson from a progressive rock band, ELP (Emerson Lake and Palmer) who played the Korg 01/W workstation synthesizer.
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