Tuesday 27 March 2012

The microKORG on YouTube

Here are five of the best examples I've come across when trawling the net for video tutorials showing off the microKORG:

1 - In my opinion, one of the most impressive examples of how flexible the microKORG is, great performance!

2 - How to program a fantastically organic mellotron flute patch (settings in description).

3 - What the DWGS organs sound like (nice organ riffing too).

4 - How to make your microKORG sound like a piano (kind of...).

5 - How to use your microKORG for funky tempo controlled effects of incoming audio.

Found a great video starring the microKORG? Share it here!

Patch 002 - Ambient pad

Last week I started with an initialized patch (shift+3 if you've forgotten how already!), this week I decided to take a factory preset I quite like but am not altogether happy with and tweak it to my own taste.

The starting patch is b.62 - "Stairs pad".  If you've already overwritten this with a custom patch then you can restore it by pressing shift+7, selecting 1Program (1P9) with knob 1 and b.62 with knob 2. Confirm by pressing the 7 key again. Remember you'll need to have turned the write protect off first (shift+8, turn knob 1 to off and then press the 8 key again to confirm). If you don't want to overwrite your custom patch saved to b.62 already then copy this to another program position first.

So now I have the "Stairs Pad" loaded on my synth, the first thing to do is try it out. I actually really like the pad sound as it is, great for ambient landscapes, but I wanted to play more than two note chords (although the patch is  polyphonic it is limited to two voices because it is layered) and I didn't want the arp voice playing as it doesn't fit with the track I am working on.

Therefore, the first thing I do is change the program to single but what you'll notice is that now only the arp plays. This is because single patches use timbre 1 only and the pad I want is on timbre 2. Therefore you'll need to swap the timbres (shift+2, you'll need to set it up to be layer first or you'll get an error message). Now reverting to a single program only the pad will play. If the arp is on, turn it off as this is arpeggiating layer 1 (now the pad).

Now, call me boring but I like this patch pretty much as is. What I do like to do though is save the patch to a free program, select it to go out of edit mode and then play with the performance controls which can result in noticeably different sounds. For example, turn the EG Attack counterclockwise and you'll get more of a brass sound (especially with the cutoff increased). You'll notice how important the envelope controls are in ensuring that what we are left with is a pad sound. From playing about with these controls though, the only thing I did and kept was closing of the filter cutoff a little so that the pad was a touch brighter, although you could always just use the mod wheel for this as the mod wheel is currently assigned to the cutoff.

Here are the final settings of the patch I called Ambient Pad (where "unchanged", this is relative to timbre 2 of the Factory preset b.62 - "Stairs Pad").

Voice: SYT, SGL, PLY, ---, ---
Pitch: 0, 0, 0, 2, 0 (unchanged)
Osc 1: SQU, 0, 0, ---, --- (unchanged)
Osc 2: SAW, OFF, 7, -7, --- (unchanged)
Mixer: 127, 110, 0, ---, --- (unchanged)
Filter: 24L, 38, 0, 14, 30
Filter EG: 115, 122, 53, 115, ON (unchanged)
Amp: 127, CNT, OFF, 0, --- (unchanged)
Amp EG: 22, 64, 127, 122, ON (unchanged)
LFO 1: TRI, VOC, OFF, 75, --- (unchanged)
LFO 2: SIN, VOC, OFF, 42, --- (unchanged)

Patch 1: TRC, LF2, 42, ---, --- (unchanged)
Patch 2: LF2, 1.CT, 42, ---, --- (unchanged)
Patch 3: MOD, CUT, 24, ---, --- (unchanged)
Patch 4: LF2, PAN, 24, ---, --- (unchanged)
Mod FX: FLG, 32, 46, ---, --- (unchanged)
Delay: CRS, ON, 3.16, 80, --- (unchanged)
EQ: 320, 5, 11, 4, --- (unchanged)
Arpeg. A: 140, 1.16, 20, AT1, 3 (unchanged)
Arpeg. B: ON, 0, OFF, 8, --- (unchanged)

Wednesday 21 March 2012

Patch 001 - Glockenspiel

The first thing I did when I got my microKORG a couple of weeks ago was to restore the factory presets (I bought my synth used on ebay) and go through them one by one taking note of which ones to keep and which ones to ditch. In the end I was happy to keep 78 of the 128 presets and set about initializing the other 50 patches (shift+3).

If, like me, you're a new microKORG user then it is worthwhile taking the time to check out the settings of an initialized patch - a single oscillator (saw wave), no detuning, filter fully open and a basic amp envelope of fast attack and decay, full sustain and no release. The mod and pitch bend wheels take on vibrato and pitch bend duties respectively with no other modulation controls operating. The effects and EQ settings are both off. If all of that makes no sense to you then you'd best do some reading up on synthesizer basics!

You'll soon find out from my sound experiments that I tend to steer clear of harsh, in your face, sounds, preferring instead lush pads, synth strings, ambient drones and musical blips and bleeps, etc. I am also interested in how to recreate acoustic instruments on a VA synth. Therefore, for my first patch in this venture I thought I'd keep it simple and try and recreate a glockenspiel.

The first thing I did was to edit the amp envelope to have a fast attack (2 rather than 0 to avoid an unpleasant click sound), zero sustain and relatively high decay / release. The ADSR characteristics are clearly a lot more like a percussive instrument (the initialized patch has an organ like ADSR envelope). The saw wave is not suitable for an xylophone so I changed this to a sine wave and already the sound is beginning to take shape, especially in the upper octaves. The sound was lacking something though, that metallic quality of the glockenspiel (perhaps more xylophone-esque).

I read in the manual that ring modulation can give a bell like sound so I messed about with that for a while but to be honest didn't have a clue what I was doing (definitely something to explore another time). Then I remembered the digital waveforms (DWGS) and so I worked through them and settled on number 7, which was definitely a lot more like it. The sound was a bit static so I added a little flanger and delay and I was nearly there. I wanted how hard I played the notes to respond as it would with a glockenspiel so I routed velocity to amp in the modulation matrix. I turned off the pitch bend. The only other thing to try and model was the change in tone as you up the actives and so I routed keytrack to the cut-off filter, which I closed about half-way (I only noticed after that there is a fixed routing already on the microKORG, oops!).

And I was pretty happy with that for a first try. Definitely sounds better in the upper registers though and I would like to be able to route keytacking to the decay / sustain so that the lower notes ring out a bit.

Here are the patch settings (in the end I also saved a version without flanger / delay, I like both):

Voice: SYT, SGL, PLY, ---, --- (unchanged)
Pitch: 0, 0, 0, 0, 2
Osc 1: DIG, ---, 7, ---, ---
Osc 2: SAW, OFF, 0, 0, --- (unchanged)
Mixer: 127, 0, 0, ---, --- (unchanged)
Filter: 12L, 71, 20, 0, 0
Filter EG: 0, 64, 127, 0, ON
Amp: 127, CNT, OFF, 0, --- (unchanged)
Amp EG: 2, 92, 0, 92, ON
LFO 1: TRI, OFF, OFF, 10, --- (unchanged)
LFO 2: SIN, OFF, OFF, 70, --- (unchanged)

Patch 1: VEL, AMP, 48, ---, ---
Patch 2: TRC, CUT, 48, ---, ---
Patch 3: LF1, CUT, 0, ---, --- (unchanged)
Patch 4: LF2, CUT, 0, ---, --- (unchanged)
Mod FX: FLG, 20, 6, ---, ---
Delay: STR, OFF, 56, 42, ---
EQ: 320, 0, 2, 0, --- (unchanged)
Arpeg. A: 120, 1.16, 80, UP, 1 (unchanged)
Arpeg. B: OFF, 0, OFF, 8, --- (unchanged)

I like how this sounds running through the arpeggiator, try for yourself!

Tuesday 20 March 2012

Ditch those presets and join me on a journey, into sound!

It has been two years since I concluded my Micron - Patch a Day project. I love the Micron, and no doubt will go back to it at some stage (or maybe even an Ion, one day...) but back in March 2010 I sold my much loved silver and red box and bought a Novation A Station. A great synth for tweaking but sadly I don't have the room to keep a rack of gear anymore and so, after only a few short months, it too moved on to pastures new.

Although I have a number of soft synths which I love messing about with (especially Reason), I very rarely sit down and get stuck into some patch creation; I dunno, just too may distractions I guess (and as my soft studio is laptop based it isn't always set up). Bottom line is I missed a hardware synth, there is something very seductive about sitting down and using a user interface designed solely for the purpose of making noises. And sometimes (occasionally!) very nice noises too.

And so I bought one. A new synth.

So what have I chosen? What have I plumped for over and above another Micron? I can almost hear the yells of Judas from the Micron users amongst you but yes, I got a microKORG  (!). I have a few reasons for choosing the Korg over another Micron, or something like a Novation K Station (the only other serious option I considered in my budget), as follows:
  • It runs on batteries (so can grab it while I have a spare half hour sat about on the sofa)
  • Although not as easy as synths with a non matrix UI, editing is a bit easier than the Micron (especially away from a computer)
  • The simpler architecture means that copying / sharing patch settings can be done via a few lines of text rather than .sysex files (for posting on blogs for example)
  • The simpler architecture also means that creating patches is not as daunting
And with my new synth comes a new project, similar in nature to Micron - Patch a Day... microKORG - Patch a Week! I really struggled to create a new patch every day so I have ditched that concept for a more realistic timescale of a new patch every week. Patches will generally be posted in simple text format although I plan on posting videos, audio files and maybe .prg files too if there is a demand (bear in mind I run OSX though).

So there you go. I appreciate a lot of you Micron users won't be able to follow my sounds on the new blog since the hardware is so different but I hope a few of you will read what I am getting up to, and possibly even try things out on your synths as we go along. Feel free to even post your results here, the more the merrier! microKORG  users, ditch those presets and join me on a journey, into sound!