Members donaldcrunk Posted August 8, 2011 Members Share Posted August 8, 2011 well, it's still being processed, but here is the fruit of the evening's labors: enjoy. i will elaborate further on my patch and some of my impressions of the keyboard at some point in the future, but it is late and i am tired. yay kronos. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Plink Floyd Posted August 8, 2011 Members Share Posted August 8, 2011 Time well spent! That Hammond patch sounds like a BC stuffed with four extra chorus generators lubricated with Agave tequilana grease. All the sounds were awesome. Some clown's shoes were squeaking, though... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members RichF Posted August 8, 2011 Members Share Posted August 8, 2011 STG and liliththekitten, it's true that the Polysix arpeggiator and chord functions are per patch as opposed to global. One cool thing is that you can actually use the chord functionality on any Program with any engine, not just the Polysix. It's located in the Common -> Basic/Vector tab.Nice job with the custom sounds, guys! I'm sure they were completely unaffected by the apple juice you were enjoying. McHale, that last bit you played on that MS20+SGX-1 Program sounded like it could have been a transition on "Look Around You." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Son of HuHefner Posted August 8, 2011 Members Share Posted August 8, 2011 enjoy. i will elaborate further on my patch and some of my impressions of the keyboard at some point in the future, but it is late and i am tired. yay kronos. 1) it is possible to get high without drugs and alcohol 2) Brian Eno is proud of his musical spawn 3) a tongue and cheek spoof of " All Access Party" has 1000% more entertainment value 4) Chillicothe ( pop, 5,996) is known for barge traffic and gravel/sand pits. Now its a hotbed center of synth enthusiasts who take musical risks and wear funny clothes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members donaldcrunk Posted August 8, 2011 Members Share Posted August 8, 2011 thanks for all the compliments guys! thanks again to Mike for bringing the beast down, it was really fun to play with. it is definitely in a class by itself. i'm happy with how the video turned out, i ended up merging line-in recordings with the X/Y mic input from the field recorder and syncing that to the camera audio. it worked well enough, but my sync seems to be a little off for the last clip, ah well it was late. there is so much cool stereo stuff happening with both patches that you owe yourself a listen with headphones. to give a little context to my thoughts about the machine, i started off with a Korg MS2000 in '03, and still have that machine. i've always had a preference for the company based on my positive experiences with that instrument alone, and the idea of a performance keyboard with all these different high-quality synthesis types available is hugely attractive to me. i trend towards more glitchy/weird ambient tones and interesting detailed textures (think harold budd + merzbow?). i was definitely able to wrangle those sounds out of the machine with very little difficulty whatsoever, and having previous experience with the OASYS Ui helped me navigate about with a good bit more confidence. the layout and organization of the menus on Kronos are pretty intuitive, as on the OASYS - but the reduced screen size caused some issues with me when it came to selecting smaller dialog boxes to edit, or selecting patch points on the MS20 emulator to connect. it often took three or four pokes before i was able to select the dialog box successfully. using a blunt stylus improved the situation somewhat. the MS20 was the first synth engine i messed around with, starting with a simple preset to edit and graduating to building up a patch from INIT. the sound of the MS20 emulator itself is excellent, the unique filters behaved as they should. there was no MS20 (unfortunately!) around to A/B with this time, but i have A/Bed the soft synth MS20 directly with the real thing in days of yore and was more than impressed with the results. it is an excellent emulation. editing the synth engine was less gratifying on the kronos than the OASYS, the control panel of the MS20 is split up into quite a few different screens. the patch panel is just as cryptic and non standard as the old MS20, which i am all for, but there are so many new patch points that it becomes a bit of a learning curve. i was excited to see the virtual headphone jack was still on the control panel for the MS20 emulation, that is a fun tool for creating feedback loops through the filter. having to switch between the patch point section and other segments of the control panel adds some steps to the process, but there have to be compromises made for the size of the screen and i could think of no better solution myself. the knobs, jacks and legending are about as small as they can be on the display and still be readable. turning the virtual knobs is a matter of clicking on the appropriate knob on the screen and grabbing either the primary value slider or the data wheel, which is intuitive enough. what's less intuitive is the behavior of the bank of assignable knobs on the left side of the control panel - knob 1 defaulted to 'cutoff' in my patch, and turning knob 1 did indeed effect the cutoff as expected - but there was no movement of the cutoff knob on the screen, as when editing with the value slider. this would normally be of little consequence, except that the MS20 has two filters and figuring out which filter cutoff was being controlled required a trip off the page. the polysix was a little easier for me to get around, though that was probably due to the lack of a patch panel for me to get sucked into. we spent some time comparing the original with the emulation, and while we didn't specifically discuss our individual conclusions, i felt like it sounded fine. very close to the original, though as suit & Rich mentioned some of the functionality in regards to the arp/chord memory has been changed to fit within the Kronos patch framework. after that i went straight into the electric piano modeller, and browsed through all the basic INIT models. i hadn't played the SV1 yet, so i was anxious to try out some of those sounds - i was more than impressed. i've always had a fascination with electric piano sounds, very rich in tone and sustain yet with the unpredictable transient response of an acoustic instrument. i definitely preferred the EPs in the Kronos to what i've heard from the Nord series, if only for the time Korg spent on those funky creaks and pops that electric pianos tend to make. i decided to use the Rhodes MK II Trem model as a springboard to dive into the effects section of the Kronos with. before i get into that, though, mchale pointed out the visually animated adjustable lids on the acoustic grand piano models. our general amusement over this feature turned to frustration when we found that we could not modulate the opening and closing of the wooden lid with anything. what a shame! we wanted to hear what a piano would sound like when its lid was being opened and closed by an audio-rate LFO. or an expression pedal assigned to wooden lid would be hilarious too. anyway, i found the IFX tab and started sorting through the Kronos's internal effects. i'm not a huge internal effects person usually, but i fully expected the effects in this one to be worthwhile enough to use in a finished product. there were certainly a huge number of available slots to work with, which was cool. small dialog boxes and tiny buttons became an issue for me again on these screens, but not a great deal of editing needed to be done so sounds were set up quickly. i ended up with a reverse delay into the excellent 'o-verb' reverb effect, this going into the 'hold delay' effect, which as i said in the video, is essentially a looper. i opted to set the loop points manually by punching in and out with the joystick and sw buttons, but tempo synced audio loops can also be created it seems. granulator and stereo decimator were assigned to the ribbon and vector joystick respectively. assigning modulations to the two different joysticks makes you sit down and think for a bit sometimes, but it's great to have both the full 360 joystick and the paddle/bender. lots of interactivity on this instrument if you spend the time to set your patches up well. suit and mchale can talk about their own noises if they want. there were so many many parts of the instrument we didn't even get to touch, folks were coming and going through the evening so the kronos was very busy. i definitely love the keyboard, i have no doubt it could handle any ambient pad-demand or weird noise request i could throw at it. in comparison to any keyboard in its class (with exception to the OASYS and possibly the Jupiter 80 which i haven't played) it is exceptionally quick to sculpt sound with, afore mentioned issues notwithstanding. i didn't even touch the sequencer, the many other synth/sample engines or karma this time. there's only so much that can be done in one evening, and i feel like we actually accomplished a suprising amount as it was. i'd love to own one, hopefully someday i will. maybe santa will bring me a big enough tax return this year! sorry this is so long. no one else who was in attendance should feel compelled to write this much, i've just had a lot of coffee! 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Members Metrosonus Posted August 8, 2011 Members Share Posted August 8, 2011 thanks for the write up / videos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members donaldcrunk Posted August 8, 2011 Members Share Posted August 8, 2011 sure! you're more than free to take any of that for your blog, if you like. i'm sure none of us have any problems with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members McHale Posted August 8, 2011 Author Members Share Posted August 8, 2011 McHale, that last bit you played on that MS20+SGX-1 Program sounded like it could have been a transition on "Look Around You." That was actually what I was going for with that sound! Awesome that someone picked up on it. I threw it together in literally 2 minutes using a stock Grand Piano and a quick modification of an MS-20 init patch. I screwed up in the video and meant to do a quick piano thing and bring in the MS-20 as they are two sounds NOBODY would put together but I forgot to mute the MS-20 patch and I was too tired to ask Suit to let me re-record. PLUS, the whole video was done pretty tongue in cheek and the screw ups and spontaneity makes it much more fun anyway. Originally we were going to spoof one of the All Access videos complete with going through the engines, Q&A, etc. but we just ran out of time. And for the record, I know I had zero alcohol...er... Apple Juice... (1.5 hour drives in the middle of the night through deer country is not good to mix with alcohol) and it wasn't like there was a booze party going on. Mainly it was cola and H2O for most of us. The reason my eyes are all watery is because I'm allergic to cats and guess who has one... It was pretty cool to compare the PolySix EX with a real PolySix. I don't do modulars so I have zero interest in arp triggers and REAL analog stuff like that. I love the PolySix and MS-20 EX models. They don't have battery leakage issues or have voice chips fail and sound just as legit as the originals. -Mc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ElectricPuppy Posted August 8, 2011 Members Share Posted August 8, 2011 Splendid work, gentlemens! thanks much for putting that vid together, Sir dKrunk! Now, what I want to know is, how many Korg shirts did McHale get for his totally objectively unbiased work here? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members suitandtieguy Posted August 8, 2011 Members Share Posted August 8, 2011 i'm going to have to type more later but on viewing now i see i TOTALLY FORGOT the most important thing about that organ patch: the 4 detuned CX3 engines were vectored into 4 quandrants and swept around with the vector envelope. it sounded much better here than it did when i programmed it into the OASYS, but i think that's because i just did a better job this time. as i expected, i am very excited about this keyboard. finally there's something that can truly replace and upgrade the Z1 in my keyboard rig. (i won't sell it though, the Z1 will get moved to the studio-only stands and loaned out i'm sure.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members evildragon Posted August 9, 2011 Members Share Posted August 9, 2011 Selling Z1 is a capital sin. Seems like you guys had loads of fun. Great! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members RichF Posted August 9, 2011 Members Share Posted August 9, 2011 Hi all, Scenicsquare, Thanks for the terrific write-up, and also for working on that great video. I'm also a big fan of mangling sounds with the Decimator & Grain Shifter effects. RE: knob/slider assignments in the MS-20EX and PolysixEX (and other engines)- The secret to total physical control is Tone Adjust mode! By default, most Programs put the control surface into RT Knobs/KARMA mode for performance. Some of the go-to parameters (i.e. cutoff) will be assigned Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members seamonkey Posted August 9, 2011 Members Share Posted August 9, 2011 enjoy. i will elaborate further on my patch and some of my impressions of the keyboard at some point in the future, but it is late and i am tired. yay kronos. watching this video brought a smile to my face. Thanks guys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members evildragon Posted August 9, 2011 Members Share Posted August 9, 2011 RE: EP-1- Just to clarify, the electric pianos in the SV-1 are different from the ones in Kronos. The SV-1 is sample-based, and EP-1 uses our MDS (Multi-Dimensional Synthesis). The effects that you see in EP-1, however, are ported directly from the SV-1. But EP-1 also uses samples as a base (so it might also be labeled as "sample-based" in nature), it just uses resynthesis to blend between different samples seamlessly, as I figured from Dan's explanation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members The Audacity Works Posted August 9, 2011 Members Share Posted August 9, 2011 That organ patch Suit and Tie Guy's playing is awesome. KRONOS makes me want to look at hardware again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members RichF Posted August 10, 2011 Members Share Posted August 10, 2011 But EP-1 also uses samples as a base (so it might also be labeled as "sample-based" in nature) EP-1 initially draws from a collection of sample data, but MDS interacts with them in a very different way than what we'd commonly refer to as "sample playback." Sorry for any confusion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members evildragon Posted August 10, 2011 Members Share Posted August 10, 2011 True, it's a sample resynthesis engine as Dan stated in one post back at KorgForums. I have some experience with that synthesis method, having used Camel Audio Alchemy and Cameleon5000 before it. It's still sample-based, derives the basic timbre from the samples, but then morphs harmonic content between different samples by breaking it down to individual harmonics via FFT. There's no confusion, just facts Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members donaldcrunk Posted August 11, 2011 Members Share Posted August 11, 2011 well i was confused, because i'm not the synth guru i used to be and didn't research the instruments features well enough. i meant to have a little cutsheet made up beforehand, but time became short and i didn't get to list everything i wanted to try. i will say, for a sampled rhodes, i was more than impressed. obviously my patch isn't 'expressive' in the traditional rhodes sense, but it did everything i needed it to and sounded better than the Nords that i've done similar stuff with. IMHO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Bernard Posted August 11, 2011 Members Share Posted August 11, 2011 well i was confused, because i'm not the synth guru i used to be and didn't research the instruments features well enough. i meant to have a little cutsheet made up beforehand, but time became short and i didn't get to list everything i wanted to try. i will say, for a sampled rhodes, i was more than impressed. obviously my patch isn't 'expressive' in the traditional rhodes sense, but it did everything i needed it to and sounded better than the Nords that i've done similar stuff with. IMHO. Korg SV1 is the king... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members evildragon Posted August 11, 2011 Members Share Posted August 11, 2011 i will say, for a sampled rhodes, i was more than impressed. obviously my patch isn't 'expressive' in the traditional rhodes sense, but it did everything i needed it to and sounded better than the Nords that i've done similar stuff with. IMHO. That's what RichF and I shortly discussed above, EP-1 isn't sampled in traditional sense of the word (it doesn't have velocity layers). It has some starting point samples (say - tine element, low velocity strike, hard velocity strike, releases, etc.), and the rest gets resynthesised (which is basically morphing through additive synthesis) in realtime. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members suitandtieguy Posted August 12, 2011 Members Share Posted August 12, 2011 is it kind of like a really sophisticated wavetable system? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members evildragon Posted August 12, 2011 Members Share Posted August 12, 2011 Nah, wavetable scanning is something different (see wave sequencing in HD-1). For resynthesis, it's best to visit softsynth land - Camel Audio Cameleon5000 (discontinued) and Alchemy do that. Waldorf Wave and older PPG Waveterm (IIRC) did waveform analysis and built wavetables out of samples, for instance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members 13ghostsofscoobydoo Posted August 12, 2011 Members Share Posted August 12, 2011 That organ patch Suit and Tie Guy's playing is awesome. KRONOS makes me want to look at hardware again. Agreed. Great patch. Inspiring. Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed watching the whole thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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