Korg EMX/ESX Electribe demo

A long time ago I told someone here that I would do a demo of the Korg EMX... and then totally flaked on it.

This is a recording of the set I just played at Burning Man 2006. The synth sounds are all EMX, the drum and other samples are all from the ESX. The drum samples were semi-random sounds taken from Native Instruments "Synthetic Drums 2" sample CD, there's also some random samples talking about "the future", which was this years Burning Man theme.

I see a lot of dismissive comments about the Electribes, but I love them. In particular, they are great for sketching out new songs, and for playing live. They definitely have their limits, and when you're writing with them you come up against those limits constantly which can be very frustrating, but for me having those limits also helps to reduce distractions and actually write music. I was really happy with the variety of sounds I was able to get out of the EMX in particular, and I didn't even touch a couple of the weirder synthesis methods.

Anyway, here's the link, it's a bit over sixty minutes worth of music... I'm not sure how to describe the genre other than the generic "electronica"... but its melodic and electronic with beats.

http://submodern.com/burn2006.mp3

...and no, I don't work for Korg or NI or anyone else... I just like their Electribes. Sorry if this came off as spam-my... hope you like the music.

And umm, yeah, all that stuff I said about the limitations of these machines being good for you, blah blah etc etc? Well, I've been telling myself that crap over and over for the past two months while writing this, and its gotten really fricking old. So now I'm off to lock myself in the studio and make a bunch of weird ass complicated noises with some real gear for a while...

Cool stuff Shows off that combo really well. The EMX has some pretty cool synth sounds. So what's your favorite thing about your electribes? The ability to record motion, knob movements?

nice set, some of the synth sounds dont really interest me but i would be completely entertained if i was hearing this live.

My favorite thing about them is that you can make music by just playing around. When I'm staring at Logic's note grid I take things way too seriously and overthink everything. When I'm playing with the Electribes, I just try to make a bunch of cool patterns and worry about stringing them together later.

It works the same way with the sounds. I know I won't be able to get exactly the sound I have in my head, so instead I just try to get a sound that I like. And then I move on.

Not having to stare at a computer is a plus too.

I agree that the synth sounds here are nothing special, but I also think they sound pretty good. That's important because if they sucked, I would never be happy and would spend all my time trying to coax decent sounds out of the thing. Instead, they have a nice large sweet spot for bread and butter synth-y sounds, which is very conducive to creating new music. If/when I record it for "real", I'll use a lot of different synths with a lot weirder sounds. But for writing new songs, and playing them live, this worked great.

You can definitely get weirder stuff from the Electribes with motion sequences -- again, you probably won't get exactly the sound you have in your head, you'll just get something that sounds good enough -- but I actually didn't use them all that much for this set because I ran out of time. If I had stuck to my original (masochistic) plan to write abstract, experimental ambient using only grooveboxes, I probably would have used the motion sequences a lot more. But writing an hours worth of new music takes up a lot of time, and corners had to be cut...

Oh yeah, the biggest motivation behind using them was that I could fit both of them in a laptop backpack, and easily ride my bike around playing at various random camps for various random people. Last year I brought out some Nord Modulars and effects, which sounded great but made me dependent on other people to help me constantly move my stuff... definitely not fun.

Anyway, thanks for the responses, and thanks for listening to it