Korg Forums

[Davey Wavey]

Hello!
I'm not a total newbie to the Microkorg, but one thing that frustrates me is that some of the factory patches are impossible to make on the Microkorg itself. Such as patch A.21 (auto house). This patch has a bass drum and hi hat in it. Also, there are layered Vocoder patches (Patch A.83) which you are unable to make using the Microkorg. If I am just an idiot and all these things are in fact possible to make, then please enlighten me.

Otherwise, my question is this: does anyone know of any freeware or open source Synthesizer programs that could be used to design these sounds?

[philtipping]

All the sounds can be made from scratch. You need some ingenuity....and a lot of patience
There's also some very clever ideas demonstrated in a series of MS2000 videos pointed out by Daz in
http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=30214&highlight=ms2000+youtube+video
such as using the keyboard filter tracking control to give the illusion of multiple instruments (especially drums & hi-hats), and alternative uses for LFOs. Syncing them to the delay can give unexpected effects. Although the videos are for the MS2000, some ideas are applicable to the microkorg.
Try one of these 'impossible' patches and de-construct it bit by bit and listen to the results; e.g. knock out one of the timbres, turn down/remove the delay, remove/adjust the LFOs, reduce the virtual patch 'mod int' amounts, remove the 3 parts to the mixer one by one, etc.
Have a look at my block diagrams (another plug ) as they show the whole instrument so you can grasp how the units affect each other (see SyDs under Freebies in www.philizound.co.uk).
Phil.

[X-Trade]

all of the microkorg patches are possible on the microkorg. afterall, they are only presets using the microkorg's synth architecture.

i don't know what you're refering to about the layered covoder patch. but the reason you see the timbre light on is because this doubles up for 'formant hold', where you can hold (and store within the patch) the incoming vocoder formant. i think the first three of every vocoder preset bank uses this.

the drums are created using a square (i think, don't have it on me) LFO wave temposynced to either 1/4 or 1/2 to turn on and off the noise (for the hat/snare/cymbal, and then a saw wave LFO to alter the filter/pitch, at half the other LFO.

so you get the filter sawing every beat, every other beat you get the noise level on so you hear the 'hat'. something like that anyway.

having said all this... if you really want to play around with free synthesis with no limits, i can direct you to a few programs such as Reaktor, or the (free) SynthEdit (which i learnt the basis of synthesis on). these are entirely modular synthesizer programs.

[Davey Wavey]

Hey turns out I am an idiot!

Thanks for that video link, it's amazing.
You were both very helpful. Thanks guys.