Korg Forums

[Darkside]

Hi. I completely agree with Disastrous and all the huge army of others, who say that making music or at least the most of it outside of the computer works waaay better. Actually I have two big points in favour of hardware: 1. a piece of hardware is more an instrument rather than multifunctional machine like a computer and 2. being blind and using screenreaders to work with computer on every task it's a completely different story. Having a mindset of a true nerd it's never a chore or a problem for me to learn a menu or a bunch of them by heart without even seing the dam display. And as we speak about limits - hmm - I have used Korg Microsampler for the last happy six years and hope to have many more to come. I have mastered the machine quite wel, the machine in terms has mastered my whole setup and workflow, becoming the center of it all so who masters who is the question here. For me this kind of limit in possibilities is actually quite good as it's not that easy to get confused and lost in x amount of options ending up not going anywhere at all. In the end the computer is of course still a very important piece of kit as everything ends up in there and so I'm quite happy having found a good way to operate in both worlds at once. In the end the most important thing in it all is actually to choose wisely and master the tools as deeply as possible.

[Unruly]

When I first got my es2, I had a ton of ideas about how I wanted to use it. But just like any piece of gear, it takes time to reconcile how the gear actually works with the ideas in my head. And so I've adjusted my approach to using it a bunch of times. Originally I was hoping I could use it almost standalone. Then I realized that for my style that probably wasn't going to work. So I have bought and sold a bunch of gear in the last year trying to come up with a good setup to build around it. I had a 404sx by the way and sold it (super cool machine but really awkward interface and didn't seem to sync to midi quite right, always a little lag). At one point I had a pretty big setup with the es2, aira t3, 2 volcas and an iPAd. That was nuts.

Then I got a Circuit and I've been super happy with that machine. I think the es2 and the circuit really compliment each other and kind of fill in each other's gaps. The es2's lack of really inspiring synths is really helped with the circuit (that Isotonik editor for the Circuit is straight up genius). Also the Circuit is really good for layering patterns that don't necessarily follow regular 16 bar patterns.

But the es2 is so great for it's overall drum programming and live drum editing. The groove templates, the xy pad, the abiity to really quickly turn drums on and off. And although the synths aren't amazing, they do have utility uses for like simple basses, background stuff. I also use single cycle samples to get more synth like sounds. And think the es2 just has a really cool, unique sound to it. Kinda simple but hi fi sounding.

So for me, I didn't think the switch from Ableton to hardware would take a whole year to figure out. But it takes time to really sort out what works sometimes. For me the only thing that I think would really take the es2 to the next level would be to quantize the step jump. It's such a great and unique feature but because it's not quantized, there's not way to use it when other gear is sync'd to the tribe. And if it could be sync'd and latched you could really remix and reinvent the patterns in amazing ways. But it's just a little too unreliable to bank on.