Korg Forums

[jannick]

Hi,
me and my friend are working on some electronic music tracks. We already finished some. But we are not realy happy with some of our distortion parts. We are actually messing around with A51 and A 52 but they don't sound like we want.

Just to give you an idea we like distortion sound like Justice or Digitalism. We
don't want to sound like them but maybe someone could give us an advice or preset which could help us.

greeds jannick

[sji]

Hi,

Distortion on the microkorg is either on or off, there's no direct way of changing the amount. However, the amount of distortion is linked to the amp level. The way I use distortion is to simply turn down the amp level until I get the right amount of distortion that I need. Then change the master volume control for the right output.

For better distortion you might want to consider an external effect - have a look at cheap pedal units for guitars.

[jannick]

And which sound do you use?

[sji]

Jannick,

I tend to create my own patches from scratch on the microkorg. It's a great little synth for just tweaking with.

To make a nice distorted bass, start from a fresh patch (use shift-3 to initialise a new patch).

Use the mixer control to increase the level of OSC 2, which should be a saw wave. For OSC 1 use either another saw wave, or better still try some of the DWGS waves.

Switch on the distortion under the AMP control, and change the AMP level value to suit - for lots of disortion try it at max, or just below.

For the AMP envelope, start with an attack of zero, low decay, high sustain and very little release (if any).

Use a low pass filter, just tweak the cutoff and resonance until you find something useful.

Add some EQ on the low end (or reduce the high end) and experiment with different values for the ensemble effect (if any). You might want to try working on a very small amount of delay too.

Voice mode should be mono, but also try unison, with different detune settings.

I'll post an example as soon as I get chance to record a sound.

[travisthered]

very nice little tutorial sji!

[sji]

Thanks!

Actually, I had another play, this time with preset A52. Switched off the arp, added distortion and reduced the amp level as per my previous post. That does work a treat!

But also check there's no portamento or too much delay on the preset and that will make a very nice distorted grungy bass.

Anyway, I'm busy updating my system at the moment (installing a linux upgrade), so I'll post a couple of samples when I'm done.

[sji]

Links to a couple of example files below.

Turn your speakers down first, just in case

The first file uses a DWG waveform and a saw on osc2, similar to how I described previously. The second file is a modification of sound A52. Both sounds are quick and dirty recordings, no processing was done on them. I went a bit mad with the filter resonance on the second clip!


http://www.mediafire.com/?7c4akaaacxa

http://www.mediafire.com/?lankhus9aei

(Just click on the button on the page that says "click here to download".)