Baffled by the iMS-20 patch panel? Watch these vids!!!!!!!!

[outbackyak]

I've been trying to find out how the patch panel works in the iMS-20 since the manual is totally useless.

Naturally I tried YouTube, but it's full of vids of guys who clearly know less than zero (in most cases, though not all) noodling away on their iPads without telling you what they are doing or why. None of the vids I found had anything to do with the patch panel (there's quite a decent one on the Kaoss pads).

I did the usual Googling for user manuals and patches and such like and found some interesting stuff for the original MS-20 that was starting to make some sense. I know other people are also confused by the patch panel since it is essentially undocumented in the user manual.

I was going to write up a big post of what I found. I'm not going to. There's nothing I could say that hasn't been better said already.

Just go this YouTube address: http://www.youtube.com/user/AutomaticGainsay#p/u

In the channel search box (not the main search box at the top of the page) enter MS-20 and hit search.

You'll find it brings up 8 videos, all around 10 minutes long of a guy named Marc Doty demonstrating every feature of the original MS-20 in amazing depth and with great clarity. He goes a little fast, but that's what the rewind function is for.

There are three vids on the patch panel alone. Almost all of it is directly transferable to the iMS-20 (not all, but nearly all). He doesn't just show you what all the functions are, he describes the limitations of the panel, and workarounds to fix many of the limitations. He goes into depth about creative uses for the patch points and how to create musical mayhem. He's also a pretty damn fine keyboard player.

If like me you've been tearing your hair out trying to work out how it functions, and spending hours randomly putting patch cords between jacks to see what happens, and getting either no results at all or completely unexpected ones then this is for you. If you think you know exactly how the panel works, it's still for you - I guarantee you will learn stuff you had no idea about.

I can't stress enough how good this material is. The other five vids on the MS-20 (2 introductory vids and 3 on the Control Panel) are equally good and again are directly transferable to the iMS20 in the vast majority of cases. Again you will definitely learn stuff you didn't know.

Naturally there's nothing there about the features of the IMS-20 that were not present in the original MS-20. But these vids will get you up to speed with all the basic features of the synth itself and they are entertaining and witty and watchable and understandable.

Seriously, this is the best 80 minutes you'll ever spend.

Enjoy.

[monoRAIL]

Great find, these videos were really good.

[korgfish]

I ran across these earlier today. Thanks for the review and for prompting me to go back and grab the Intro video!

- Steve

[disc-chord]

Thank you so much for bringing this to our attention. I recovered my old account to come out of lurking to thank you! That's how much I appreciate this! I have been playing with virtual analog for so long I didn't even think for a second I'd be stumped by the iMS-20. Hell, I mastered the DS-10! This threw me for a loop though.

I was instantly hooked on the videos as soon as he started with explaining the "Total" input. None of my experiments yielded predictable results, but within a minute he had me completely up to speed! I spent that whole minute going, "Oooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

The MS-20's non-obvious backend suddenly made sense as I grasped the patch-scheme design philosophy. It's a shame Korg didn't think to include any of those details in the manual! Thanks to you and this guy, I was designing the most ellaborate orchestral bass drum patch, ever, last night... and having a blast!

[outbackyak]

Glad it helped. The iMS20 really is very different from any other synth I have used. Non-intuitive but very deep.

[Upright]

This is great! Thank you.