Building the right string sound

[Spevinator]

Hi All,

I bought a Korg X-50 for my friend it aid our songwriting/band founding. Our style is thoroughly Symphonic/Melodic metal. Korg seems to own the Keyboard niche associated with this music genre (and rightly so considering their sound). Anywho, the X50 is great. It has plentiful piano sounds, some soft pads, and good strings. Up to this point the stock string sounds have been great but we are increasingly looking for a little more out of them.

A sound we often use is a mix between distorted guitars and strings. Usually a combi like Pro Strings. I am looking for ways to edit these combis (or build my own) to address the following problems.

1. Not quick enough. Some of our songs require quick hammering of chords which I mute when playing guitar. The strings on the Korg sometimes drift too long and when played in succession it sounds a bit muddy. How can I "tighten" everything up?

2. Not punchy enough - I have a some compression would likely help this. Can I do this within the X-50?

An example of a guitar/string mix I really like would be Nightwish's song "Bless the Child" which can be viewed here: (starting at 1:08)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=RXLuOWN4Xzk

Thanks for any help!

--Kev--

[Bigs]

It sounds like it's time to open the manual and dive into the world of synthesizers

You can make the strings faster by editing the individual programs of your combi and tweaking the amp envelopes to short the attack time.

Stero compression can easily be added on the Insert or Master effect pages and it sounds pretty good with the preset strings.

Good luck