Korg Forums

Good morning, from Wales UK.
I'm looking here for guidance where to more specifically post an enquiry.
I'm a member of the EK-50 forum, but that is a relatively quiet forum, and I think my enquiry may actually be more widely relevant to Korg users, in any case.

So: I'm looking to make an instrument definition file (*.ins file) for the EK-50. The Korg manual provides a comprehensive set of patch numbers, but every single one is nominally MSB 121, not MSB 0. So the crucial number for selecting a specific sound is actually the LSB.

*.ins files that I already know are structured in banks, labelled by their MSB.
With the EK-50, would these banks therefore be structured by the LSB ?
And if so, what is the syntax for the final section of the file, where all the 'banks' are listed ?

Obviously, I'd be delighted to get a direct response 'here'; but would be equally grateful for suggestions which other forum might be more appropriate ?

Sincerely

Ian Graham

It might be worth looking at Instrument Definition Files that have been created for other Korg arranger keyboards. There might be some common ground, or some useful pointers. There is a repository of IDFs here:

http://sonarmusic.ru/index.php/instrume ... tions.html

This link will (hopefully) perform a search on the Korg Forum itself. The results might give some ideas:
https://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB3 ... mit=Search

PS Were you once posting as idgraham??

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Thank you, voip (VOIP ? Voip?) for your input.

yes, grahamid is idgraham. I must have registered more than once ! I had a Korg 03 R?W long before I got the EK-50 a couple if years ago. I had to check my passwords records to get in to make this post, and probably tripped from one id to the other.

If we are going to get into discussion here, it would probably be very helpful if someone could clarify whether the 'everything is MSB 121' set-up is universal or widespread in Korg keyboards ? That would help to ID the most similar in terms of looking at ins.files.

I imagine the EK-50 is basically an economy version of some other keyboard; the the 'big-daddy' at least would probably be the same.

Sincerely

Ian G.

According to a posting in the forum linked below, the EK-50 is a cut down version of the Pa300:

https://forum.psrtutorial.com/index.php?topic=65463.0

There's a link to a Pa300 .ins file here (it has a .txt extension, but seems to be essentially an .ins file). There are lots of what appear to be MSB 121 entries there, so it might be of some use:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... O4vOEJouSz

The above link comes from this thread:

http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB3/ ... p?p=746850

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Morning, voip, and everyone else.

I thought I had posted an acknowledgement of your last, voip, yesterday, but it doesn't seem to have 'gone' or 'taken'.
I am very grateful indeed for your interest and effort. Thank you !

You're right - that txt file is not a fully-set-out *.ins file. I have followed up some of the other leads, and I'm coming to the conclusion that the likelihood of an *.ins for a related keyboard being directly usable is rather low - across the PA family, for instance, no two keyboards have quite the same set of sounds, so far as I can see.
The more certain way forward, I think, is to just go for the grunt-work of transcribing from the Sounds lists in the EK-50 pdfs, probably reorganising into 'banks' based on the LSB numbers.
The issue then is how the syntax works in the final section of the new file, to tie in the universal MSB 121.

In a PG Music Pat File for the Korg PA 800, I found this comment:
You also have the option of defining the Bank MSB and LSB
; settings for a patch by the use of commas. For example:
;
; 1,30,40=Orch Hit
;
; In the above example, the Orch Hit sound is patch 1 with a Bank
; MSB value of 30 and Bank LSB value of 40;

which gives one thing to try.

Thanks again
Sincerely
Ian G.

I have had an exchange of emails with Technical Support at Korg UK.
It seems the pa 500 is the most immediate precursor of the EK-50. An */ins file for that is available at https://www.korg.com/us/support/downloa ... 0/93/2481/.
That file is structured in banks determined by the LSB, and banks 0 -12 are recognisably similar to the Voice List of the EK-50.
The .instrument definitions section at the end of the file specifies, line by line, a different coefficent for each bank, and that coefficient is calculated by [(MSB) x 128 + (LSB)].

Great news. I also saw your posting in the EK Series section of the forum. Good luck with building the .ins file.

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