Korg Forums

I've had an EMX for about a month now, and have been toying with the idea of keeping a physical copy of sounds, patterns and such. I don't know how useful it is, but hey, why not?

I'm used to reading guitar tabs, and have been looking into drum tabs as a way to track my drum parts. For synth, standard music notation is fine. Recording sounds has involved noting each setting (osc type, parameters, etc...) and their values (probably an easier way).

I was wondering how (if at all) you guys note this stuff down on paper?

I merely push all the buttons, turn all the knobs and record what sounds good! It's the secret of the Electribes don't cha' know.

Are the settings on effects and modulation standard across synthesizers? At least from Korg? Like if I find a sound I want to remember and write down the settings could I program those into a Triton or something? I suppose a high-end keyboard might have a higher resolution to the effects instead of the 128 setting levels on the electribes. But does it more or less work like that?

How do people use the effects on a software synth/sampler? Apply it with the mouse wheel?

Not 100% sure but I'm guessing that 127 is the standard max. This is a midi thing involving the number of combinations that can be stored in 7 bits. (the other bit is used for something I bet, but I've never looked at the actual spec) Lol, I'm a software engineer so these things stand out to me

As for controlling a software synth, anything that can send midi data can usually be mapped to controls. My midi keyboard for instance has 8 encoder knobs and 8 faders. In ableton live, I map these to whatever I want. For example, if I want knob 1 to manage the master pan, I right click it, say 'map to midi', wiggle knob 1 and then it is assigned easy

sherman wrote:Not 100% sure but I'm guessing that 127 is the standard max. This is a midi thing involving the number of combinations that can be stored in 7 bits. (the other bit is used for something I bet, but I've never looked at the actual spec) Lol, I'm a software engineer so these things stand out to me

Just to be pedantic, 127 is the max value, BUT the original poster mentioned 128 setting levels, which is absolutely correct. You can store 128 combinations in 7bits when you include 0 as a combination.
The most significant bit is set to distinguish Status bytes from Data bytes, required as timing information can interleave with the other message bytes. This leaves 7 bits for the data packet. If higher precision is required, one sends one high byte and one low byte for 14bit messages. At the time MIDI was designed, the speed of transmission was very limited and very important, and so timing information took priority over accuracy. It looks kinda ugly/limited by todays standards, but OSC as an alternative doesn't seem to be catching on in a hurry.

Thanks for the info.

Sherman- you don't need to keep a note of the parameters- the EMX does this for you. When you turn the knob for any of them the word 'original' will flash as you go past the setting- telling you the original setting for the sound you created then saved. This saves you the bother of writing them down. Just go to the pattern with the sound you want and all the info is available.

oh, i see, midi is like a standard protocol for recording synth information?

So in theory you could just open a text editor write some midi information and pipe it down a network interface to a midi device and it would play? I mean that's a slight simplification but it's something like that?

Really wish we could muster enough interest for a EMX1 editor to be developed, much like this one for the EM1... http://www.midiweb.de/