Please help! I'm a newbie and need help with MIDI and my R3

[Austinnotla]

I recently bought a Korg R3 & a Korg Electribe EMX-1. What I want to do is to record both instruments into Garageband and I want them to sync up. For example, I have a song that has an arpeggiator going for 1 minute alone (coming from the R3), then after a minute I want the drum pattern I made up on my EMX to come in and sync up tempo-wise without getting out of tempo.

I hooked the EMX and the R3 together and through a peavey amp, but it only lets me play the R3 through the EMX.. I don't want to play the R3 through the EMX- I just want the temp to sync up in Garageband.

Please help! I've been sitting here for hours trying to figure this out!

THANKS!!

[cymbaline]

Ideally, you would hook up a midi cable from your output of your interfact to one machines input, and another from its thru to the input of the other (daisy chaining...)

Then hook up quarter inch cables from your machines outputs to the interface's inputs.

In your recording program, enable MTC/MMC (Midi Time Code/Midi Machine Control), and make your computer the master. This should make it so when you hit start/stop in your recording software, it will do the same on your machines. You may have to make your machines slaves if they dont do it by default upon receiving midi commands.

Set up the appropriate tracks in your software with the correct inputs, arm and you should be good to go.

Hope this helps!

[Austinnotla]

Ok I will try it now. Thank you for responding. I'll let you know how it goes.

[Austinnotla]

Im still lost.

[xmlguy]

I hooked the EMX and the R3 together and through a peavey amp, but it only lets me play the R3 through the EMX.. I don't want to play the R3 through the EMX- I just want the temp to sync up in Garageband.

If you don't want to play the R3 through the EMX, then why did you hook it up that way? You created exactly what you didn't want.

The audio output of the R3 and EMX have no effect on syncronization when hooked together in any combination.

Syncronization is done with midi, not audio. Midi is not audio. Audio is not midi.

To syncronize them you need to hook the R3 to the computer with a USB cable, then download and install the latest USB-midi driver from Korg. The EMX doesn't have USB- so you must have a midi interace on your computer that has a midi out port. You also need two stereo inputs, or a mixer, to record the audio of the R3 and EMX on the computer. You may need an audio I/O box to do this, like an M-Audio FastTrack pro, which has 4 inputs as well as midi in/out ports.

Once you do this, you can record midi and audio from the R3 and EMX. Get that working first before you start trying to sychronize them.

[vibedog]

Hi Austinnotla,

Being a newb can be frustrating but can also be a time of creativity so I hope you are finding a solution. I'll try to add a little to what the other posters have said.

1) You say you have "hooked the EMX and R3" together. I'm not sure how but I'll guess you went from the mono out of the R3 to the audio in of the EMX. From here, you may select auto-bpm on the EMX and then just hit "play" any time you want and, cross your fingers, the EMX drum pattern should be in sync.

Doing it this way is about as crude a way as I can think of but you could record an audio signal. You would miss out on the stereo of the R3 but you could add some EMX effects I suppose.

2) A better way is to use a MIDI cable from the EMX out to the R3 in and then set the R3 to have an external clock (I think you just turn the multi function knob to 42 and then use the rightmost knob and select "midi ext"). Now on the EMX you can set whatever synth part to control the R3, just match the MIDI channels. For a 1 minute "silent" period you can just play an EMX pattern with no sounds (except for the synth) and then select your drum pattern with the big knob when you are ready to come in.

3) This can all be automated by using MIDI control from your DAW which is "perfect" once you get it all set up. The R3 MIDI can be controlled through USB or MIDI cable, and you might be able to control the EMX by doing "computer -> usb cable -> r3 -> midi out cable -> midi in of EMX". This might be hoping for too much though and then you'd have to get a midi-usb interface to get the EMX hooked up to the computer.

I hope these ideas give you something new to try, and best of luck!