Korg Forums

Hi folks,

I've recently begun experimenting with loading downloaded .PCGs into my KARMA via floppy disk, and was wondering how I could merge the patches I've downloaded with my current repertoire of patches?

I'll quickly explain my setup...

I play using Combis I've created in bank C from unchanged or edited Programs in banks A, B and E. When I load a PCG of sounds designed on a Triton, it loads the Programs into Bank E and the Combis into Bank D. The new combis sound great, but loading the PCG has overwritten the programs that I use in bank E.

To get around this, I tried to copy the Programs loaded from PCG into Bank D, then reassigned the programs used in the PCG-loaded Combis to those in D rather than E. This meant that all the patches used in the new Combis came from Bank D and left those in E redundant. I then reloaded my back up PCG from floppy disk, hoping that because bank D was blank when i saved this backup PCG it would be leave the new programs and Combis alone, but sadly it wiped everything in D too.

Long story short, I just want to know the best method for loading patches I've downloaded from the internet into my KARMA and to be able to merge them with my current patch repertoire, without anything being overwritten or lost.

Any and all help/suggestions greatly appreciated guys!

As far as I know (don't have a Karma myself), you should use your normal PCG. Then load the necessary programs and combis one by one (tedious job), and redirect the timbres in the combi to the correct programs (even more tedious).

I will try to make my PCG tools application supporting the Karma soon which can help with organizing (but you have to do most of the work yourself tough).

Lex,

Michael K's essentially correct.

One thing to try before throwing in the towel tho' would be to document the combis (from non-factory PCG's) that you want to get into your machine - you can use a spreadsheet - you want voice name and number &/or category.

Many will use the custom program bank, but I think you may find that most of the PCG's use common tones, so think sound categories, like lead, bass, etc. You should be able to re-voice those combis and get really close to the intended sound and still retain your own programs.

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Make sure that any additional KARMA data gets copied to the "user" slots, since custom PCG's may look for non-factory G.E.'s there. (If you're consolidating several PCG's and sets of data, you may have to do some serious juggling to get everything in and get combis to reference the right data -- again, having it written down is really helpful in wrapping your head around what needs to be done to get everything working as intended.


BB

Gents, thanks for your swift replies, much appreciated.

I did post something here but since posting it I realised you can OPEN a PCG on the board and load it manually... I'm going to give that a bash and see how far i get first.

OK, so I've got my head around this successfully Cheers for the help above guys, much gratitude.

For those that might stumble across this topic in future and would like the same question answering, here's how I did it min simple terms...

When loading PCG data from a Triton, you can either LOAD the PCG (this is what i was doing previously) which will import the WHOLE PCG into the same locations it was saved in, regardless of whats already there on your board.

OR

You can OPEN the PCG in disk mode, and then select which programs and combis you want to load individually. Furthermore, you can specify where you want to save them.

So this is what I did with all the programs i wanted to load from this particular PCG. I loaded them all sequentially into D bank, in the same number as they were originally saved as, i.e. E021 saved to D021. I then loaded all the Combis into D bank too, and went into the program page of each Combi in turn and redirected the programs used. for the example above, E021 was redirected to D021.

In a nutshell, this allowed me to load everything I wanted to without overwriting bank E. I may move these around again to make space for loading more PCGs, but for now but this allows me to load PCG data, not overwrite anything, and then merge these combis into my live set on bank C.