Korg Forums

I'm in a little bit of help here...

I'm having trouble with the instruments and effects in SEQ mode. If I'm in PROG mode, I can select any instrument and they all sound fine, but when I'm in SEQ mode, whatever instrument I select sounds incredibly basic and dry. I read in another topic here that I can select "Copy from Program" or "Copy from Combi" from the top right menu and it will sound good. Yes, it does sound good, but as long as I don't do the same for another track. If I do a "Copy from Program" for, let's say, Track 1, Track 2 and Track 3, by the time I finished recording Track 3, the first two tracks will most likely be a total mess.

For example, let me explain what happened just some moments ago: I started a new song, set Track 1 to Slap Bass, Track 2 to Jazz Ambience Kit and Track 3 to Wet Dist Guitar. I recorded the first two tracks without trouble, but while I was recording Track 3, the distortion FX for the guitar was being applied to the drums and the bass, and everything sounded horrendous. I stopped recording to go check the other instruments, and I had to do the "Copy from Program" thing again for both tracks. But then the guitar sounded dull and lifeless, so I had to reset that track too. I recorded it, and then the FX for the bass and drums have gone to who knows where, and they sounded like some 90's MIDI. I kept doing the same thing without any results. There was absolutely no way that I could get all 3 tracks sounding correctly at the same time.

Moreover, not only I couldn't get the desired sounds, but also the keyboard lagged terribly. When I clicked the "Copy from Program" option, the fading effect of the screen played terribly slow and the touch screen took like half a second to respond.

I don't know if my keyboard came flawed, if it's supposed to be this unreliable or if I'm just doing something wrong...

Please help me.

When you build your own combi's and sequences you will have this problem with effects. There are only 5 slots plus TFX and MFX. You have to map the effects of all timbres into those available slots.

As you already know it's easy for the first one since you can just use the copy command. But it gets more tricky for each timbre that you add. If you add a program that uses an effect already in use just route that timbe to the existing effect, otherwise add it to an open slot and route it there.

But eventually you will just run out of FX slots. No magic secrets to help you here. You have to try and reuse an existing effect that will produce a similar result. It will be a time consuming process to get a complex combi just the way you want it.

So, let me get this straight: I bought a $1000 workstation with a great set of sounds, but I can only use two or three of them at the same time while sequencing?

Great, my only option is to manually add FX and make the routing myself, but there are two little problems there: 1) I have no bloody idea how to do that, because reading the FX names is like reading arabic. 2) I don't feel like wasting my time doing it, because in the end, the instrument would sound like crap anyway, and even if I magically manage to make it sound good, it would be limited to 5 or 6 instruments per song.

I might just as well bought a $50 15-year old synthesizer if I knew my songs were going to sound like Commodore 64 MIDI.

If you look at some of the preset combi's you will see that many of them use many timbres and use some creative FX routing. So yep, if you don't put in the effort you won't be able to produce complex combi's that sound good.

I don't claim to be an expert and it can take me quite a bit of time and a lot of trial and error. The Kronos has 12 slots. Sure, I would love 100 FX slots but despite these limitations it's usually a better arrangement than some other boards. Some have a single FX per timbre with no other routings. Korgs FX structure allows FX sharing and chaining.

Maybe a PC based DAW with some good VSTs would work out better for your needs.

Yes, that's what I had before buying the Krome: SONAR X3 with some good VST's, and I bought this keyboard precisely because I thought some sounds were better than the ones from the VST's. My idea was to use those Krome sounds together with other VST's sounds.

I'm not asking much, I just want to use two or three instruments at the same time. I really like the basses, synth leads and electric guitars. As for the other sounds, I'd use the ones from EWQ Colossus, Spectrasonics Trilogy, Addictive Drums, or the Cakewalk ones. If I can configure the FX chaining and save it as a preset in the Krome Editor, I'll do it, but I'd need some help because I have absolutely no idea how to check what FX I need for each instrument and how to do the routing.

Start here ...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yCK5RgoO7TE

Any tutorial for the Krome, M50, M3 will be helpful since FX routing is the same for all of them.