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Joined: 06 Sep 2008 Posts: 1095 Location: Netherlands (PA4X61+PAas. Past: PA3X, PA800, Y PSR-S910, PA500, T KN1000, Y PSR-16)
Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2018 1:58 pm Post subject: Korg PA4X combined with an analog synth (module)
Anyone experience with combining PA4X with an analog (simulated) synth?
I'm getting more and more interested in the old school sound synthesis.
I think this will probably learn me a lot that's also useful in current keyboards.
Maybe one day I'll buy myself for instance a Deepmind 12D rack module, to start experimenting.
Joined: 25 Aug 2007 Posts: 2539 Location: Netherlands
Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2018 2:43 pm Post subject:
the deepmind is a great synth, but if you are interested in synthesis why not start with the excellent synthesizer in the Pa4x?
I think this will give you a few benefits, you get familiar with the basics of synth programming and most importantly it will give you ideas of what to look for in your new synthesizer, so that you can make a good decision which synthesizer suits your needs.
there are a lot of synths available which are great to combine with the pa4x.
For instance the new korg prologue looks very promising.
The synthesizer in the pa4x is a substractive synthesizer based on Samples. If you load a sine, saw, triangle or square sample then you have the basic oscillator of an analog synth to experiment with. Substractive synthesis is one of the easiest synth programming types to learn. It's based on removing partials (harmonics) of the source sound with filters to modify the sound.
So in my opinion you can start instantly with any standard substractive synthesis tutorial and apply that to the synth engine in the pa4x. It's a very powerful synth with not that many parameters to get lost in. So a perfect synth to start with.
Once you master that, you have a great idea of what kind of synth you want, the deepmind will be a good choice, but expect a lot of menu diving for the more complex stuff.
I have lots of synths in the studio and it depends on what kinds of sounds you want. Personally i think the following synths are fantastic addons to a pa4x:
- Deepmind
- Access Virus TI
- NordLead 4
- Roland JP8080
- Korg Radias
- Korg Arp Odyssey
Joined: 06 Sep 2008 Posts: 1095 Location: Netherlands (PA4X61+PAas. Past: PA3X, PA800, Y PSR-S910, PA500, T KN1000, Y PSR-16)
Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2018 2:58 pm Post subject:
Hi Qui,
Thank you for your insights. I will give it a go again with my PA4X one of these days.
I did some sound programming experiments with my PA's throughout the years.
They were never very succesful, to be honest. I always end up finding myself lost in all of the paramters and settings.
I don't know exactly how to start and where I'm going to / what's going on.
I also don't understand a lot of the parameters / settings, even afters studying the manual.
So I was thinking the other way around: maybe by exploring an analog synth with lots of direct (hardware) controls,
maybe I will learn better / quicker what's going on. _________________ Musical grtz, Frans
Joined: 25 Aug 2007 Posts: 2539 Location: Netherlands
Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2018 3:15 pm Post subject:
Fransman wrote:
I did some sound programming experiments with my PA's throughout the years.
They were never very succesful, to be honest. I always end up finding myself lost in all of the paramters and settings.
I don't know exactly how to start and where I'm going to / what's going on.
I also don't understand a lot of the parameters / settings, even afters studying the manual.
I understand that, but the drawback is that you will probably get lost programming a deepmind synth too. The key concepts are more or less the same. I've created a tutorial for the korg kronos where i explained the basics in a very simple way. Although it uses the korg kronos the concepts are exactly the same on a Pa4x substractive synth. When you know the logical steps to program a sound than all the information on the screen makes much more sense.
A typical approach for a new sound on the pa4x would be:
- selecting an Oscillator
- set the envelopes (ADSR)
- set the filter
- the use of an LFO
- Insert FX
- Master FX
All these concepts are explained in the video.
Now when you know what each of this step means for a sound it gets more easy on a pa4x.
Let's follow the above guide:
- First create a new sound
- select an oscillator (you can set the amount of oscillators on a pa4x to a max of 24)
- load a sample in that oscillator
- press a note and you will hear the sample
- then set the AMP EG (the adsr envelope) , so that the attack, decay, sustain and release are exactly the values that your sound should be (for instance long attack and release for a pad sound, or a short attack and medium decay and zero release for a bass sound)
- Then you have the sound you need, now sculpt the sound to something you like by going to the filter stage. There you set the filter accordingly to the sound you like.
- If you want movement in the sound you can assign an lfo to the filter
- then you can decide of you need a second oscillator to create more variation in the sound and repeat the above steps.
When done you can enter the 'beautify' stage, there you add effects like chorus, or reverb and delays. Remember, there are two important terms that are used. Insert and Send.
The main difference is that insert effects are mostly used to change the source sound, like chorus. Send effects are added on top of your source sound, like delays or reverbs.
That's basically all. The Korg kronos tutorial showed all the above steps in detail with examples, but since the pa4x is also a korg keyboard with a synth engine all terminology used in the video is the same in the pa4x synth so it should be not that hard to create your own sounds after some experimenting.
Joined: 06 Sep 2008 Posts: 1095 Location: Netherlands (PA4X61+PAas. Past: PA3X, PA800, Y PSR-S910, PA500, T KN1000, Y PSR-16)
Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2018 3:46 pm Post subject:
Thanks again, Qui.
I will most certainly watch your tutorial and experiment with my PA4X following your steps. I think I can follow them. It's really great to see that an expert like you is able to explain these things in a simple way! _________________ Musical grtz, Frans
Joined: 06 Sep 2008 Posts: 1095 Location: Netherlands (PA4X61+PAas. Past: PA3X, PA800, Y PSR-S910, PA500, T KN1000, Y PSR-16)
Posted: Sat Feb 10, 2018 8:50 am Post subject:
Great tutorial, Qui, it really helped me a lot.
I did some experimenting with the sound engine last night following your guiding steps and was able to get a decent result. There are still a lot of options/parameters that I don't understand, so I'll need to practice a lot more. Thanks again for putting me in the right direction, highly appreciated.
It would be great if you could make a similar tutorial for the PA4X one day, but I fully understand if you cannot find the time to make one. _________________ Musical grtz, Frans
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