Korg Forums

Hi,

a lot of people dislike the Electribes and other sequencers due to their 16 step architecture resulting in their sound to be "mechanincl, steril and unhuman". On the opposite, there is the MPC series and their special "feel", which is basically based upon the ability to sequence in a resolution of about 96 "steps". So much finer than the Electribe, which is, as far as I know, only able to record 32th notes. Slight timing mistakes are possible as the notes have much more positons than only 16 steps in a measure.

In addition to the resolution, changes in velocity are vital for a human touch. The MPC has pressure sensitives pads, so that a drum pattern features some slight changes of the volume. This somehow fakes the idea of a real drummer, who also hits his drum set with different power.

Even most technical genres like Techno offer these slight changes of velocity. It can give your track the final touch, but I also think that some people exagerate. A good drum pattern will always sound powerful/moody/etc, with or without changes in velocity. Nevertheless, I have some tipps which I personally like very much.

1.) Random level modulation

A lot of drum pattern need some 1/8th or even 1/16th notes of percussion instruments like shakers/hihats for a synoptic feeling. It is even better if you use the random amp modulation to make them sound louder/quieter. Adjust speed and depth of the amp modulation so that the effect is barely noticable.

To be continued.

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What do you think about my post? Is this "groove issue" important? Do you have another understanding of what "groove" actually is made of? Do you like the first tipp?

Hi there,

I like your post, and I'd like to see where you go with it.

I'm not sure this "groove issue" is important, because the electribe (or any other instrument) is just one element of the music.
When you put everything together (the instruments, the effects, the mixers, the amplifiers, the speakers etc.), they all help create the "groove effect"; IMO one single instrument won't kill it.

I find the random amp suggestion works great, especially on cymbals. you can also make it triangular and motion sequence the 2 mod knobs then it's as random as you could hope for. Reelslikk

2.) Swing

I do not know if my ears are maybe not that great or if I am doing something wrong, but I can barely notice the swing option.

To hear what it actually does I recommend to place a rim on every beat and copy it so you have two rims playing at the same time. Now turn on one of them swing off (in Part edit). While playing, change the swing amount in "Pattern Edit". Now you should hear the difference between a swing of 50 and 75, though I do not know whether I hear a differnce or if I am hallucinating.

I have a trick with hi-hats where I make a pattern of 1 bar and then semi-randomly (but trying to make it sound cool) record a mod sequance of the level and maybe eg time, and then just copy the first 8 beats across the pattern. then save and expand to 2 bars and maybe do a little pitch dip or 1/16th beat reverb or delay send or a roll and then save and expand to 4 bars and so on. the idea is to have multiple layers of little variations that repeat at different durations. Sometimes really cool, "unstiff" things happen this way.

this mechanical sequencer nature has only become a nuisance to me recently. especially because I have wanted to incorporate triplets within a 4/4 time signature OR 16ths within a 3/4 time signature which is unfortunately not possible with the EMX by itself. So I am starting to slowly incorporate my MPC with my EMX... but besides the obvious: there are a few ways to "humanize" your drum programming to some degree

shuffle... experiment with using shuffle only on specific drum parts like hats.

randomize amp LFO on a drum part (as alluded to in original post): very useful for repetitive parts to avoid them sounding electronically produced. (I used this with crashes on a "groovebox-metal" track I uploaded recently to my soundcloud account [rise of the machines] to give a little dynamism) that same track was done in 3/4 time signature to emulate triplet kicks. give it a listen and let me know if anyone else actually thinks the drums don't sound "100% drum-machine" haha.

accent parts: never really used this but it partially makes up for the lack of velocity programming (2-level velocity only without LFO or motion sequencing)

"off-center" drum programming can give some real good groove action... but there is no way you'll be able to get the same level of "wonk" or groove that you can with the MPC or any other higher division sequencer... or an unquantized looper like a kaossilator pro.

EMX will always be the core of my setup but its long past time for me to integrate my MPC into the mix. onward and upwards.

I like many aspects of the ESX and EMX, but they do feel incredibly "stiff" to me. It's so much easier to get a nice sounding groove out of a MPC, but alas.. I had to to sell mine. I'll definitely get another one day because MPC = essential.

The MPC feel is made of a sequencer with 96 possible steps and velocity senstivie pads, nothing more. Nevertheless it does sound great, but the workflow of the MPC is way weaker than the Electribe's. Especially the sample management is horrendous.

I agree 100% MPC is no friend of workflow.

Are you kidding me? The MPC kills the Electribes in term of workflow, especially if you're using JJOS2XL. The ESX and EMX are cool boxes and are a lot of fun to use, but I'd rather have a MPC any day.

skunk3 wrote:Are you kidding me? The MPC kills the Electribes in term of workflow, especially if you're using JJOS2XL. The ESX and EMX are cool boxes and are a lot of fun to use, but I'd rather have a MPC any day.

ESX may be worse, but I can create a beat on my EMX in three seconds, whereas the MPC has a a much longer boot time, you have to load a program, you do not see your notes, step edit is shitty, etc.

For Hip Hop, where you have to focus on the groove, it is cool. Doing more technical things is horrendous in the MPC.

I have 2 EMX's and an MPC 2500. workflow on the MPC depends heavily on alot of factors. What type of music you're producing, if you use long loops as the foundation of the track, if you're working from an existing sample library or sampling stuff for the track as you go, the amount of sample trimming and treatment needed etc

If you have all your samples already on the MPC... and chopped and trimmed and setup exactly how you need them to load and tap out tracks, cool... and if you build tracks with a few longish samples at the core then add drums, also cool.. very quick.

admittedly the EMX was my first piece of gear so I'm far more familiar with it.. but in terms of constructing a track from start to finish the EMX will always be faster because working with samples will take alot more prep work before the track building starts coming together. I still need to upgrade my MPC with a hard-drive and JJOS which will definitely improve workflow immensely but the EMX will still be quicker for me and I've always preferred the realtime flexibility of synth engines over samples, another reason why I don't own an ESX.

punpkomg wrote:I have 2 EMX's and an MPC 2500. workflow on the MPC depends heavily on alot of factors. What type of music you're producing, if you use long loops as the foundation of the track, if you're working from an existing sample library or sampling stuff for the track as you go, the amount of sample trimming and treatment needed etc

If you have all your samples already on the MPC... and chopped and trimmed and setup exactly how you need them to load and tap out tracks, cool... and if you build tracks with a few longish samples at the core then add drums, also cool.. very quick.

admittedly the EMX was my first piece of gear so I'm far more familiar with it.. but in terms of constructing a track from start to finish the EMX will always be faster because working with samples will take alot more prep work before the track building starts coming together. I still need to upgrade my MPC with a hard-drive and JJOS which will definitely improve workflow immensely but the EMX will still be quicker for me and I've always preferred the realtime flexibility of synth engines over samples, another reason why I don't own an ESX.

The thing is just that using sample always evokes a lot of issues. If it is too simple, your possibilites are small (looking at the EMX' samples), and if it is too complicated, you spend a lot of time with simply manageing your samples.

Even with PCs it is still complicated. I decided to trigger samples stored on my PC via midi by the EMX. This is a compromise and works flawlessly, eventhough you still have to boot your PC. Maybe an ESX with a usb port and a very simple sample storage system could do the job.