How does one remove a filter from a microKORG program?

January 17, 2006 11:26 PM

Super amateur musician-filter: I have a korg microKORG, and it's great, but there's an issue that prevents me from doing anything useful with it, and I'm completely clueless as to how to resolve it.

The problem is this: many of the instruments (or programs) I like to use have a filter on them which very slowly decreases and increases the volume of the instrument as time goes by, on a sort of sine wave. A really long, 2-10 second sine wave. It becomes quite annoying for two reasons:

1) Sometimes the instrument becomes so quiet that it can't even be heard over the rest of the music anymore, and it sounds like someone is screwing with the volume while playing.

2) When I'm trying to play something that I want to loop, it always sounds horribly inconsistent, because by the time I'm at the end of the loop the volume is much lower or higher than when I started, therefore the repetition "clips" and sounds awful.

b63 is an example of an instrument that has this issue (but many, many others are similar).

Is there some easy-to-understand methodology for removing these types of filters? I know that I could learn how to reprogram the instruments if I really spent the time, but that's a huge investment - At this point I'm just trying to learn to play it and enjoy the pre-programmed sounds.

posted by helios to media & arts (5 comments total)

1. Try to borrow or otherwise use an MS2000, AFAIK, it has the same synth engine as the microKorg, but is vastly easier to program.

2. to solve this problem, call up a program. Read through the manual to find out how to adjust the LFO - matrix - amp thingy (it is the thing that connects various control generators to sound making and processing modules). There should be a "depth" knob that scales the impact of the LFO on the amp. You might try turning it down before you turn it off entirely.

3. really take some time to play with your microkorg. It may come with cool samples, but you can make WAY cooler sounds with it if you experiment around. The microkorg is essentially a simple analog computer (that produces sound as output) and the knobs are its assembly language. It takes time to figure out, but really isn't that hard once you get the hang of it.
posted by b1tr0t at 11:37 PM on January 17, 2006

Regarding your question (2): you need to either sync your LFO to the beat (thereby locking the phase of the LFO's ups-n-downs to your dong) or sync your LFO to key (thereby locking the phase of the LFO to when you start playing). Which one you choose depends on what effect you want, and what capabilities your synth has. I find that 'beat sync' LFOs are usually the most musically useful. Some synths will let you do both: it syncs to the beat, but restarts the waveform on keypress.
posted by todbot at 10:09 AM on January 18, 2006

thanks guys, but it seems that I'm stuck with the same problem.

I've read the manual several times and it doesn't seem confusing at all. The microkorg has two separate LFOs per timbre, and four "virtual patch" routines that allow up to four additional modulations. In addition, there's a "Mod Fx" parameter which lets you "apply various types of cyclic change to the original sound".

I've done my best to disable anything related to LFO for all of these settings (there's no on/off, but you can effectively zero them out) and nothing works - if I play a note over and over again for testing purpose, the note drops (sometime -12+db) and rises at a very slow frequency.

I'll post here if I ever figure it out, though.
posted by helios at 4:11 PM on January 22, 2006

Virtual Patch and ModFX sound like the right things to be playing with. If they don't do it, check to see if there is a dedicated routing between one of the LFOs to the amp. The LFO control might be on the LFO or the amp. If you have a guitar center, they might have an MS2000 on display that you can play with to test this out.
posted by b1tr0t at 12:09 AM on January 23, 2006

I found the korg forums and decided to ask there as well - It turns out that LFO, ModFX, and Virtual Patch can produce this kind of behavior, but what I was experiencing was actually detuning! Essentially, the program I chose had eight oscillations, plus an "ensemble" effect. The combination of the oscillators (plus the ensemble shifting them around) caused them to cancel each other out in the pattern that sounds like someone adjusting the volume.

b1tr0t, I'm definitely taking your advice to experiment with my own programs.. I probably would have been much better off making my own from the start (and therefore being able to undo anything that caused this effect as I was making it). Plus, it would sound more interesting, I'm sure.

But in any case, I'm glad to have resolved this, and thanks for your help, b1tr0t and todbot.
posted by helios at 11:20 PM on January 23, 2006