QuiRobinez Sounds for the Korg Kronos

Those of you who know my music and actually read the text in the booklets of my albums should have seen the name of my good friend Qui Robinez. He is an excellent sound designer and he made a lot of sounds for the Korg M3 and the Access Virus TI that I used in my music. Now he has discovered the Korg Kronos and started to make sounds for that synthesizer. He has some free sounds on his website, but now also started selling some very good premium libraries for the Korg Kronos. Together we build an online website where you can buy those sounds as immediate downloads. You can preview the sounds in his excellent YouTube clips that are also online so you know what you are buying. Go check his website out and if you own a Korg Kronos do buy the sounds he made. You won't regret it! You can find the website here: http://www.quirobinez.nl

Mobile Studio for upcoming Collaboration ......

As some of you might already know, I'm currently working on a collaboration album together with Remy Stroomer. Progress on that project is going well and we hope to release that album later this year. I'll update you on that when there is more certainty. There is another collaboration coming up though. You might remember that in 2010 I released a collaboration album together with Ron Boots called 'Refuge en Verre'. The album was the result of a long weekend in a rented house together with both our families in the Belgian Ardennes. Well we are going to repeat that soon. In the picture is the stuff that I will be bringing along, so a notebook with Cakewalk Sonar installed, a Clavia Nord Wave and the Roland SH-101 and I heard Ron will bring his Korg Kronos. So we'll have a nice set to work with. We are going to improvise there just like last time and if it works out, who knows :) I'll keep you posted. I'm really looking forward to this holiday and also to playing together with Ron Boots again :) More information on 'Refuge en Verre' can be found here: http://www.synth.nl/Refuge

Korg Kronos and Roland Jupiter-80 in the Studio

When I visited the Musik Messe in Frankfurt last year, there were two new synths being presented: the Korg Kronos and Roland Jupiter-80. I saw and heard the potential of these two monster synths directly and ordered them right away on the way back home. It has taken a while and I had to sell some stuff beforehand to make room in both the physical and financial sense, but finally they arrived. Never did I wait so long for something to arrive, but I'm sure I won't regret it. I'm still busy with a release that needs to be done in a week, so I haven't gotten much time yet to play with them, but looking through the menus is very promising. Both synthesizers have one thing in common though: The factory presets are very bad. I really don't get why manufacturers do that. Always the same standard sounds :( Well that does leave room for creativity I guess. I already wrote a little review about the Jupiter-80 before on my blog, but now I can finally compare it to the Kronos as well.

The first thing I noticed when I turned on the Kronos is that it has a noisy fan :( I don't like that at all. Another thing is the build quality: compared to the Jupiter-80 the Kronos feels like a toy. The knobs are very cheap. The keyboard of the Jupiter-80 on the otehr hand plays like a dream and it feels like a tank. I can't say the Kronos keyboard is bad, but the Roland is more my thing. In terms of sound they both are fat, but the Kronos is obviously more versatile with it's 9 different sound engines and much more modulation options. The Jupiter sounds a bit bigger though in my opinion, but I have always preferred the Roland sound so I'm biased I guess. I really can't wait to start programming my own sounds on both of them, because the possibilities are there for sure. I'm very sure you will hear the both of them on future albums :) I'll write a bit more about them in the future when I have more hands on experience.

Korg Mono/Poly added to the Collection

Last week I added another very nice synthesizer to my collection. It is a Korg Mono/Poly. It is a small but remarkable analog synthesizer. It has four oscillators that you can use to play polyphonic, but it also has a great and very powerful unison mode to use it monophonic. But when you use the appropriator you can also rotate trough the oscillators. When you set them all to a different wave form you get a very nice alternating sequence. Last night I put it next to me in the studio and jammed a bit on it. I had great fun. I think actually there is nothing like it. I like it so much that I plan to write a little review about it in the near future. I'll post that on my blog when I have time.

MS-20 Trade

In my quest to make a little room in my studio last week I traded two big synthesizers for one little one. A fair trade I think in value, but it didn't feel very fair. But that is what they call market pricing. I traded my Roland Juno-6 with build-in midi kit and my Roland RS-202 string synthesizer for this Korg MS-20. The MS-20 is a real classic, but in my opinion a bit overpriced. It is a nice semi-modular synthesizer. The reason I wanted to have one is that I used it on my AtmoSphere album and I liked the sound of it. I had one on load back then from my fried Chris, but now I have one of my own. It doesn't take up much space, so I'm sure I can fine a nice spot for it somewhere. I will use it the coming days to make some sound effects for my upcoming album.

Great Korg M3 Soundset by QR

One of my friends is a great sound designer. I used numerous sounds from him on my albums. He releases these sounds under the name 'Qui Robinez' or short 'QR'. If you ever see a preset with these letters behind them you'll know he made it. Sometimes he makes some sounds publicly available. Now he made a bank with 65 combos for the Korg M3. I played a little with them last night and this afternoon and they are great. Two I actually fell in love with :) I couldn't stop playing. Great inspiration! If you own a Korg M3, be sure to download it. You can find it on this URL:
http://www.karma-lab.com/forum/showthread.php?p=75116#post75116

AtmoSphere SFX on MS20

Here is a quick video my good friend Chris made during the creation of some wind sound effects on his Korg MS20 for my AtmoSphere album. You can see it running through the Boss RE-20 Space Echo simulation that we only used only for the live situation. Eventually I recorded the SFX in Cakewalk Sonar without it so I could add reverb and delay afterwards to fit the track it would go in. You can also see it is attached to the PAIA 9700S and the Cwejman S1 MK2. I used those for some triggering and modulation. These systems are not fully compatible since the Korg is V/Hz scaled and the other two V/Octave. But for a bit of triggering and modulation of sound effecs that doesn't matter to much. We made lots more, but did not film that.

MS20 on loan

My friend Chris also brought his Korg MS20 with him. I will use it to make some sound effects for some future albums. We already recorded some of those last night. It is a very nice machine. It does lack a bit of modulation on its own, but since it is (semi) modular we hooked it up immediately to the PAIA 9700S and Cwejman S1 MK2. That worked like a charm actually :) I will do a bit more intensive work with it after my album is finished. But I do like it a lot. I'm considering to look maybe for one for myself. They have become a bit expensive though, but probably that will only get worse since they are quite popular. As you can see I did find a nice spot for it for now in my analog corner. I hope I can keep it for a while.

Poly 800 Modding (Part 2)

Today I finished the PCB for the Hawk-800 Mod I'm working on for the Korg Poly 800. First thing to do was to make 27 wire connections with the blank wire that was supplied in the kit. You have to be careful here since some of them are quite close together and you have to make sure they don't touch each other. It was quite time consuming but not difficult. Most important is to make sure the wire is as straight as possible.

Also one wire connection has to be made on the bottom of the PCB. The insulated wire for this is supplied in the kit as well. You have to solder this one after all the IC sockets are installed since you have to solder the wire to the pins of two of these sockets. The manual is very clear fortunately on all this. After this I put a drop of glue from a glue gun onto the wire to secure it. I only took the picture before I did this, so you cannot see it here.

Here you see the completed PCB. As you can see not many other components on there than IC's. In the top right corner is a battery holder for the memory backup functionality. This battery is not supplied in the kit. I will have to pick it up from my local electronics shop. The empty sockets will be filled with wire connections to the main PCB of the Poly 800. I will open up the Poly 800 soon to see how I can install it. This will be the first time I open a synthesizer myself. I'll update you soon. Not sure yet when I'm going to do this though. We'll see.

Poly 800 Modding (Part 1)

My friend Hanz tipped me on a very interesting site about a DIY electronics kit do modify the Korg Poly 800. This mod is called HAWK-800 and it turns the Poly 800 into a more sophisticated machine. It seriously updates the midi functionality to start with. You can find a complete list of features on the website here:
http://patrioticduo.tripod.com/hawk800/id15.html. After reading this I decided to order mine. As you can see there is also another kit coming that will be based on this one. And a very nice thing is that the kit holds an EEProm so you can update it when new features come along. Very nice work I think!

The kit arrived last week. And as you can see it is quite complete. It even comes with the necessary blank wire and flat cable. The documentation for construction is on the website I mentioned before. It will be kind of a retro fit kit build in the P0ly 800 itself. The documentation is very precise about where and how to fit it in the Poly 800. But first I will have to build the PCB for this kit. It looks quite easy compared to the other projects I have going on. I guess it will take about one or two hours work at the most. I'll build this one soon and keep you updated on the progress like always.

Korg MS2000R

I recently sold the RME Fireface 400 that I used on my notebook in the past. But since I hardly work on my music any more on my notebook I had no need for it anymore. I bought two synthesizer from that money. The first is a nice Korg MS2000R. The R stands for 'Rack' and it is a Virtual Analog Synthesizer. It has the same sound engine as the MicroKorg that I bought before, but I found out (like a lot of people) that it is not very easy to edit the MicroKorg. I do like the sound though. Quite powerful in the low end actually. The MS2000R has a lot of knobs and that makes tweaking sounds a lot easier. The build in step sequencer is also great. I did have some trouble to sync it to midi clock, but I found out that it was running an old OS version. After I upgraded to the latest version it worked like a charm.

I found a nice spot for the MS2000R in my digital corner. Actually it was the spot I reserved for an Arturia Origin, but I heard recently that it isn't coming any time soon. So I decided to fill up that spot. As you can see I now have a lot of knobs up close now that I can tweak. Ideal for creating sounds and recording turning of the knobs real time. Funny detail by the way was that it took me a while to figure out how to turn the MS2000R on ;) The power switch is on the volume knob, like turning on an old car radio. Not very logical in my opinion but, well it does the job. Last night I had a little Korg only jam with the M3, Radias, MicroKorg and MS2000R. Really fun. And as always I thought.... I should have recorded this. Well I didn't. Maybe next time.

Trinity and Jupiter 8 in the Studio

Today I finally put the Jupiter 8 in the studio in my analog corner. It literally overshadows the Juno 106 now. But the nice thing is that I can still use them both. I won't use the keys of the Jupiter 8 to play on but I can still reach it well enough to tweak a sound. For the rest it is connected through midi (via the build in encore midi kit) so I can use any remote keyboard that I want. I still have to figure out how the encore midi kit works, since I didn't get to test that at the synth meeting. Time flies when you are having fun! I'll try to do that this week. At least it is connected now and I'm happy that I won't have to move it again for a while. It is still heavy I found out today :)

I also added another synthesizer today. It is a Korg Trinity. I didn't ever really knew this one, but I heard so many positive reactions about it that I wanted to try it out. Well I can tell you it is here to stay! To begin with it looks great :) It is made of brushed aluminum as you can see on the picture on the right. No plastic rubbish here. It also has a very nice touch screen display. I think it was the first Korg synthesizer to have this actually. Its sound is very digital but very great as well. I just browsed through some sounds today and fell in love right away. Just one layered pad sound from it can make a complete track. I know it is the predecessor of the Korg Triton. Well I had a Korg Karma which has the same engine, but I can tell you. The Trinity will blow a triton away!

I also found a nice spot for the Trinity as well in my digital corner. I put it just behind the Korg M3 and the Roland V-Synth GT. It is funny to see 3 synthesizers with a touch screen on a row. Also the Trinity is a bit far away to comfortably play on, but it is also hooked up with midi off course like everything in my studio, so I can play it again on any keyboard I want. I jammed a bit this afternoon on the M3, Trinity and V-Synth GT and I completely lost time :) That is a very good sign! I just should have recorded it :( But you will definitely hear some Korg Trinity sounds on future albums.

I found out while looking for documentation that there also is a Moss board for the Trinity with the sounds of the Korg Z1. As I mentioned before I liked that a lot as well on the synth meeting, but I found out also that this board is more expensive than a used Korg Z1.

Korg Poly 800 reversed keys

As you have seen before from my Micro Korg purchase I just love reversed keys. A while ago I acquired a Korg Poly 800 with reversed keys as well. I found it by accident, but really loved the looks right away and the price was low so I decided to buy it without even knowing what it sounded like. It turned out to be a simple but lovely synthesizer actually. It is an analog 8 voice polyphonic synthesizer with just one handicap and that is just one filter for all the voices together. It is a true analog VCF filter though despite the oscillators being DCO's. It is great for basses I think. It really growls at you there and it really sounds very analog indeed.

I managed to find a place for it between my Alesis Andromeda and the Juno 106 in my analog corner. Sorry for the lousy picture quality of today by the way, but I took this pictures with my phone since my wife took the camera with here today. I didn't put it here by the way for it to be easy to play on, because it isn't ;) But it is close to the other analog stuff. And I like to keep that together. I don't know how long I can keep this up though since I've been collecting more and more analog stuff. I will have to make a DCO and VCO separation in the future I guess :)

In the spot I put the Poly 800 in there used to be my Elektro Harmonix Smallstone and Mistress. I moved them temporary to the floor now. This is really not ideal an ideal place off course. I'll have to find a new place for them soon. This way it is not easy to turn the knobs and that really is a delicate process on these machines. I really love them. These are the units that made the famous Jarre sound in combination with the Eminent 310 organ. My Eminent 310 still resides in my office by the way. I have no room for it at the moment :( But I can't wait to get it a decent place in the studio some day.

MicroKorg Reversed

The latest addition in my studio was a MicroKorg. It is a small but powerful synthesizer with a build in vocoder. For a limited time Korg made the MicroKorg with reversed keys and I just couldn't resist it because of these looks.

Editing on this synth is not very easy but doable. I saw that Korg also has an software editor on their website, but I haven't checked that out yet. I think this is the ideal synthesizer to take with me on holidays, since it is so small :)

Last night I jammed a bit on it in combination with some drums from my Korg M3 and soloing on the Virus TI. I had a lot of fun. The sounds are very nice. I used the MicroKorg especially with its arpeggiator on. And even though the keys are very small you can play quite well on them.