To get this prickly texture I ran the Korg MS2000 through Grain Delay and Auto Pan in Ableton Live. I forgot to mention that the track was going through the usually reverb and delay sends as well.
Korg MS2000 Granulated Prickly Synth
2
Tag Archives: Korg MS2000
An Exclusive Holiday Gift from Ostraka
Here’s a set I recorded live to Ableton during a performance at Nick and Eddie Thursday Funhouse hosted by Jon Davis, December 16, 2010. This is all new material that I’ve been working on, except for the last track, which is a remix of Illuminator Console from Precambrian Resonance (Unearthed Music 2009). Here’s the download link for the 37:28 minute set hosted on Unearthed Music. Expect to hear lots of Grain Machine, as well as synth sounds from the Casio CZ-1000, the Korg MS2000, the Roland D-50, my Sequential Circuits Pro-One, some old Hammond rhythm programs, and even a little bit of Rhodes electric piano.
Download Live Ostraka Set at Nick and Eddie Thursday Funhouse (89.9 MB)
Keston and Westdal with Graham O’Brien at Galactic Soul Lounge
Hosted by Toki Wright, Galactic Soul Lounge is happening tonight. Artists include St. Paul Slim who is celebrating the re-release of his album “Baldheaded Samsun” on Soul Tools Records, Keston and Westdal with Graham O’Brien on drums, VOC Women’s Division performing African Dance, and Radio Pocho (Miguel Vargas & Steven Renderos) DJ’ing a dedication mix to Janet Jackson.
Galactic Soul Lounge is a monthly night of Funk, Hip Hop, Reggae, R&B, Soul, Latin, Dance, and much more. The event is 21+ and a bargain at $5 cover. Please join us at 10pm tonight, November 24, 2010, at Cause (formerly Sauce) Spirit and Sound Bar, 3001 Lyndale Avenue South, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Control the GMS Via Ableton Live
Currently I am busy preparing for the Ostracon show at the In / Out Festival of Digital Performance that is coming up on September 17 and 18 in New York (we are playing on the Saturday the 18th at 9:30pm). Part of my preparation involves minimizing my setup for ease of transport. For one thing, I am not bringing my Korg MS2000 as a controller for the GMS, as I have done for other performances. However, because I’m projecting the live video source, I cannot use the on-screen controls in the GMS.
My first idea to solve this problem was to share a single Korg nanoKONTROL between Ableton Live and the GMS. Unfortunately this approach was not practical because it would require some major reconfigurations as well as recompiling the GMS with a set of new external MIDI controls. My next idea was to route the MIDI control and program changes to the GMS via MIDI clips in Ableton’s session view. This worked immediately and I knew I was on the right track. The only problem was that there seemed to be a MIDI signal feedback loop when using the same bus for output and external control in the GMS. I solved this problem by creating a second IAC bus for the external control and using the first bus for the MIDI output. Finally I configured a combination of keyboard controls and Korg Nano buttons to trigger the clips in Ableton that, in turn, trigger the specific functions in the GMS. Voilà!
The flexibility of Ableton never ceases to amaze me. I had never used session clips to send MIDI program and control change messages to an external device, let alone, independent software running simultaneously. Nor had I ever needed to do this in the past. Yet the thought occurred to me, I wonder if Ableton can do this? It turns out that it can. Thanks to Ableton this solution has saved me many hours of redundant and tedious programming, and well as making my setup more streamlined and efficient for upcoming performances. How have Ableton’s capabilities surprised you?
Korg MS2000 Bricked by Firmware Update
ACB readers are sure to be aware from previous posts that my Korg MS2000 is one of my favorite and most indispensable synths. Embarrassingly I seem to have turned it into a drink stand during a firmware update. I used the firmware upgrade utility on korg.com to attempt the update. The process failed part way through and now my beloved instrument is a brick, well more like a cement block, that shows a blank back-lit display after turning it on. I’ve tried resending the update at all the available speeds that the utility allows with no impact on the results. I also tried a factory reset to no avail. I’m going to try again tomorrow with a different MIDI interface, but I’m afraid that this isn’t going to be an easy fix. I’ve searched the forums for a solution, but haven’t found anything. If anyone has any suggestion, please let me know. I’m desperate to get this thing up and running again.
Sequential Circuits Pro-One
I have finally started restoring my Sequential Circuits Pro-One. My plan is to get it as close to mint condition as possible and start using it again for recording and perhaps performing. Once I started using the Korg MS2000, I neglected the Pro-One and it fell into disrepair. Over time the key contacts became dirty and inconsistent. At some stage one of the knobs was broken off and lost, leaving a stub of potentiometer protruding uselessly from the control panel.
The first thing I did was clean the pots. For you laymen, pots is short for potentiometers. In other words, I wasn’t diverted by dirty dishes. To clean the pots I removed the knobs and then squirted a few drops of a greaseless lubricant called LPS-1 around the post. The stuff works wonders on crackly volume knobs and was recommended to me by the electronics experts at AEI Electronics in Minneapolis years ago. I’ve been using it ever since. After applying the LPS-1 I made thirty or more rotations of the pot from zero to maximum so that the dirt particles were worn away by the fluid.
I put the thing back together and did some tests. The knobs no longer had anymore crackling going on, so that was fixed, but the keyboard was horribly inconsistent. The Pro-One uses a J-wire keyboard with open air connectors that are prone to collecting dirt (or residue from malted beverages spilled over the keys). For a close up view of the Pro-One J-wires check out this post on MaxtrixSynth. Another problem is that the J-wires can become less springy, making the connections a bit weak. I used used q-tips with a drop of LPS-1 to clean each J-wire and the metal bar that they connect to when the key is depressed. I also bent the J-wires slightly to improve the tension. After all that I tested it again to find it working flawless, although still a little difficult to tune. Next up I’ll be replacing the missing mod wheel, the broken potentiometer, and the missing knob.
Warped Korg MS2K Noise
Here’s a loop that I played on my Korg MS2000 during a recent jam session. I was sending the MS2K an external synchronization signal via MIDI and it sounds as if the instrument was laboring to lock in with the clock.
I added some warp markers to tighten it up a bit, but it still has a warped and distorted quality from the processing on the MS2K. John Cage said, “There is no noise. Only sound.”
Filtered Synthetic Clavinet
I have lots more from Spark that I would like to post, but it needs some sorting through, so here’s something of my own for now. This is an arpeggiated loop of a synthesized clavinet chord filtered in real-time with the cutoff frequency on the instrument, which happens to be the Korg MS2000. After looping it I ran it through some gentle amp modeling followed by two ping pong delays. One set very short and another set much slower. The short delay has a lot of feedback and almost sounds like reverb, while the long delay is creating the echo.
Resonant Drone
Here’s another example of audio that was recorded for the purpose of live looping during a performance.
The clip is dated from August 18, 2006 and is a typical example of how I often use a resonant drone with cutoff frequency manipulation through delay to create textures.
Korg MS2000 Noises for Sunset
Here’s a segment from a single track out of the piece Sunset on Keston and Westdal’s first album, Super Structure Baby (2002, Unearthed Music). Sunset was the final piece on the album until Kinon’s Path was added as a bonus track for the reissue.
Sunset was the first track that I wrote after buying my Korg MS2000 in 2000, so I was still learning the instrument but enjoying myself fully in the process. The knob turning goes on for the whole seven minutes and two seconds of the piece, but I have edited it down to the first minute and six seconds.