Korg Microsampler

[Matt Davignon <mattdavignon@gmail.com>]

I have a microsampler too. It's another one I haven't figured out much yet.

This keyboard has its uses, but feels like Korg tragically missed the
opportunity to make something wonderful. I would expect a modern
sampling keyboard to have these basic features:
--The ability to adjust start, end and loop points for the selected
sample on the fly with dedicated controls.
--ASDR envelopes (attack/sustain/decay/release)
--a pitch wheel and a mod wheel.

The microsampler has NONE of these things. I believe there's a way to
edit start, end and loop points, but you have to hunt through menus to
get there.

It's a great tool for making hip-hop beats that use samples. In fact,
the feature set is completely steered towards this. It has a nice peak
detection feature so you could run a drum beat through it, and it
would split each hit into a different sample automatically. Another
nice feature lets you sample and assign a key to a sound at the same
time. When you turn the mode on, you simply hold down the selected
note for as long as you want it to record a sample. The sample is
saved to that key. I then use a dry-erase marker on the keys to remind
me which sample is on each key.

Once you have samples, dedicated switches let you loop and reverse
them. You can't loop/reverse the samples all at once - only for the
keys that you're holding down.

One really annoying thing is that the default samples are all
beatboxing sounds. Apparently whoever designed this keyboard is either
a beatboxer, or was sleeping with one at the time. I haven't yet
figured out how to get it to start up with a "blank slate" on the keys
- or even better, the samples I had previously loaded.

-- 
Matt Davignon
mattdavignon@gmail.com
www.ribosomemusic.com
Rigs! www.youtube.com/user/ribosomematt



Ruelle Benoit <benoitruelle@yahoo.fr> was all:

> The last one: the microsampler might interest you and bring us back on a
> looper topic.
> It's compact, you can sample/mangle your sound, use it as a crude 
>multitrack
> recorder, use it for glitch/experimental stuff, has a little pattern
> sequencer, you can resample several sample in one, use a single sample
> chromatically, with or without time strectching (repeater anyone?), allow
> easy multisampling, sync several loops ... Perhaps it would suite you. 
>It's
> fun, it's probably the one in which you can the most easily put your
> signature sound (it's a sampler). The Con is that it takes some time to 
>load
> a new bank (up to 30 sec for a full loaded bank).
>
> Ben