Hardware Reviews Part 5

Korg MS2000 - $350-500 used (8.75/10)

I recently purchased on of these used on craigslist and so far I've been digging it. It is the grandfather of the more recent Microkorg. As far as I can tell, the Microkorg is capable of producing the same sounds as the older, larger MS2000, but on the Microkorg you end up having to program everything with a few knobs and a tiny LCD screen. I prefer the ease of use the MS2000 offers as well as its larger keyboard. I'll probably have a more detailed comparison of the two later.

The Korg MS2000 has a surprisingly aggressive tone that works very well for my style of music. Rather than using patch cables like traditional analog synthesizers, it offers a versatile 'Virtual Patch' system. The distortion is nice, but there aren't a lot of options, so I've got mine going through a guitar distortion pedal to further mutilate its sound. The MS2000 has the ability to act as a vocoder, which it does well, but I haven't really messed with it much. It's no longer in production, so if you plan on obtaining one of your own, I wish you the best of luck in finding a used one in good condition at a reasonable price.

Successes
-Tasty virtual analog synthesis
-An abundance waveforms to choose from.
-Sexy body with lots of metal and wood.
-Powerful step sequencer

Failures
-Only 4-note polyphony
-Not true analog synthesis

You show me yours, I'll show you mine.

Today we're going to be sharing music we've made. I know there are some other producers among us.



11 points to anyone who shares music they made.
1 point to anyone who shares music they didn't make.

Another Mystery Song

I'm really busy today, but I figured I might as well give you guys something, so here's another mystery song. 5 points to the first one to get it right. 1 point to all the others who get it right after them.

By the way, the last mystery song was Limelight, by Rush.

Also, you get the whole song.

And a music related image.

New Soundfont Made Specially For You

I created a soundfont using a simple distorted saw kick patch I made on my Korg MS2000. Feel free to use it in your productions. It covers a few octaves of pitches, each rendered individually.

MS2000 Saw Kick Soundfont

Also, this comes with some free advice. All the samples are mono because most of the time you really don't need to do any panning or stereo effects when it comes to your kick. It's usually best dead center in the mix.


Also, 10 points to whoever can guess what song this tiny fragment is from. This is an easy one.

Distortion Pedals

I'm looking for a new distortion pedal to run my new synth through and I was wondering if you guys had any favorites. Those of you that play guitar should probably have some sort of idea. It's proving quite difficult to create the effect I'm looking for with effects plugins.

And a related image in case you didn't read the text above it.

New Keyboard!

I just managed to obtain a near mint Korg MS2000 Analog Modeling Synthesizer for $350. I'll be providing a hardware review for this eventually, but I need some time to work with it. After using midi and softsynths for so long, it's nice to get my hands on a good old fashioned hardware synthesizer.

EQing Drums and Bass Guitar

The key to EQing multiple tracks is to contain each track in its own space to keep your tracks from competing for the same frequencies. It's important to remember to do this all in moderation if you want a natural sound, but the rules are always different depending on the genre and the sound you're going for.

Here's a loop I put together using drums and bass guitar.

Loop

It's generally a better idea to EQ each drum microphone separately, but for the sake of this lesson, I've already combined them.

The first problem that really stands out to me is that the bass is too damn bassy, especially at the low end. This area should already be occupied by the kick, which is too weak.

Now I've cut the low end (100 and lower) off of the bass guitar and boosted it on my drum track. This way the kick will dominate the low bass. Then I boosted an area around 240 for the bass guitar's higher bass sound and lowered it on the drum track. I also boosted 2k or so on the bass track to make the fret sounds louder and to give it more attack. Then I finished with some minor adjustments to the drums to make them sound a little clearer. Here is the final result.

EQd Loop

Keep in mind that the loops were kind of shitty to begin with, and you can only polish a piece of shit so much before it smears. I hope you got something out of this little demonstration anyway.