Electribe EM-1 – E.Piano Chord Set for Volca Sample

I’m working on a bigger project for the sample but its taking time. So here is a little preview.

This one is like magic. Just find your voicing and go! The original synth wave number 46 consists of 4 samples that are tuned over the key range. The problem here is the looping. You can loop the sample on the Volca, but it plays the whole loop only. You cannot separate the attack portion of the sample. But you can do it the hard way and create the sustaining part of the sample separately. Which is what I did.

For download there are 6 files. One file containing attack portion of four chord samples. You choose the sound by selecting the “start” and “length”. Four files with the sustained portion that can be looped – start 0 end 100). In a demo below there is also a mini-drum set you can find in the last file. Again you select the sounds with “start” and “length”. There are 2 kicks, 3 snares a rim-shot and 2 hi-hats from the EM-1 sound set.

The reason for this “economy” sound management is that you need only an iPhone to load 6 files for a whole sound set. I use it a lot because I don’t need a PC, Vosyr etc. I store the files on my iCloud that way I can import them to the Audiopocket app again just with an iPhone.

Anyway. Lets hear it. Or better, play it.

E.piano Chord set – attack one shots
E.piano Chord 1 looped
E.piano Chord 2 looped
E.piano Chord 3 looped
E.piano Chord 4 looped
Mini Drum set

Elektron Model:Cycles chord machine progressions

MIDI CC to “shape” utility

Testing the idea of sending MIDI CC to the Elektron Model:Cycles’s for chord machine “shape” change. You can test the app here https://wavesontable.com/chordmachine.html

There are “skips” in the changes of shapes from Maj to min caused be a delay in midi communication. Not sure if it’s possible to eliminate it. Recorded on iPad with camera app and connected Model:cycles trough USB sending the audio to the iPad.

Volca Sample beats

Exercise in Korg Volca Sample – sample import, creativity and a few concepts testing.

I have a Korg Volca Sample for some time but haven’t played that much with it due to the complicated way of getting the sound in. I have tried the Vosyr but to me it force you to do a lot on a PC in advance and the loading times of the whole memory sets is a killer. I am more towards shorter samples a moment of surprise when switching samples and also slightly not knowing what exactly is in the sample memory.

I have created a simple web app with chromatic keyboard and more features coming later.

Now that I really want the Elektron Model:Cycles i was thinking “Play with what you have and don’t spend on more gear”. So I did. And lately I have found that the native iOS app for sample transfere AudioPocket supports importing from iCloud. That’s great because it makes the sample import process way easier and you are able to do it computer-less. Well you still need an iOS device. But it works!

While working with my iPhone7 and AudioPocket i tried to sample a few things from the iPhone mic. And at first I was very disappointed. I was monitoring the results from the phone speaker and it was noisy and bad. Later I checked the recorded samples on headphones and there were a lot less noise and obviously better sound overall. Trust me I have home studio gear and know how to use it. But with a 2 year old kid around, less and less time for music you want to be quick, simple but still have fun. That’s why I try to use as less gear, wires, computers as possible.

The results below are two tracks – loops just for fun. I was trying a few things here.

Track 1 – have one sample with the entire drumset of 808 style sounds. It is chopped on different track for kick, snare and hi hats by sample start and length. Track starts with a kick from this set and iPhone recorded sample of a child wooden block xylophone together with recorded ukulele sample (same in track 2) that is reversed and pitched up. Then comes in a sample from an E-MU Morpheus pad set ( https://rhythm-lab.com/e-mu-morpheus-samples/ ) tuned and filtered to taste. Finally there is a ticking sample of recorded Korg Monotron that is looped to match the tempo of the beat simulating a delay effect with set decay and some automation. Recording of Monotron from speaker to iPhone mic is fun but noisy. The sound is filtered to get rid off that. But for sound effects its usable.

Track 2 – have a recorded kick sample from an inflatable balloon “kicked” with a finger. Hi hat and snare are some generic samples. There is also a sampled ukulele (same as in track 1) and the bass sound is looped single cycle waveform (FM synth sound) with some envelope that is copied to two tracks and slightly detuned for fatness.

Korg Electribe EM1

korgelectribeem11This is one of the Korg grooveboxes with very usable internal sound set for bass/lead/instrument sounds and good set of drum samples. The drumsamples have been around the web and can be found for example here.

The bass/lead/instruments samples have never appeared or I haven’t found them and so here are some of them in SFZ format to have a taste of how this box sounds like. Some of the waveforms were probably on a CD that was shipped with the newer Electribe ESX units.

Of coarse this is only a bare sound looped and mapped over the keyboard. The filter sound depends on the sampler instrument you are using. Also effects section is missing so you have to use something similar from your vst toolbox. For now there is no control over the Amp envelope but since I’m using sforzando sfz player on my Mac I plan to implement controls for this as well for the filter in the future. So if you’re interested stay tuned or comment.

I have sampled the whole sound set of this instrument and plan to release a full SFZ library. Since it is a time consuming project I would appreciate some feedback on this just to know that someone will be interested. Thanks

Korg EM-1 SFZ