To: AH analogue@hyperreal.org, From: Legion legion@voicenet.com, Subject: [AH] In praise of (new) Korg (ER1, etc. Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 12:46:58 -0500 I picked up an ER1 this week (good trader and fellow Philadelphian Paul D'Amato!!) and have to say I'm damn pleased with this little box on first take. My only contact with one previously was playing with one a bit in the store and listening tothe "virtual ER1" on Korg's website. Quite honestly I think this is every bit as entertaining to use as the old roland X0X boxes (and I've had 'em all). You don't get a lot of sounds but the flexibilty is fine for a little drum unit and I can easily see using this unit where I used to use a TR606 or something. The "stock" sounds for most of the blank patterns seem to be a tight bass drum, snappy snare, simmons tom, and electro/cowbell thingy. These are all very good as they are but of course you can change any sound to anything you'd like so with some quick tweaking I mangled the bass drum into a noisebursting low pitched growl, the snare got phatter and deeper, the toms made kraftwerk zaps, and the cowbell became a sample and hold modulating mess. I can't remember the last time I was able to change a new piece of gear so easily and powerfully. Well yes I can, it was the Korg Prophecy. It's a shame the ER1 doesn't have extra outputs for separate processing but it's quite the little electro sound monster right out of the box let alone thrown in with some processing nonsense. I guess you could pan the bass drum to the left output and send the other stuff to the right to at least get one single sound on a indie output. Given the range of sounds available and the ability to record tweaks in realtime with a little more practice I'm sure I can get this to do a convincing portamento sweeping bassline. I *almost* got it down this morning but had to go to work :). I haven't gotten into the more esoteric features like triplets or swing and such but it's DEAD simple to use in a simple live playing or 16-step X0X mode. I dig the motion sequencer (kind of like the tweaking I've done on the Jomox drum machine.) I haven't tried sequencing anything externally via midi which using the ER1's interface but just in poking around that also seems pretty easy to do (set midi not per pad, go!). I dunno, maybe I'll be bored of it in a week or so (ED - didn't happen I now use this as my main percussion unit live) but soundwise I kind of dig it and it might make it into my live rig for one gig at least. This makes the third piece or new(er) gear i've bought over vintage stuff in the past two years. The others were the Prophecy and the Kaoss Pad. Kudos to korg for making electronic instruments that are FUN again dammit! ====================================================