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Korg ElecTribe Em-1
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Korg ElecTribe Em-1

Groove Machine from Korg belonging to the ElecTribe series

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LéoMoldo LéoMoldo
Published on 11/05/11 at 08:52
Good characteristics are known: 150 drums sounds (8 per pattern), 50 monophonic synth sounds (2 per pattern), effects section (one at a time but only applicable to several drums or synths at the same time) + delay global.

Sequencer to the old, not velocity or pitch bend but with automation parameters (filters, pitch, glide, effects etc ...).

By playing against the synths with a midi keyboard (use as expander) it recognizes the pitch and velocity.

UTILIZATION

Very friendly and intuitive to use, especially with a lil midi keyboard to record melodic lines on the fly.

I never use the mode "song" I program my patterns and I recorded in the computer.

The only things a little boring are:

- Mixing volume between the sounds because you have to select each time the sound in question to change its volume, but anyway I record usually sounds one after the other and I mix in to the computer. For the live is a bit sucks.

- Having to stop playing for some actions (save a pattern, change the "swing", etc ...) but it is not very serious, overall it's still a very cool machine to be used for jam: one can still do almost everything online.

SOUNDS

Must not have any illusions here above: the sounds are quite dated nineties and a little "cheap", there is good and not so good but I find much usable and even sounds, it's COOL.

The drums are especially snares and kicks, a lot of synth sounds nice for bass heavy and spacey sounds. The editing of synth sounds is very limited but the filter is not bad.
The effects sound very lo-fi, you have to like, it can be if a particular exploitable want to sound a little like chiptune / 8bit (with Bitcrusher and reverb which made a very "digital dirty").

What I deal with is in a vein electro / groove / trip hop.

OVERALL OPINION

I bought a OCCAZ in very good condition (AF thank you!) Because I was fed up of 100% computer to compose, I wanted a cheap machine and limited to concentrate on the essentials and get ideas quickly . Also if I paid an analog synth or expander rack one day, I can use the sequencer to create the EM1 with electro loops.

It is synchronized to noon, then quite usable in a live set hardware with other machines.

So very good machine for the live or studio, even if limited in terms of sound.