Korg K61P And M1LE Make Bill All Misty With Nostalgia
Bill Holland learned to program on a Korg M1 back in the day (late eighties, yo) and was delighted to learn that the K61P controller keyboard ships bundled with the M1LE soft-synth. The M1LE GUI and patch bank were already familiar to Bill, who glides* through this demo like Scott Hamilton (coincidentally, Bill's favorite eighties celebrity reference).
*portamentos?
BILL HOLLAND: Hey everybody. Welcome back to Gearwire.Com. I'm Bill Holland, and we're looking again at the Korg K61P Keyboard in the K Series. We looked at the onboard sounds the last time. This time, we're going to take a look at a great piece of software that's called the M1 LE. It's a software variation on the Korg M1 sound module from the '90s, which was a very popular synthesizer, and I actually learned how to program on one of these, so let's take a look at and see what kind of sounds we can come up with.
So here we have the M1, pretty simple layout. I've got the browser open. Let's throw in a preview real quick so we can preview these patches.
[BILL HOLLAND PREVIEWING A PIANO PATCH IN THE KORG M1 LE USING THE KORG K61P]
I've got a piano. There are a variety of different things in here. Fretless bass.
[BILL HOLLAND PREVIEWING A FRETLESS BASS PATCH IN THE KORG M1 LE USING THE KORG K61P]
Guitars.
[BILL HOLLAND PREVIEWING A GUITAR PATCH IN THE KORG M1 LE USING THE KORG K61P]
Pads.
[BILL HOLLAND PREVIEWING A PAD PATCH IN THE KORG M1 LE USING THE KORG K61P]
Drums.
[BILL HOLLAND PREVIEWING A DRUM KIT PATCH IN THE KORG M1 LE USING THE KORG K61P]
You can configure this from the M1 keyboard. Enough of preview.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A DRUM KIT PATCH IN THE KORG M1 LE USING THE KORG K61P]
We have different -- We have a pole filter here.
[BILL HOLLAND PREVIEWING A POLE FILTER PATCH IN THE KORG M1 LE USING THE KORG K61P]
Organ.
[BILL HOLLAND PREVIEWING AN ORGAN PATCH IN THE KORG M1 LE USING THE KORG K61P]
Vibraphone.
[BILL HOLLAND PREVIEWING A VIBRAPHONE PATCH IN THE KORG M1 LE USING THE KORG K61P]
So again, a variety of different things. We even got standard synthesizers.
[BILL HOLLAND PREVIEWING A SYNTHESIZER PATCH IN THE KORG M1 LE USING THE KORG K61P]
What makes this different than the full version is you'll there's a card here, sound card for all the presets. Well, you got a card 2, card 3, and there's a lot of blanked out presets here that are probably pretty awesome, but you can get those by expanding to the full version, and you'll notice that they correspond with the M1 add-on cards from the original synthesizer. I can search for whatever I want by using the search engine here, very similar to KORE or the Native Instruments search. We can also go to multi. They have a lot of multi patches and you can set up your own as well. Combi patches: Go to browser and you can browse those.
[BILL HOLLAND PREVIEWING COMBI PATCHES IN THE KORG M1 LE USING THE KORG K61P]
Now, while the preview may make this sound a little bit cheesy, one thing that this is very good for is anything where you need a lot of ambience, a lot of space in recording. This stuff has almost exaggerated clarity to it.
[BILL HOLLAND PREVIEWING COMBI PATCHES IN THE KORG M1 LE USING THE KORG K61P]
So, I've been using it a lot lately for like industrial style pads.
[BILL HOLLAND PREVIEWING COMBI PATCHES IN THE KORG M1 LE USING THE KORG K61P]
And you really have to tweak some of these to get them to sound them the way you want, but there's a master effects bus and this is really nice for doing that. You'll notice I have chorus, delays, flangers, phasers, tremolo, equalizer, overdrive, distortion. Let's hear what the distortion sounds like on some of these different patches.
[BILL HOLLAND PREVIEWING PATCHES WITH DISTORTION IN THE KORG M1 LE USING THE KORG K61P]
Delay.
[BILL HOLLAND PREVIEWING PATCHES WITH DELAY IN THE KORG M1 LE USING THE KORG K61P]
And then different reverbs are over here too. Check out -- if I turn this off -- concert hall.
[BILL HOLLAND PREVIEWING PATCHES WITH CONCERT HALL REVERB IN THE KORG M1 LE USING THE KORG K61P]
Room.
[BILL HOLLAND PREVIEWING PATCHES WITH ROOM REVERB IN THE KORG M1 LE USING THE KORG K61P]
Live stage.
[BILL HOLLAND PREVIEWING PATCHES WITH LIVE STAGE REVERB IN THE KORG M1 LE USING THE KORG K61P]
Large room.
[BILL HOLLAND PREVIEWING PATCHES WITH LARGE ROOM REVERB IN THE KORG M1 LE USING THE KORG K61P]
Also we have early reflection.
[BILL HOLLAND PREVIEWING PATCHES WITH EARLY REFLECTION REVERB IN THE KORG M1 LE USING THE KORG K61P]
Let's set this high a bit.
[BILL HOLLAND PREVIEWING PATCHES WITH EARLY REFLECTION REVERB IN THE KORG M1 LE USING THE KORG K61P]
Now, if I want to....
M1 LE : no output to speakers
Purchased the Korg 61P for my studio. Got it setup with the authorization codes and so forth. I am getting output through my computer's speaker so the drivers are obviously set-up but am still getting the 61P's sounds (built-in to the controller) through my external speaker.
Basically, I have a 1/4" jack guitar cable from the L-Mono jack on the back of the controller to a mic jack on a stereo system.
How do I set up this controller to play through a PA?
hmm
So, the M1 LE is playing on your computer speakers?
If that is the case, I would say unplug the instrument cable from your 61. To use the M1LE, you just need a usb cable going to the computer from the 61p and you should be ready to go.
IF that doesn't work, check your preferences to make sure all the connections are good.
korg k 61 p
i have windows vista and i cannot install my keyboard because the driver that the cd has is for xp where can i find the one for vista
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