Live performance knob twiddling tips?

Hello all-

I'm relatively new to electronic music, and I'm working with the EMX-1 by Korg. On the patterns that I've created and saved, rather a lot goes into the construction of synth parts- and of course the saved patch contains your knob settings.

I'm wondering how people deal with knob settings in realtime performance. Basically, when moving between patterns and patches, if you need to readjust your knob settings for some smooth and seamless tweaking, what methods do you employ? If I'm just working on one tune, I can, in stop time, tweak parameters until "Original Value" is displayed easily enough- but if you want to flow from one patch to another without any break at all, is there a better way?

I suppose I could come up with some charts and draw in the knob settings, but I guess I'm just fishing for experience here.

1) practice

2) funnel realizations practice generates into better patch ideas

  DrHat said:

1) practice

2) funnel realizations practice generates into better patch ideas

100% agreement on the practice principle. The best thing about the EMX-1, imho, is that it is both an instrument (which means you must practice your technique) and also a machine with which the player interacts- both make music, and neither excludes the other. At least in my case. At the moment.

For better patch ideas, can you elaborate a bit for me? What would you say in your experience makes a good patch?

Put your elbows into it.

  heliumb said:

Put your elbows into it.

lol and hips

  LJG said:

  DrHat said:

1) practice

2) funnel realizations practice generates into better patch ideas

 

100% agreement on the practice principle. The best thing about the EMX-1, imho, is that it is both an instrument (which means you must practice your technique) and also a machine with which the player interacts- both make music, and neither excludes the other. At least in my case. At the moment.

 

For better patch ideas, can you elaborate a bit for me? What would you say in your experience makes a good patch?

it really depends on the instrument, and i don't have an emx-1.

what i meant by what i said above was - just start fucking with it a lot. after enough of that, you'll start coming up with ideas on your own. trust me, it works. and then you can claim complete credit for the idea, too.

one general technique: if it has a random patch generator, use that a lot, and if you get a cool patch... figure out what makes it sound cool.

  DrHat said:

  LJG said:

  DrHat said:

1) practice

2) funnel realizations practice generates into better patch ideas

 

100% agreement on the practice principle. The best thing about the EMX-1, imho, is that it is both an instrument (which means you must practice your technique) and also a machine with which the player interacts- both make music, and neither excludes the other. At least in my case. At the moment.

 

For better patch ideas, can you elaborate a bit for me? What would you say in your experience makes a good patch?

 

it really depends on the instrument, and i don't have an emx-1.

 

what i meant by what i said above was - just start fucking with it a lot. after enough of that, you'll start coming up with ideas on your own. trust me, it works. and then you can claim complete credit for the idea, too.

 

one general technique: if it has a random patch generator, use that a lot, and if you get a cool patch... figure out what makes it sound cool.

Thanks for the advice and thoughts. Discovery is really the best part of the process in the end, and time is the real ally of discovery. Word.

How big are the knobs, you could put colored flags at the points to turn to for each song with what knobs you have. Also maybe a jump or two would be exciting! unless it matters a lot about the knob tweaking thing I wouldn't worry. just set the knobs you konw you want to move slowoy fairly close. maybe use an easily cleanable pen. I think some synths these days have 360 knobs with LEDs, so the save konb position doesnt matter, its already there. I could be wrong.

ROTARY ENCODER

LED RING

ROBOT LASER FROM OUT OF SPACE CARRYING A FLAG UP A SPIKE

THIS IS THE FUTUIRE

hey man don't forget blue backlit lcd displays

YES ALSO

BACKLIT LCD DISPLAY

MOTORIZED FADER

ROBOT DOG NEWSPAPER FETCHER

MECHANIZER SANDWICH FIXER

AUTORECALL

PERSONAL LSD LAB

THIS IS THE FUTURE

THE YEA R 3000

Im not sure I understand what it is you are asking here.

You make a patch, and load it, so it sounds like you made it... but then the knobs aren't lined up to the exact position that they are supposed to be, when you switch to a different patch? Is that what you're saying?

If so, look in your manual for "soft take over" which means, you can turn the knobs, and they wont change the sound, or send a signal, until it hits the original value of the patch.

so lets say, you have your knob set to 10, and you load a patch where the knob is supposed to be at 80. If you have soft take over, then you can move the knob from 10 to 79, without there being any effect on the sound, but once you hit 80, it will change the sound as you move it further.

is this what you're looking for?

take time to wave at someone while you change patch...

just wear a mask and you'll be fine

I have no idea actually sans maybe a loop pedal or sampling software

  Kcinsu said:

Im not sure I understand what it is you are asking here.

 

You make a patch, and load it, so it sounds like you made it... but then the knobs aren't lined up to the exact position that they are supposed to be, when you switch to a different patch? Is that what you're saying?

 

If so, look in your manual for "soft take over" which means, you can turn the knobs, and they wont change the sound, or send a signal, until it hits the original value of the patch.

 

so lets say, you have your knob set to 10, and you load a patch where the knob is supposed to be at 80. If you have soft take over, then you can move the knob from 10 to 79, without there being any effect on the sound, but once you hit 80, it will change the sound as you move it further.

 

is this what you're looking for?

Yes, precisely. I'll look deeper into that, and see if my machine has that feature. If not, I'm sure in time I'll be able to navigate around it. Or I could always have a walkman beside it and play five minute snare ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuush loops in between songs... :unhappy:

  pantsonmyhead said:

take time to wave at someone while you change patch...

just wear a mask and you'll be fine

I have no idea actually sans maybe a loop pedal or sampling software

  Quote

"I somehow came across this looping delay pedal that would hold a 2 second sample. This pedal coupled with the ghetto blaster experiments really changed my life." -- Aaron Funk

@ DrHat:

A friend of mine yesterday reminded me of this excellent article, which I feel ties into our discussion of practice yesterday. You've probably read it, but I expect I'll be revisiting it periodically...

Collaboration with Machines

LJG

  Bubba69 said:

How big are the knobs, you could put colored flags at the points to turn to for each song with what knobs you have. Also maybe a jump or two would be exciting! unless it matters a lot about the knob tweaking thing I wouldn't worry. just set the knobs you konw you want to move slowoy fairly close. maybe use an easily cleanable pen. I think some synths these days have 360 knobs with LEDs, so the save konb position doesnt matter, its already there. I could be wrong.

This makes me think of DJs marking records with little stickers. A pretty decent idea, but I guess my machine is a bit small for it. Still new too- I want to keep that new synth smell for just a couple more weeks...

  iep said:

YES ALSO

 

BACKLIT LCD DISPLAY

 

MOTORIZED FADER

 

 

ROBOT DOG NEWSPAPER FETCHER

 

 

MECHANIZER SANDWICH FIXER

 

AUTORECALL

 

 

PERSONAL LSD LAB

 

THIS IS THE FUTURE

 

 

THE YEA R 3000

Yes Also