Ableton Forum

jbuonacc wrote:

thelike5 wrote:
I am really curious about "everyone who is everyone" could you throw some names.

Steve Bug, Luciano, Ricardo Villalobos, Autechre, John Tejada, Andrew Weatherall, Richie Hawtin, Bright Eyes, New Order to name just a few. As this list points out, the EMX1 is used by such a wide ranging palette of artists which highlights the fact that you can really tweak this machine to produce all sorts of sounds suitable for a lot of different genres of music.

Autechre? Richie Hawtin? New Order? where the hell did you get this list from? i've never heard of these guys using any Korg Electribes. wtf?

Here is the link mentioning Villalobos and Hawtin. I stand corrected- it only mentions Villalobos using the electribe.

http://www.rhythmism.com/forum/printthread.php?t=2513

As far as Autechre: I read an interview in an older issue of Future Music and they raved about the electribes. They said they are "all over" there records.
They have been using them live and in the studio since the electribes came out.

Steve Bug (probably my favorite live dj/producer right now

http://www.korg.de/artists/20041209-161225.php

I also saw Modeselektor in Cleveland last week and they played live with one. Smash TV and Ellen Ailen from the (B-pitch label) also used them live.

I saw New Order in Chicago last year and they had the MX on stage along with all of there other synth equipment.

To make a long post longer, they are a lot of fun to use, you can get great inspirational sounds from them and you can tweak them to hell and back. I forgot to mention they are affordable and work well next to Live.

And to make another point, the poster RIKHYRAY (with all due respect, he seems like a nice guy) owns gear for like a month, raves about it, and then sells it for the next hottest thing and then talks bad about it. There is no way you can really get everything out of gear in that short amount of time.

Look, I would never slag JOMOX, I actually really would like an xbase or an Mbase. I almost came close to purchasing an Xbase over a month ago but I wouldn't sell my MX. I think both machines are great and vastly different. Whatever. Jeff Mills created arguably the hottest techno anthem of all time on a Yamaha DX-100 which had mini keys and was probably the hardest synth to program. The sounds that it shipped with sucked and he made the most of it. Isn't making the most of what you have where we get original sounding music from? This isn't to say the Korg MX is limiting. That box rips. The only thing that is at all limiting is the fact that you can't filter the drum sounds individually. There are work arounds via Ableton Live though...

thelike5 wrote:And to make another point, the poster RIKHYRAY (with all due respect, he seems like a nice guy) owns gear for like a month, raves about it, and then sells it for the next hottest thing and then talks bad about it.

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Come on, if I write here is to help otheres- guys like you. I am full time musician, it is my job, I do not waste my time, neither anyones else. It is not running after next hottest stuff but what works really. Like Novation SL very promising at first, you expect they will correct the bugs etc but if they dont I dont have time for such shit, I cannot stand as a fooll on stage when some machine fucks up. So I get stuff that works if it does not I get rid of it.
When I write my opinion here it is after giving a very serious try that no press reviewer would ever give, 30, 40 in this case maybe 100 hours.
NOBODY needs/can to invest 1000 hours to find out if something is good enough or not. I spent weekend with Jomox09 enough to know how good and for what it is, and that just to examin the sequencing options, for sound an hour would be enough. Or you mean I am retarded musically and technically and should have spend 2 years 12 hours daily with Korg MX to realise how great it is ?
I know how some companies send certain products to celebs and then advertise them as "users". Takamine was using John McLaughlin name in Germany and France for 3 years, till I told him about it. He remembered receiving it and gave it away to some struggling guitarists without even checking it out.
Read more carefully what i write, MX is excellent for beginner who wants almost "good" result almost instantly, which may work for some live use or "cheap" productions. It simply want cut for anything else, technically it cannot deliver more then it does and it is very, very limited.
I dont want to argue about it, dont care, but I wish somebody "warned" me like I am doing it now. I dont care for the money spent but definitely the time wasted.
I guess I spent much more time then you did with MX, I will never believe anyone serious ever used it other then accidently. There is nothing there in Electrotribes that you cannot do with real instruments from Korg or others.
Why a hell anyone would need to use that having tons of better stuff the mentioned guys have at their disposal.
The fact is I have MX in front of me right now checking what is there midi or audio I should, could backup before selling the box. The problem is that almost everything is "almost" only, sound and the rest, you just bloody cant fine tune anything with it, you have good "sketches" ideas but then you hit the limit when you want to refine it. It is just fucking frustrating because it wont make sense exporting just the midi. Probably just recording the audio as reference and then reconstruct the ideas on real hard or software. I better cut it here as I really getting pissed that I ever got this bloody toy, it is so frustrating.
Conclusion if you are musician dont even start with MX because after some time you will hit the barrier and realise you were wasting time.


Regarding the links someone might write that Rikfy Ray uses MX on stage while in reality it is only midi master and tempo control and there is no single sound coming out of it.

hey thelike, ever used an xbase ?

b0unce wrote:hey thelike, ever used an xbase ?

Yeah, and I really loved it!

I wanted to purchase one and I came insanely close to buying one off of a guy on Ebay for $150-$175 and lost out at the last minute. He misspelled the name of it and didn't know what he had. Seeing that it's only about 7 years since they started manufacturing them, if he didn't know what he had I'm assuming it was stolen or something. Anyways, yeah, I missed out on it...

I settled on the the Korg MX and I'm happy. The synth stuff sounds good on it and you can tweak away until you really come up with some great sounds. Effects, not so good but I use different outboard effects usually.

I'm keeping my eyes open for an Mbase as I mainly wanted the xbase for it's bass drum/synth. Am I correct in assuming the mbase bass drum is tweakable like the Xbase's? I rememebr the incrediable bass sounds the xbase could make BESIDES an 808 or a 909 bass drum sound. You could really do so much more with the Xbase's bass drum. Almost make a tb-303 type bass noises with it. If the Mbase can do that I will pick one up soon and just 'midi it up' to the Korg MX and let the hi-hats and snares on the MX play while the Mbase covers the bass drum. I can sync it up no problem with the Korg's tempo control.

Any feedback on this would be greatly appreaciated.

rikhyray wrote:MX is excellent for beginner who wants almost "good" result almost instantly, which may work for some live use or "cheap" productions. It simply want cut for anything else, technically it cannot deliver more then it does and it is very, very limited.

That's what I thought until I actually bought one. The EMX is a fantastic little machine with a huge amount of range. I've owned a Machinedrum and a Monomachine and I currently have Reaktor, Kontakt, Absynth and a ton of other plugins but I get things out of the EMX I'd never have thought of with the rest of my gear. I like it so much I ordered an ESX to go with it.

Anybody that tells you the new Electribes are toys or "very limited" just lacks imagination. The EMX does more in one box than a lot of synths costing 3x as much! PWM on all the standard waveforms, Cross Mod, Ring Mod, Formant Synthesis, Simple Additive, PCM + Comb Filter or Waveshaping, a Grain Shifter effect, automation of LFO shape *and* destination. All this and a decent step sequencer for $500 is a killer package.

Here's a simple electro track I put together in an hour entirely on the EMX:
http://abnormo.us/music/EMX%20Vox.mp3

right, and the 303, 909, and 808 were considered limited and for non-serious musicians as well.

We all know where that ended up.

rob.

robtronik wrote:right, and the 303, 909, and 808 were considered limited and for non-serious musicians as well.

We all know where that ended up.

rob.

Good point. And exactly the same point I was trying to make with the whole Jeff Mills created the bells on a Yamaha Dx-100.

The way I look at it, the original idea behind a "Groovebox" is that you have a self contained unit capable of giving you drum and synth parts plus effects for a price under $1000. Sometimes considerably less then $1000.

Remember when the first batch of Roland MC 303's and 505's came out? Everyone was way excited at the idea. Sadly those machines sucked for the most part. (I went out and picked up a MC 303 and hated it). Point is, the IDEA behind the Groovebox is a great one and I think several have come out that are very, very useful. (Korg Electribes, Yamaha DX-200 (slept on unit), and Quasimidi 309.

I've stayed away from the Roland stuff ever since the MC 303. I'm sure they made advancements and I'll bet the MC 909 isn't a bad unit and you can get alot out of it and make original sounding tracks.

Well, I love the Korg Mx1 and wouldn't talk about it so much in here but it works so well with a live performance with Ableton. I guess I can understand the standoffishness some modular Doepfer, or Vermona user would have but sync up an MX through a PA during a live set and that thing just will SCREAM out of the soundsystem...

Thelike where are you ? My 01 should be coming anytime, means they called Jomox and it is supposedly on its way , can let you know. I passed the Ebay 160-170 when I get brand new for 199 and then get back my VAT anyway.
The thing that I love lots of MX is so frustrating while hitting those limits, the audio demo someone send actually ilustrates what I was talking about, if someones is satisfied with "that" , great be happy, enjoy but for me it woudnt be enough. I would prefere to just expand MX with Jomox- which I am also getting itch to use for more then BD.
I will really check the 808 before buying, didnt like any of the MC series. DX 100 ? Man, that`s classic ! I am not at all FM fan but DX 100`s basses are killers.

the electribes are definitely aimed a live performance. That's why they are designed the way they are - realtime, easy to use, interfaces for altering sound.

The fact that you expect it to be a full featured studio tool with all the bells and whistles means that your expectations and understanding of the unit was off a bit. Its probably no wonder you were unhappy with it.

rob.