Korg M50 first impressions

This review is from playing around with the 61 key version for a couple 30 minutes sessions.

Quality:
It's not built like a tank, but it does feel gig-worthy. I noticed some weirdness (burn-in?) on the display. Normally this wouldn't be surprising for a floor model, although in this case it's a bit worrisome given that the store would have only had it for a few days.

I'm not as picky as some regarding keyboard action, so it felt fine to me. The knobs and buttons felt sturdy as well. I had no real concerns about build quality aside from the aforementioned display issue.

Expressiveness/sounds:
There are some extremely cheesy combi presets, that's to be expected, but they are all quite expressive and show off the power of combi mode. If you like the "Korg sound" then I think you'll be happy. It's a big step up from the TR, sound-wise.

• Keys: Warm and responsive. The amp sim adds a nice touch the EPs.
  
• Drums: There are some pretty decent sounds in this thing. Maybe not enough to stand up on their own, but certainly to augment another source.
  
• Pads: Warm and lush with lots of movement.
  
• Orchestral/acoustic: The standard fare. Strings would be passable for live performance but I don't think I'd use them in the studio.
  
• Synths: A bit thin but some of the leads were definitely usable. To satisfy my curiosity I downloaded the voice list: it covers everything one would need to recreate most subtractive synth sounds - sync, PWM, etc. Of course you're not going to get the same sort of flexibility as you would with a VA.
  

Features:
The effects section is quite comprehensive and easy to access. I was hoping that all parameters would be assignable, but sadly it seems only selected ones are. Along with the single stereo out, this is yet another limitation of the M50, but not a huge surprise given the price point.

The chord buttons could be pretty handy for live performance. Ditto for the tap tempo. I wasn't able to check out the computer integration at the music shop, but if it's stable then this would make a welcome addition to anyone's studio.

Ease of use:
If you've ever used a Korg then the layout will be quite familiar. I was able to find everything I wanted fairly easily. I didn't have a chance to try editing a patch, but I was able to find the edit mode easily. I imagine the touch screen and computer integration will simplify the editing process greatly.

The one gripe I have in this area is the arp. There were dozens if not hundreds of patterns and I didn't see any sort of categorization to them. I spent a couple minutes just trying to find a basic "chord" mode, to no avail.

Overall impression:
An impressive piece of gear at this price point, and one that would be equally as useful in the studio as it would be on stage. It won't replace everything I can do with my laptop, but it will come extremely close.

Update: I found out that the local music store has it listed at a couple hundred more than I was expecting. Probably not worth considering until the price drops.

How to make NES music

I like video games, music and synthesizers. Nothing brings these three things together quite like the soundtrack from a NES game. Sure, there's the C64's SID chip, but alas, I never owned a C64 (side note: check out Quadrasid and Sidstation).

So then, you say you want to write some original NES music? There are some good resources on the web (here's a starting point), but I wanted to summarize the two main approaches and my experiences.

Use synthesizers

There are a couple important things to keep in mind when using modern synthesizers to write NES music:

• The NES had 5 channels:
• 1 triangle
  
• 2 pulse (with only 4 duty cycles to choose from)
• 1 noise
  
• 1 D-PCM
• The NES had no effects or filters, although basic chorus and echo effects could be achieved by using two channels
  

The triangle and pulse channels are easy enough to simulate, but the noise and D-PCM take a bit more work. My earlier attempts at writing NES music were done mostly with my workhorse subtractive synth, NI Pro53. I also played around with Waldorf Attack to simulate the noise channel, and Bitcrusher to simulate the D-PCM channel, with varying degrees of success.

I recently came across the NES VST pack. It consists of 3 plug-ins: pulse, triangle and noise. The pulse plug-in has a switch to toggle between the 4 duty cycles. The noise plug-in has 2 noise modes and allows you to "sweep" the noise. All 3 plug-ins are quite faithful to the original NES sound chip.


Here's a little demo I whipped together with nothing but the NES VST pack and the default FL Studio limiter. Update Sept. 09: by popular demand here's the FL project (you'll need FL Studio 8 to open it)

Use the actual hardware (or emulation)

If you've got a bit of money to spend, Wayfar makes something called the MIDINES. It's basically modified NES cartridge that runs custom software and provides a MIDI interface to the actual NES sound chip! Check out the demos!

Otherwise, take a look at trackers like Famitracker or Nerdtracker ii. These allow you to create NSF (NES sound format) files which can then be played back with an NSF player. If you're not familiar with trackers then these will be a bit awkward to use at first, but next to the MIDINES they will give you the most convincing results.