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FRIDAY, MAY 2, 2008 (11:14 AM)

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Since I use this sexy red box for creative writing & performance - I often use it in tags - the electribe sx is a very
versatile & rugged sampling workstation/groovebox

Give it a quick glance, and the ESX1 appears to function in a similar manner to the EMX1, certainly as far as sequencing goes. (The effects and arpeggiator are also identical.) Nine drum Parts plus five others, each marrying a sound source with one track of sequencing, are used to record Patterns of up to eight bars in length, in step or real time, with the Patterns chainable into complete Songs. As mentioned above, though, the EMX1 needs to have samples in it before you can start creating those Songs.

The sampler section can record or import mono or stereo samples, at 16-bit resolution and a sample rate of 44.1kHz. Imported samples can be in WAV or AIFF format, and they come into the system via SmartMedia cards. (In view of this fact, it might have been nice if Korg had supplied a card with the machine.) The precise on-board MB memory capacity for samples is unspecified in any of Korg's paperwork, but the memory can hold up to 285.3 seconds (4.75 minutes) of mono samples. That's divided into 384 sample slots: 256 for mono samples and 128 for stereo. If you want more than 384 mono samples, a) Well done! You're being creative; and b) Tough luck. Stereo sampling is always an option, but stand by for some compromises on this front.

In trying to figure out the numbers, I discovered that saving the memory contents of the ESX1 to SmartMedia card (once I'd maxed out the sample memory) occupied around 27Mb, though I don't know how much of that memory is needed for other data, such as global settings, Patterns and Motion Sequences, which we'll come to shortly. Using the scratch calculation of around 10Mb of storage needed for every minute of 16-bit stereo digital audio at 44.1kHz, this would imply that data reduction, to 'compress' samples into less space, isn't necessarily being used by Korg in the ESX1 (the maximum sample time would need just under 24Mb), though one can't always be certain about these things! Even if data reduction was used, there would not really be any cause for concern: Roland, for example, have developed an entire dynasty of digital multitracks which depend on data-reduction technology.
Korg Electribe ESX1-2
There's a lot of hands-on tweakability courtesy of a massive array of knobs and buttons.

Once created or loaded (and edited if needed — more later), samples can be assigned to one of the Pattern Parts, of which there are 14. Between them, they handle samples in four distinct ways. From the left of the front panel there are nine Drum Parts, labelled 1-5, 6A, 6B, 7A and 7B, with each of the last two pairs not triggerable at the same time, to help simulate hi-hats and other similar rhythmic devices. In most circumstances, you'd assign drum, percussion or sound effect samples to these Parts. Two so-called Keyboard Parts, when selected, can be played from the ESX1's button keyboard — the bottom row of 16 buttons doubles up for this function and is transposable over an eight-octave range, whilst also providing access (in tandem with the Shift key) to a collection of edit functions and menus. The most obvious choice of samples for these two Parts would be those suitable for melodic playback. Samples assigned here can be played with sustaining loops.

Next up are two Part types which allow you to have rhythmic or riff samples play back in time with whatever tempo you've set for a given Pattern: Stretch and Slice. Two Parts can be assigned Stretched samples. In these instances, you simply tell the ESX1 how many 16th notes long a sample is and the machine works out how to play it back such that it'll stretch to fit any tempo. In practice, this DSP-based trick is a little limited — large variations in tempo, in either direction, will not always be terribly faithful, though the effect may well be effective in any case! It's certainly up to the task of moving a few BPM in either direction, though, allowing you to perhaps tempo-match two loops and still be able to play with Pattern or Song tempo later.

There is but one Slice Part, and this is a simple take on the Propellerhead Recycle idea of dividing a sample into discrete segments, each of which is then triggered by a MIDI event. The resulting sample can have its tempo changed to a much greater degree than a Stretched sample, since no DSP is involved: it's exactly the same as creating a drum kit from individual hits and triggering them, except that each 'hit' is a portion of the original sample loop. In fact, it's possible to extract hits from within a Sliced sample for redeployment elsewhere, such as any of the Drum Parts (you'll find instructions for doing this on page 47 of the user manual). In practice, there are issues, since each Slice can't be changed in length. This results in big gaps between hits when a tempo is slowed down a lot, for example, though it's often not a problem as such. However, tempo changes of many BPM in either direction are acceptable.

Now for a few words about stereo samples. They introduce compromises, the main one being that the use of them results in the loss of Parts. For example, if you assign a stereo sample to Drum Part 1 or 3, you lose Part 2 or 4; you can't assign stereo samples to a single Drum Part, or any other Drum Part besides the 1/2 and 3/4 pairings. The same compromise is true for the two Stretch Parts. Choose a stereo sample for Stretch Part 1 and that's all you can choose, with Stretch Part 2 obviously being deployed to hold the other side of the stereo sample.

Other bizarre stereo compromises are the fact that a loop point (more in a moment) can't be applied to a stereo sample, not even a stereo sample assigned to a Keyboard Part, and a stereo sample can't be Sliced (and hence can't be assigned to the Slice Part).

All ESX1 Parts have access to a set of synthesis and sound-manipulation tools. They're boiled down to the essentials, but (as with the EMX1), this abbreviation never gets in the way of creativity. A multi-mode filter is at the heart of the synthesis tools, offering Low-pass, High-pass and Band-pass variants, plus a Band-pass option which adds the output of the filter to the sound's original waveform. The filter, as I discovered after the EMX1 review went to press, is a newly-modelled 12dB/octave design, making its first appearance on these two instruments. Apparently, a simulated analogue drive circuit helps the filter produce a more convincing resonance peak, whilst avoiding digital clipping — so it sounds even more like an analogue filter than earlier Korg models — and the maximum cutoff frequency has been increased as a result of algorithm and sampling-frequency improvements. One significant difference on the filter front between the ESX and the EMX is that the ESX's 'Drum' Parts each have a filter: this was not the case with the EMX.

There's a basic modulation section, which can be sync'd to Pattern tempo and routed to pitch, filter cutoff, amplitude or pan. The simple EG, controlled by one button and one knob, again proves its worth. New controls for the ESX1 are sample-specific: a start point offset knob, and a reverse button.

We're mainly in pattern-sequencing territory here, though real- or step-time recording is not only possible but practically available simultaneously. Each Pattern (of up to 256 on board) has a length of up to eight bars, and a choice of resolutions means that a bar can offer 16 16th-note steps, 16 32nd notes, 12 8th-note triplets or 12 16th-note triplets. A wide range of potential time signatures, in addition to the 4/4 and 3/4 options implied by the basic resolutions, can be bodged by changing the ESX1's Last Step parameter.

Drum Parts can be triggered by their respective buttons — as if they were pads on a drum machine — and the 16-strong strip of buttons at the bottom of the front panel shows the result by their lit or unlit state. As mentioned earlier, these 16 buttons also double up as a chromatic keyboard for playing the Keyboard Parts (though there's no transposition as such). The buttons come into play again for triggering Stretched samples, or the individual Slices of a sample assigned to the Slice Track. If a Pattern is longer than one bar, a pair of buttons scrolls back and forth between bars, with you keeping track of where you are via a handy line of red LEDs.

None of the buttons generates velocity information, though an Accent track allows Drum Parts (only) to have a little variety; unfortunately, the Accent is global for all drum hits: accent one beat, and all drum samples sounding on that beat will be accented. The other cheat is that the Accent track defaults to all steps being active, so the user is actually taking away accents after the fact, rather than adding them to something that's just been created but would benefit from a bit of 'oomph'. There is no Accent track for the other Parts, as there is on the EMX1. (Note that Drum and Keyboard Parts respond to velocity over MIDI, and Keyboard Parts respond to pitch-bend data, though this incoming data cannot be recorded by the ESX1.)

A 'Motion Sequencer' offers a simple way of creating Pattern diversity, allowing you to overdub (and edit) the tweaks of up to 24 knobs or buttons in a Pattern. The EMX1's Motion Sequencing options of Smooth and Trigger Hold are replicated here: the latter records changes in discrete steps, while the former extrapolates the changes between those steps for smooth parameter changes. A separate Motion Sequencer is provided for the effects section, though only the two edit knobs for the three effects can be sequenced — that's six controls in total — and data is only recorded 'Smooth'-ly. As we'll discover elsewhere in this review, the audio input can be affected by a wide range of editable parameters, which can themselves be Motion Sequenced, and the Accent level parameter of the Accent Track can be changed dynamically with its own Motion Sequencer.

Patterns are chained into a Song (of which there may be up to 64 on board) to create a finished piece. There are 256 steps per Song, and each step could be a completely different Pattern (though beware of the machine's 20,000 event limit). Equally, a single Pattern could be repeated for the length of the Song, since a certain amount of remixing and data overdubbing can be achieved in this mode. Mutes and solos can be recorded, as can transpositions, Motion Sequences and, even more helpfully, an extra Song-length 'keyboard' performance/solo, either triggered from the arpeggiator or played live by you. However, this performance can't, unfortunately, be edited.

Category: Music

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