Keyboard Presents Korg Product Spotlight - (Page 13) www.korg.com The panel layout is reminiscent of the MicroKorg, chiefly because of the large knob that selects sound categories, but more elegant. An XLR input jack on top of the R3 can accept the included gooseneck mic (intended for use with the built-in vocoder), or a dynamic mic of your choice. Both it and the rear-panel audio inputs have gain knobs, and the R3 lets you process external audio through its synth engine by setting “audio in” as the waveform type for oscillator 1. The right side of the panel is where things get exciting. The Page Select knob, which is right beneath the primary LCD display, navigates through 46 pages of tweakable parameters for the four edit knobs to its right, each of which has its own LCD display to show what you’re tweaking. The LED rings around each edit knob are more than mere eye candy: They indicate the current stored value of the selected parameter. If the knob is set all the way down to zero, the light is red, all other values mean it’s a bright yellow-green. This is an excellent feature, and is downright essential when dealing with multi-function knobs. R3 also contains a modulation sequencer. This is like a step sequencer, but records controllers instead of notes — you can program sequences of changes to filter settings, envelopes, and other parameters you choose, and you get a separate “track” for each timbre. VOCODER A vocoder produces those “talking synth” or “robot voice” sounds we know and love from ’80s new wave and synth rock, and it does this by using external audio (usually your voice) as a modulation source for a carrier signal, which is most often a waveform from a synth. The R3’s vocoder has 16 frequency bands, and lets you follow the usual conventions or expand on them — you can simply speak or sing into the gooseneck mic as you play a synth sound on the R3, which uses timbre 1 as the carrier, or add in audio input 2 from the rear panel as the carrier. This means that the R3 can work as a standalone vocoder, letting you superimpose syllables onto external sources such as a guitar, other synth, or pre-recorded audio. While that’s great for experimenting in the studio, the R3 vocoder’s most gig-worthy feature is what Korg calls formant motion recording. Introduced on the Radias, it works in the same way here: You can record up to 16 “data sets” (vocal phrases), each up to seven and a half seconds long, then save them for later use. At the gig, you can then just play the keys, and the synth sound will “sing” the phrase that’s saved as part of the current program, without you having to speak into the mic. Under the hood, what’s going on is a lot like recording your voice into a sampler, except instead of playing it back unadorned, the R3 uses the stored vocal phrase as a modulator signal. Slick, and until now, unheard of at this price. Unlike with a conventional sampler, the one thing you can’t do is somehow map different stored phrases to different keys within the same program. Formant motion programs have their own notch on the R3’s big dial, and each program can use one data set at a time. VITAL STATS SYNTHESIS TYPE Analog modeling, with digital waveforms and vocoder. KEYBOARD 37 keys, synth action, velocity-sensitive. DISPLAYS Main: 8 character x 2line LCD. Edit knob displays: 8 character x 1 line LCD each (4). POLYPHONY 8 voices. MULTITIMBRAL PARTS 2 (via layer, split, or multi mode). AUDIO OUTPUTS L and R 1/4" unbal., 1/4" stereo headphone jack. AUDIO INPUTS 2 x 1/4" unbalanced (input 1 is mic/line switchable), XLR mic input. PEDAL INPUTS 1 assignable switch, 1 assignable sweep/continuous. MIDI CONNECTORS In, thru, out. USB CONNECTOR B-type for MIDI communication with computer. USER MEMORY 16 performance locations for splits and layers. POWER SUPPLY External 9VAC, in-line type with two-prong power cord. DIMENSIONS/ WEIGHT 25" W x 10.6" D x 3" H; 6.17 lbs. . SOUND STRUCTURE The R3’s 128 factory programs are divided into categories that include Motion, Pad/Strings, Lead, Bass, Vintage Bass, Vintage Lead, Vintage Poly, and presets for the formant motion feature of the built-in vocoder (see “Vocoder” at right). You can overwrite any of the 128 preset programs, and save your faves in a favorites bank. Each program consists of up to two timbres. Each timbre is a self-contained, two-oscillator synth, and they share eight voices of polyphony. These are dynamically allocated, meaning that however many voices are not in use by one timbre in a split or layer is available to the other. The structure itself follows the familiar analog-style chain: You start with the oscillators, which are then mixed together, fed into the filter and amplifier, modulated by two LFOs, routed to insert effects, then to a master effect, and out into the world. I simplify here, but it gets deeper. Multiple Modeling Technology (MMT) is Korg’s umbrella term for several things the oscillators do in addition to the requisite virtual analog waves, hard sync, and ability to cross-modulate the first oscillator with the second. For starters, there are Korg’s DWGS waves (see “Jargon Jockey” on page 64). Oscillator 1’s “mod” parameter lets you do simple FM5, or continuously vary the selected waveform’s shape. Even more impressive here is a unison mode that makes oscillator 1 sound like five stacked, detunable oscillators, with no extra polyphony cost. This is different from the usual keyboard unison mode (which the R3 also has) that stacks voices. The Drive/Waveshaper can go from adding a little grit to creating a sub-oscillator to far more tonally complex ways of mangling the sound. For Minimoog fans who crave that threeoscillator sound, the R3 can approximate it with this feature. Keeping in mind that both dual-oscillator timbres in a program have their own Drive/Waveshaper, you can create some filthy-huge stacked sounds. Vintage aficionados will also love the analog drift function, which introduces random pitch changes in the oscillators, and the virtual patching, which is a modulation matrix that lets you route MIDI controllers, LFOs, and envelope generators to destinations of your choice. The IN USE Being a fan of analog synths, my first instinct with the R3 was to see how long it would take for me to simplify a sound, i.e., to take off the effects, remove all the swirling bells and whistles, and rebuild my tone from there. When editing a sound on the R3, you can either work from an existing program, or start from scratch with an initialized one. If you know your way around basic synthesis concepts, you can easily get a good lead sound happening with a few seconds of knob tweaking on a real analog synth, or on virtual ones with tons of knobs, such as like the Clavia Nord Lead series or Novation K-Station. With the R3, I needed marginally more time — a few minutes — due to having four edit knobs with many pages of functions instead of “one knob per function” or close to it. Keep in mind though, that it would have taken me longer still to get to the same goal on a menu-heavy workstation keyboard. It helps that the R3’s Page Select knob calls up foursomes of things you’re likely to edit at the same time: major filter settings, envelopes with attack, decay, sustain, and release, and similarly sensible groupings. 13 http://www.korg.com
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