The Korg DS-10 is a synthesizer/step sequencer for the Nintendo DS. Ugo Capeto, this blog's author, composes melodic electronica, chillout, downtempo tracks on the Korg DS-10.
Showing posts with label Korg DS-10 Tracks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Korg DS-10 Tracks. Show all posts
Yeah, my Nintendo Korg DS-10 tune output has a bit suffered from my more elaborate music production with FL Studio and VST plugins (see Ugo Capeto music). Nevertheless, I still enjoy the Korg DS-10 because I can lay down an unpretentious tune in no time.
Let me try to describe the (tune) creation process: created 1 drum channel, then 2, then 3, then 4. When the 2 synthesizers came online, I kinda laid off the drum channels or more precisely, used them more sparingly (as it is often said, more is not necessary better). When I start a tune, I really have no idea where it's gonna go until I get to about the middle, then I have a better idea. Wouldn't say that the melodies are random but it's pretty close.
The bmp is the default bpm, that is, 120 (that's unusually fast for me). I've only used the white keys, in other words, it's in C major.
If you follow this blog very closely, you may have noticed that this is the second version of this tune. I was not completely satisfied with the bridge that is now between 1:12 and 1:36, and I also thought the tune was a bit too long.
Because 72 is a multiple of 12 (I always put 12 tracks in a Korg DS-10 album), it can only mean that an album is gonna be available shortly for download at Ugo Capeto Records.
If you make melodic electronic music on the DS-10, feel free to join and post (that's the important part) at the melodic electronica forum.
This 71st track kinda marks the return to my roots, musically speaking: the happy go lucky tune, downtempo style. Yes, I had strayed a bit from that kind of tuneage recently. One more track and the next album is gonna be ready for release on Ugo Capeto Records.
I had reserved a pattern (the last one) to end the song but ended up not using it, opting for the not very creative fading out repeated (random) pattern.
The bpm for this song is 60. The scale is F major.
If you make or like melodic electronica, stop by at my melodic electronica forum and share your releases or likes.
The more I make tunes on the Nintendo Korg DS-10, the less I have to say about them. I think I may have overused the bass line a bit on this one. Also, I didn't really know how to end the song so I just used a blank pattern as the last pattern to get the tune to fade out nicely (waste of a pattern though).
A song usually takes about one week to write, working on it one to two hours most nights, right in front of the TV. The hardest part is to "finalize" the tune and make sure that all the patterns flow nicely together and that the song is interesting. I always listen to the whole song prior to recording. If something is amiss, I make a change and listen to the whole thing again, until everything is up to snuff.
The sounds are a bit saturated (it's coming straight from the DS-10) but I kinda like it. The bpm is 58 which is kinda slow, I guess. If you think this tune is swinging, well, it's because the swing is set at 62. Key is good ole' C major, the most used (some will say overused) scale in popular music, by far.
Good news (or not), I have started a melodic electronica forum for electronic music of the melodic kind. Hope to see you there if that's the kind of music you are interested in.
A lot of LFO action (acting upon of the cutoff frequency) in this track. Kinda had to because most of the patterns are repeated 4 times before going on to the next. The tune started out in the key of G major and, at some point, switched to F major. It's pretty rare my tunes have modulation (key change) so it's worth mentioning. The tune is actually two relatively different tunes all bundled into in one and you can clearly hear when the 2nd tune comes in (no subtleties there). Didn't plan it that way but it seems the tune needed a drastic change in the way it was going, I guess.
The BPM is 82, which is a bit on the faster side for me. As usual, I use all the drum tracks as additional synthesizers to complement the two leads. I wish the 4 drum tracks were not sample based but you've got to live with that (the limitations of the Nintendo DS), I guess.
Well, I had so much fun writing Korg DS-10 Track 67 during "hurricane" Irene power outage that I went for the double with this mellow track. This tune is really on the slower side - 42 bpm - but it has some delay to make it "less" slow. The two main synth voices are both saw wave pairs. The first one makes use of the third kaoss pad to modulate the cutoff and peak (makes things a little bit more interesting). I've used the four drum tracks as additional synth voices, going for vibraphone or xylophone type sounds, which I am very fond of as you probably have noticed by now.
If you too make music on the DS-10 or DS-10 PLUS that's similar to mine, have a bunch of tracks sitting around, and would possibly like to be on Ugo Capeto Records, I'd be more than happy to put you in there.
This track marks my return to the Korg ds-10 after a bit of a break which has been spent (in part) working on my non ds-10 tunes (see Ugo Capeto Music on Bandcamp). The reason I came back to the ds-10 is "hurricane" Irene which caused a power outage last Sunday.
The beginning of the tune has just the two synthesizer voices going, each of which being a combination of saw and square waves (one voice has the two are tuned, the other slightly detuned). After a little while, the drum channels which are used as additional synthesizer voices come in, pretty much one after the other until up to five channels play in polyphony (for some reason, the fourth drum channel is not used).
I don't know if you have noticed but this tune has a bit of swing (60). The bpm is a mere 50. No effects were applied.
Slowly but surely, I am getting some Korg DS-10 tracks in the bag. Here's "Track 66" in honor of "Route 66". Again, no drumming (well, at least, not the usual kick, snare, hat, tom combo) on this track since I kinda need the 6 layers for my synth sounds.
It took me quite a bit of time to get the patterns to flow (relatively) well together once I had them down but I guess that's part of the game.
I don't know how others do with their patches but I never re-use patches from one song to another. It's always a fresh start, every time. Might be because of laziness though.
After a little bit of slacking off, I, Ugo Capeto, am back with "Track 65". Started working on the tune late Friday night and finished Saturday morning (had to finish it asap for some reason). There's no drums on this one as I wanted to have all 6 channels available for sounds. There are 16 patterns and each pattern is repeated once (couldn't be bothered with arranging the patterns in some clever way).
Track 64 on the Nintendo Korg DS-10. This is a short one (1:42) that starts with just the two synthesizer voices (tuned square waves on synth 1 and detuned saw waves on synth 2) and continues with pretty much all I could muster from the tiny machine (the 2 synths and the 4 drum channels used as synths). So, the tune has a chip tune feel at the beginning but it quickly morphs into something else, you just have to be a tiny bit patient.
Bpm is 78, key is G major.
Looks like youtube is giving iframe code for embedding now, used to be a flash embed object not that long ago. I guess it's because of mobile phones and the likes.
This is my 63rd track on the Nintendo Korg DS-10 (the original on NDS lite). I started this tunette (little tune) by selecting a bpm of 33 and putting some delay fx on everything. Now, when you have delay, it's really difficult to get a "complex" melody going so I opted for very simple motifs, maybe, too simple. Indeed, it was actually more like: Let's see what sounds good as the next, don't put too many and let's and hope for the best. The scale is Eb major and I don't think I am using all the degrees available (pretty sure there's no degree 4 or 7 notes in there, or very few).
Little else to say except that some of the sounds in this tune kinda saturate. I don't usually like that too much but, this time, I did let it slide. Upon further listens, it downed on me that I could have made an effort making the patterns a bit less repetitive. Maybe, next time.
This is my 62nd Korg DS-10 track which I named "Track 62". Here, I wanted to use all 16 patterns but without any repeats. In order to last for more than 30 seconds, the bpm had to be lowered quite a bit. I chose 33 bpm for no reason whatsoever, it's just a good number.
At first, I wanted to do chords with 3 drum channels loaded with the same sound (some kind of distorted guitar sound) but then I realized, the heck with chords but let's keep the 3 identical drum channels as I would just play them at different octaves. Pretty quickly, I realized I needed some delay just to add some spice to what looked like another pretty boring tune.
Add a lead on the 1st synthesizer, a bass on the 2nd synthesizer and I was off composing what would later reveal itself as a masterpiece.
The tune is once again in the key of E major. None of the patterns is repeated and it all fits under 2 minutes.
This is the 1st track of what's gonna be my 6th Korg DS-10 album (hopefully). The goal here was to make a chiptune-like track with some chords (major, minor, diminished, augmented, in other words, whatever sounded alright). For some reason, I also wanted to end the tune with some kind of build-up.
For the chords, I used three drum channels all loaded with the same sound. The chiptune feel comes from the square wave oscillators. The remaining drum channel and the two main synth voices are used for the melodies (and occasional bass). The tune is in the key of E major.
Can't say that the DS-10 is very chord friendly. Obviously, you have to do triads using three channels (maybe fewer if you want to be clever and use the 2nd oscillator as a note in the triad) and it's fair to say that it would be much easier if you could lay out a chord in one (polyphonic) channel. Dunno if it's worth the effort on the DS-10 to be honest, especially knowing that any DAW can lay out chords in a single channel.
Let's talk about chords for a second or two. The pitch grid on the DS-10 is divided vertically into half-steps (semi-tones) so it's pretty easy to build any kind of chords: you just have to know how to count (to 8 for triads).
A major triad chord is built with 3 notes: the root, a note that's 4 half-steps higher (major third) and a note that's 7 half-steps higher (perfect fifth). In integer notation, it's represented by the triplet 0-4-7.
A minor triad chord is built with 3 notes: the root, a note that's 3 half-steps higher (minor third) and a note that's 7 half-steps higher (perfect fifth). In integer notation, it's represented by the triplet 0-3-7.
A diminished triad chord is built with 3 notes: the root, a note that's 3 half-steps higher (minor third) and a note that's 6 half-steps higher (diminished fifth). In integer notation, it's represented by the triplet 0-3-6.
An augmented triad chord is built with 3 notes: the root, a note that's 4 half-steps higher (major third) and a note that's 8 half-steps higher (augmented fifth). In integer notation, it's represented by the triplet 0-4-8.
When a major interval is decreased by one half-step (semi-tone), it becomes minor.
When a perfect fifth interval is decreased by one half-step, it becomes diminished.
When a perfect fifth interval is increased by one half-step, it becomes augmented.
If, when building chords, you only choose the notes of the scale you are currently in, the chords are said to be diatonic, that is, within the scale. For example, if you are working with a major scale, the diatonic triads are either major, minor or diminished depending on the chord root (check the Harmony post on this very blog for more on diatonic chords).
Anyways, I just want to say that it didn't take too long to make that tune and I think it came out alright (better than expected maybe).
A little note about video editing and youtube ... Because my computer is not so great, the frames I grab (with fraps) are 344x240. This means that on youtube, the only format that's gonna be available is 240p (that represents the height of the video). I usually don't care about that but today was different. Indeed, it would be nice to have the next video format available (360p) for giggles. So, what I did in VirtualDub was to expand the frame to 480x360 without actually resizing the input video, letterbox style (using the video resize filter). Youtube took the bait and the video can now be seen in the 240p and 360p video formats. I am not completely sure what the point of all this is but I am ready to bet it affects the search results (the relevant ones). I have also been told that the sound quality is better when the video definition is itself higher.
And here are, by popular demand, the sound settings for the intro pattern (same settings on the 3 drum channels in order to play chord triads):
This is my 60th track (aptly named "Track 60") and it's made (as usual) entirely on the Nintendo Korg DS-10 (original on NDS Lite). No extra effects except fade-in, fade-out and normalization at -6db.
All tracks from "Track 49" to "Track 60" (that's 12 of them) are gonna go into my new album CD (the 5th), which should be available pretty soon.
I seriously hope that you like the melodies in that one because it was a lot of work.
This is Track 59, a 100% Nintendo Korg DS-10 tune. One more track (which is actually already done) and my 5th album is ready to be released to the world.
About the song, the first version didn't have the harpsichord sound that you can hear at 0:57 (it was meant to be a bell but it didn't work out) and it kinda felt it was missing a thing or two. Added the extra patch (as a drum) and voila. Don't know about you but (in general) I really have to listen to a finished tune a bunch of times to find problems and iron them out. This tune was no exception as it required a lot of fine tuning.
And now, for the more technical aspects. This Korg DS-10 tune is 60-60 for swing-bpm. Nothing remarkable to say about the patches except that the lead is gated, that is, the signal to the Voltage Control Amplifier (VCA) bypasses the envelope. Scale-wise, the tune is in D minor. Oh yeah, last but not least, it was done with the "old" Korg DS-10 cart on the "old" Nintendo DS Lite. Those things are really not that important but it fills up the page.
The video was recorded with a slightly better frame rate than before after I had changed the display settings (color depth from 32 bit to 16 bit) on my computer. I still can't do larger videos but that's still an improvement, I think.
This is Track 58, a rather "happy go lucky" track on the Nintendo Korg DS-10. Before you say it's a repetitive and simplistic, well, I'm gonna say that it was meant to be that way, eheh (yeah, right).
This little tune celebrates the return of the swing in my compositions.
How do I write my tunes? I am asking myself this question here because otherwise the article would be real short so here it goes ... First thing first: choosing a key the tune will be in (to me, it's very important). Then, it's the patch for the lead synthesizer. Once I have a good sound, I need to find a good melodic motif that spans one pattern or more (the more, the better). Then, comes the bass line on the 2nd synthesizer. Once I have the main melody and the bass, it's pretty easy to build up the whole song. Variations on the initial melody can fill up patterns pretty quick and the drum channels provide a lot of options for either percussion sounds or additional melodies. To be honest, once I start a song, I really don't know where it's gonna lead me and I often end up finding a cool melodic motif mid way through the creative process which gotta be integrated somehow into the tune (if it's too cool, it's gonna go into another tune). Once all the patterns have been created and the song structure is pretty much done, the "hard" part comes: listen and re-listen to the tune and make sure the patterns transition nicely. I think it's a good idea to take a break (a day or two) prior to making the final arrangements to the tune. Of course, the mold must be broken once in a while otherwise it would be pretty boring. Sometimes, I start with the rhythm or a melody that I already have in store or just a concept of what I want the tune to sound like.
This is Track 57. It kinda came to life as I was finishing Track 56 and discovered a cool patch that I had to use for a new tune (doesn't take much).
Percussions on this one are rather simple as it's pretty much all sorts of claves. What are claves? you may ask. Well, it's basically two sticks that you bang together.
For the two synthesizer voices, there's really not that much to say except that I have apparently made use of the old arpeggio effect, so dear to most synthesizer keyboard players. Arpeggiating means that you play a series of notes one octave apart. There's all kinds of variations you can bring in but that's the basic idea and it's pretty cool ... when used sparingly, of course.
This is "Track 56", my latest tune on the Nintendo Korg DS-10. If I can still count correctly, this is going to be the 8th track of my 5th Korg DS-10 album (no name yet), which means there are still 4 to do. Actually, the next 4 are done and the next album release is therefore pretty imminent.
These days, I am doing a lot of automation using the kaoss x and y grids. Nothing too fancy as I mostly automate the filter's cutoff frequency and the peak (resonance) with something that looks like a very discrete sinusoid. Dunno, it's kinda neat seeing the knobs turn by themselves in the synth edit screen.
Here's Track 55, my latest track on the Nintendo Korg DS-10.
For this track, I wanted to use some delay because, in general, everything sounds better with some mighty echo. So, the 2 main synthesizer voices are both delayed. They make up the bass lines. The drum channels which actually have almost nothing to do with percussion are effects free (you have to be careful with delay because it's pretty easy to overdo it). They are the various leads. Nothing more to declare except that, for the 2 synthesizer voices, I did make use of the X/Y KAOSS grid to automate the cutoff/peak (just to do something a bit different and I just like to see the knobs turn by themselves when the pattern is playing).
Oh yeah, it usually takes me about a week working maybe 1 or 2 hours a day to make this kind of tune on the Korg DS-10. I kinda like to work a little bit on a tune, let it rest for a while and go at it again much later ("rinse and repeat" the process). This one, I made it in one go. Actually, it's not exactly true as I had to fix the bass that was way too low for youtube.
About using the drum channels as regular synth voices ... Well, it's a bit of a gamble every time because the drums are sampled, which makes it harder to get the sounds you want. More importantly, there's something real annoying when you try to use the drum channels as synth voices: there's a click whenever a note's envelope is interrupted by the next note. My guess about what's happening is that the sample gets interrupted and you get a click. Not too good when you have two notes next to each other in the sequence. So, if you have notes next to each other in the sequence (or notes that overlap in terms of envelope), you should really have not too much decay and, of course, no sustain in the volume envelope.
If you like the type of music I make, please check Ugo Capeto's Music Blog for my non Korg DS-10 musical adventures.
This time, I wanted to do a fast paced tune with a lot of drums. Basically the opposite of what I usually end up doing. Started with the rhythm and then the bass line. After that, it was pretty easy and the song didn't take long to make. It's a bit short though.
The beginning is quite reminiscent of the Visage "Fade to Grey" tune. There's also some Yazoo "Don't Go" later in the tune. Could have probably spent more time to polish it a tad more but don't think it matters. Oh yeah, it's in C sharp in case it matters.
Not really a big fan of the fast bpm tracks (this one is 120 bpm) with lots of drumming because, for one, you can't use the drum channels for anything else and two, you end up with very short tunes (under 2 mns). It's fun to do them once in a while though.
In other news, my good friend bryface has a new album out called "HOW TO DODGE LASERS" and it's available (free of charge) at WAVEFORMTOWN. Check it out!
After listening to the tune a bunch of times, it has come to my attention that I probably should have put more modulation into the two main voices because you can really make out the pattern structure. In my opinion, when listening to a tune, one should not really be able to tell that it's pattern based or it should not be too obvious.
This is "Track 53", a tune made on the Nintendo Korg ds-10. With a bpm of 36 and without delay, it's quite downtempo.
The song is made up of three parts. The first few patterns establish a melodic line in F major (till 0:54). Those patterns are then repeated with 2 or 3 additional voices (till 1:41). Then, the song evolves into something slightly different starting at 2:15 which coincides with the (slight) change of patches for the 2 main voices (kinda gives a different vibe to the tune). This third part is a bit too repetitive as you have 3 patterns going on a loop for too long (more than twice basically and in the same order).
