Do you own a MicroKORG?  Do you dig those crazy sounds I get out of mine?  Well today is your luck day!

I’ve had my MicroKORG for a good 8 years now.  I got it just barely used for a really good deal.  During this time it’s been used in just about every band I’ve been involved with. It’s come in handy — mostly due to the fact that it’s so small that I can take it anywhere, while still being quite versatile. Over these years, either out of necessity or inspiration, I’ve created a whole handful of my own patches, because frankly, the sounds that come stock on the MicroKORG are pretty lame.

The result: a unique MicroKORG sound bank.

There’s a strong retro / vintage / avant garde electronic music / hauntology / twee / indie pop vibe across my patches, since those happen to be the sounds I’m most interested in. Great patches if you’re into Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, François de Roubaix, Gary Numan, Yann Tiersen, Kate Bush, Isao Tomita, …

Listen for yourself! This morning I recorded this short song to demonstrate all my various patches (after coming to the conclusion that nobody wants to sit for 15 minutes to hear each one demonstrated individually):

The patches included in my library are:

• Þ.AnalogHorn.prg – This is a somewhat typical synth horn.  Something between what you might get on an analog synth like a Moog and a FM synth like the DX-7.  Sounds good down in the tuba range and up into trumpet.  I think the most special thing about this patch is that turning up the modulation wheel makes it growl.
• Þ.Churchbell.prg – The Phil Specter in me needed one of these.  This isn’t going to fool anybody, but it sounds rad nonetheless.  Sounds like a synth.  Especially if you turn up the mod-wheel vibrato.
• Þ.DeepRzBass.prg – This one has embarrassing origins.  I was trying to emulate the sound of the fuzz bass in the intro to that Muse song, Time is Running Out.  Nevertheless, THIS PATCH IS MY SECRET WEAPON!  Whenever I need to kick up the intensity of a section of a song a notch, I just layer one of these in.  Fills out the low end with a really pleasant saw sizzle on top.  Really thick.  Similar to that Shins song, Sphagnum Esplanade.  But that’s not all!  Turn the mod wheel and you’ve got a slow attack on the low-pass filter sweep.  A really deep, thick analog Moog-style bass sound.  And for the clincher, turn on the arrpegiator and it’s instant François de Roubaix.
• Þ.Forbidden.prg – Inspired by the film, Forbidden Planet, which I believe features the first electronic music score.  Basically it’s a theremin-sounding patch with a ridiculous amount of echo.
• Þ.G.Armonica.prg – The glass armonica is an instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin, based on playing wine glasses with a wet finger.  This is my emulation.
• Þ.Glass Pad.prg – Don’t write this one off.  A very glassy/digital sounding pad.
• Þ.Glockspl 2.prg – Metallic/bell-like sounding patch.  Nothing to write home about, but has it’s uses.
• Þ.Glockspl 3.prg - Metallic/bell-like sounding patch.
• Þ.Male Bass.prg – Sounds like a sample of a man with a very deep voice saying “UHHH”
• Þ.Marimba.prg – The sound of chromatic wood blocks struck with a mallet.
• Þ.Mrimbababa.prg – A slightly different marimba sound, except with loads of delay on it.  Trying to emulate the sound found in recordings such as Leslie Gore’s You Don’t Own Me.  Not fooling anybody, but still cool in its own right.
• Þ.MTBoyChoir.prg – Another of my pride and joys.  This emulates a Mellotron Boys Choir.  All the “choir” patches that the MicroKORG comes with are rubbish.  This one sounds close enough to the real thing when in the mix.
• Þ.PSRFantasy.prg – Years ago I fell in love with the “Fantasy” setting on my friend’s Yamaha PSR keyboard.  I recreated it here somewhat, except with more resonance on the filter to make it SING.  Magical.
• Þ.S&HCompute.prg – A vintage sci-fi staple — the old sample-and-hold computer-processing-information sound.  Beep boop beep bap Beep beep boop.
• Þ.Sci-fi Goo.prg – While it is tonal, it is more a sound effect.  A thick sound with an intense sweep that sounds like goo dripping.
• Þ.SpaceWater.prg – This is a sound effect.  If you can imagine what it would sound like to step in a puddle in zero-gravity.
• Þ.Stage E-P.prg – The BEST electric piano you will find for the MicroKORG.  I’m proud of this one.  It’s actually usable!  More of a glassy Rhodes sound than a Wurlitzer, but still not way digital sounding or anything.  Pleasing velocity sensitivity – from muffled and soft, to glassy, to a little growl.  I’m not going to bash the stock piano sound on MicroKORG–it’s unique–this on the other hand is definitely a much better emulation.
• Þ.Theremin.prg – This is pretty basic — a sine-like tone with portamento.  Doesn’t compare to the real thing, but lacking an expert theremin player in live situations this suffices.
• Þ.Thorioline.prg – This is one of my oldies but goodies. In the early 60s a strange sound started making its way onto pop recordings — the solo in Del Shannon’s Runaway and the lead in many Joe Meek recordings, including The Tornados’ Telstar.  It was a monophonic keyboard produced and sold under various names — Clavioline, Ondioline, etc.  This patch makes similar sounds.  Mod-wheel increases brightness and vibrato.  Wide usable range — from basses, to leads, to whatever is above that.
• Þ.Toy Piano.prg – Sometimes I don’t understand how I managed to recreate a complex organic sound within the confined parameters of the MicroKORG.  But this sounds like a toy piano (hardly a piano, since it has metal bars instead of strings).. such as you’ll hear all over the Amelie soundtrack.
• Þ.TransOrgan.prg – A transistor organ like a Vox Continental.  There’s a similar patch that comes with the keyboard, but I felt like this was closer to what I wanted.
• Þ.TubulrBell.prg – A nasty big bell sound.  Useful if you want to create disorienting “music.”
• Þ.TWOrgan.prg – Tone-wheel organ.  I was thinking of a Hammond B-3 or similar organ with the bars drawn so that it’s over-driving some.  Not going to fool anybody, but a useful addition to your arsenal.
• Þ.VideoGame.prg – My first patch.  It’s weird!  It’s loud an intense.  Mod-wheel slides one of the oscillators up an octave.  So it goes from sounding like an 8-bit video game sound to.. well.. somewhere between another 8-bit video game sound and a Farfisa compact transistor organ.
• Þ.VL1 Pops 1.prg – My first go at it.  More diffused sounding than the next.
• Þ.VL1 Pops 2.prg – This sounds like a Casio toy keyboard “pops” setting.  Sounds like the hook in Outkast’s Hey-ya.
• Þ.Whistle.prg – Sounds like a synth emulating a person whistling.  Depending on how you play it it can range from somewhat convincing to ridiculously awesome.

I’ve had requests to demo each patch individually, which I’ve done here:

That’s a total of 29 patches!!!  Is that worth $15?  That’s $0.50 a patch.  That’s about the price of a one CD!  Sounds this awesome will help you sell at least one CD to recoup the cost, right?  Basically, you can’t afford to not buy these patches.  Thanks!  :)

^^^ Just use that PayPal button, and I’ll send you an email with all my MicroKORG patches so you can download them.

PS — Patches can be delivered both in .PRG format (which is read by the MicroKORG sound editor and loaded into the MicroKORG via a MIDI connection) OR as settings (in the form of screenshots of the MicroKORG sound editor) so that MicroKORG owners without a MIDI connection can still manually load these patches into their synths.

PPS — Let me know what name you record music under as I’d like to link to musicians who are using my sounds!

… Stop what you’re doing and set aside the next 2:48 minutes to watch his homemade video for this insanely good single from his new album Ghosts. …

The Ghosts EP is available for free/donation download. For now at least.

For the music video she chose River Song, which we decided to do a new recording of for the project. We gathered all the materials we needed at thrift stores – costumes, green bedsheet for the greenscreen – and shot it on my digital camera’s video mode. Those files sat on my hard-drive untouched for half a year until I had enough free time to try to learn how to paint and composite it all together. Here’s how it came out:

The video was to give me a chance to improve on techniques I’d started developing during the last Monsters From Mars music video. I wanted further to explore the possibilities of putting real people in fantastical settings – in this case, a children’s book world. If nothing else, it was a great learning experience. I’m looking forward to working on the next one and exploring some new, more ambitious territory.

I won’t go into too much detail about the EP, as I put a lot of time and work into this ultimately stillborn endeavor. You can stream as far as we got with it – an 11-song collection of alternate takes, outtakes, or otherwise unreleased material recorded 2006-2009 – in low quality here for a brief period:

Tracklist:

1. Owl Song (originally a William:Kaiser song?)
2. Release Me (recorded for Spaceman)
3. Staring at the Sea (original demo)
4. River Song (alternate version)
5. Unloved Unhappy
6. Have They Found
7. What You Said When I Was Dreaming
8. Sat There Unknowing
9. Show Me Love
10. Apple Sauce
11. Phantom Hearts

Tracks 1-4,6,10,11 produced by myself; rest by Rachel. Erin Copp plays cello on 2,4. I play any synthesizers, xylophones, melodicas, and harpsichords found on tracks 1,2,4,6.

Here’s the premise.  Lets say this is you — you’ve got a band.  Lets say you’re doing it DIY.  Sure, you’ve got a MySpace or whatever, so people can discover you and hear your music.   People have heard your music and they like it, but you’re still bumping in the dark.  At the end of the day they might or might not remember you, and if they do, you don’t have any good way to keep connected to them.  It’s hard to convert online “fans” into real fans.  This is where Bandwidth^Beta comes in.  You offer your fans a FREE album download — single, EP, or whatever.  Make it a unique one-off that’s only available through Bandwidth.  If they liked your music, they’ll download it.  Now they’ll remember who you are, you’re on their iTunes (or whatever) rotation.  On top of that, when downloading the album from Bandwidth, they enter their location and agree to automatic show notifications.  That’s the trade: the fans get a free album in trade for their contact info and location.  Show info is pulled from Last.fm (and at some point other sites such as Facebook and MySpace), so the band needs to put no effort into it after the first upload.

The site is far from complete at this point.  Still lots to figure out.  Any ideas/comments are greatly appreciated.