These files are designed to complement my review of the Korg KP3 effects processor/sampler in Electronic Musician magazine. —David Battino
The KP3 touchpad contains an 8x8 matrix of LEDs that double as a display. Here they're running in one of the flashy screensaver modes, which you can disable by pressing Shift-6.
In addition to effects, the KP3 contains ten synthesizer patches and six drum patches you can play by stroking and tapping the touchpad. Here's a medley of the SawBass, Square Synth, Metal Synth, and Noise Synth patches, played over a drum groove I made by resampling one of the onboard drum patterns.
The eight buttons above the touchpad can mute sections of looped samples. Here's my original loop, which I made by resampling Pink Floyd's “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” and a sound bite from the George W. Bush Public Domain Audio Archive into a new pad. Note that the pitch of the Floyd loop is higher than the original because the KP3 doesn't offer time-stretching.
And here's the sliced-up result, performed in real time by enabling the buttons in these combinations:
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1234**78
123****8
**345**8
******78
The KP3's unusual Morphing Filter changes from lowpass to bandpass to highpass as you move your finger horizontally on the touchpad. Vertical movements control cutoff frequency and resonance. Here I play three construction-kit loops from the defunct BitHeadz Unity DS-1 library through the Morphing Filter while stirring with my finger on the pad. Note the FX Release delay, which fades copies of the effect back into the original signal.
One of the new effects in the KP3 is the Decimator, which reduces the sampling frequency and bit depth to roughen up the sound. Here I play the three construction-kit loops from the Unity DS-1 library through the Decimator effect, varying those two parameters.
Like a sonic barber pole, the Infinite LFO effect appears to keep rising. You can control its cycle time by sliding your finger on the touchpad. Here I play a drum and vocal loop through the Infinite LFO highpass filter; at around 24 seconds, I play the same loop through the Infinite LFO flanger.
Several of the delay effects in the KP3 interpolate between values as you adjust the delay time, changing pitch to keep up rather than glitching. Here I play a resampled drum groove, vocals (doubled with reverb and time offset) and the internal synth through the Smooth Delay patch.
Another new KP3 effect is granular synthesis, which chops the audio into tiny slices and transposes them randomly. Here are the DS-1 loops again, slowed down and played through the Grain Shifter while I trace shapes on the touchpad.
Here's a parade of looper and sampler effects applied to the DS-1 loops.
The KP3's vocoder patches don't offer as much control as a normal vocoder because the carrier signal comes from the KP3 itself, with pitch controlled by the horizontal position of your finger on the touchpad. Here's a vocal sample first played straight and then through the four vocoder presets (Vocoder, Vocoder Maj7, Vocoder min7, and Vocoder Mix).
Sampling on the KP3 is wicked fast: Just hit the Sampling button and then the trigger pad you want to sample into. To resample, you simply hold down the Shift button first. But because sampling is synced to the internal sequencer loop, it can be tricky to hit the trigger pad exactly on the downbeat. I wanted this sample of Ugnaught's “Acoustic Park” to start on the word “jazz,” but missed because there's no clear beat in the background:
So I fired up one of the internal drum grooves, initiated resampling mode, and resampled the loop with the drumbeat into a new pad when the downbeat rolled around:
You can also resample with effects. Here I played my new loop through the Sample Forward/Reverse effect while manipulating the touchpad. Horizontal movements control playback direction and speed; vertical movements control highpass filter cutoff and resonance.
It's not explained in the manual, but the KP3 software lets you configure the touchpad to send out up to eight MIDI Control Changes. Here are the seven possible layouts.
