Korg 1600MKII

Henry Matthews · Post by **Henry Matthews** » 20 Mar 2007 9:52 am

Wandering if any of you out there have this Korg and know any tricks for better recordings.
Just got one about a month ago and it does have a big learning curve for me anyway, but have managed to get some decent recordings but can't get the steel and fiddle to sound like I want.
Help if anyonw has one a knows any of these tricks for recording.

Leon Grizzard · Post by **Leon Grizzard** » 21 Mar 2007 1:41 pm

I have the prececessor machine, the D 1600. I don't think there are any tricks unique to this machine as opposed other recorders. There have been some threads about recording steel in general here on the forum, direct vs. miced, dry vs. with the player's effects, etc. I have personally had the best success going direct and dry to recorder, and adding digital effects with the Korg, mainly because the amp and stomp boxes are so noisy; fine for a club, but you really hear it when recording. With fiddle, we have gotten good sounds both going direct, and miced.

The Korg preamps are not outstanding, and getting a good mic pre amp can sure help get a good strong, clean signal. If you are micing the fiddle, placement and a good mic are essential.

There is a great forum that started with just Korg stuff and now has expanded to other recorders. By following the forum (and I bet the new Korg D 3200 is very similar so look at those too), reading the manual and experimenting, I have gotten pretty proficient with the machine. Just learn an operation at a time.

http://www.studiotrax.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=98

Henry Matthews · Post by **Henry Matthews** » 21 Mar 2007 3:00 pm

Thanks Leon for the info and the great forum on the 16oo. I can see already that there are alot of unanswered questions on that forum for me.

I'm not very proficent on the board yet, guess I'm not good at reading directions. I think the 1600 that you have and the 1600 MK11 are about the same board and have the same effects. Which reverb and which compressor or limiter have you found to work best on your recordings???

I have been using the smooth hall I believe and the studio limiter for effects but can't figure out how to use them both at the same time. May you could shed some light on me about that.

Again, thanks for the reply and the great info--Henry

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 22 Mar 2007 4:00 am

Henry, it's a fine workstation, there , that being said here's the issue.

We buy these things in the stores, they tell us go home and produce, record and sell your own CD...It's that easy !

Well it ain't that easy..

recording is still an art and requires a few things up front, no matter how easy these manufacturers tell us it is or the guy in the store.

I suspect the biggest influence to your recording is the EQ settings . Take a look at the EQ patch that is selected, I would bet all of b0b's money that it is really tweaked HI in the mids...Look at your amp settings, I suspect that you, like most of us have similar settings which means the mids are very mild. Don't expect the same results with two different sets of EQ settings. Set the workstation EQ patch the same as your amp.

Rule 1, Record dry,( no effects) but that does not mean that you can't add an effect patch such as EQ or Delay to the singal as you are playing and recording, it is just not being added to the recorded track. The track is recorded DRY.

Rule 2, write your own patches for the Steel, especially the EQ settings. Strong mids or stock KORG EQ patches are mosy likely NOT Steel guitar friendly. Learn how to edit effects patches and store them in the library. When I edit mine I save them with real simple names, Steel 1, Steel 2, Tele 1, Tele 2 etc....even my wife can figure out what they are for

even me sometimes too

rule 3, spend time with the recorder without the Steel, I took my Yamaha AW2816 (beast ) on a road trip with me along with the manual a mic and a set of phones.

I sat down and wrote down what I wanted to accomplish, which was record on separate tracks, add them together, edit patches, listen back and add eihter my edited effects or stock effects to suit my needs. I took notes, made my own little cheat sheet with references to the BIG manual page numbers.

It's an education for sure, and time consuming, but worth the time and effort. Note I said I didn't learn the whole workstation, still haven't, I learned what I nneded to get going and then added features as I needed them. If the Korg is anything like the AW2816, there is more stuff on that machine than I will ever discover, stuff I don't even want to discover.

Ok, a simple tube preamp maybe with a limiter or peak protection on the front end will be way better than the DIGITAL only preamp of the Workstation, that will help warm things up. A $49 ART may do the trick, a $2000 Premap will obviously do it much better...

keep your average peaks at about -6db, 0 Db is for analog recorders, not Digital. 0 DB is the point where if you exceed it , the nasty digital saturation arrives.

The more clean signal you can capture without any effects the better off the end result will be. Spend time with your volume pedal, it is a compressor/Limiter eliminator.

Recording Steel is an art all by itself with all we have to do anyway...IF you have a preamp with a Limiter than that would be fine but I recommend NOT using a compressor on the input of your recordings. Learning how to use a compressor correctly could take longer than actually learning the workstation

Does the Korg have two effects engines which allows for two different effects at the same time on each channel ?

the bring em' home workstations are great tools, and they can really offer excellent results, but not without a few tricks and some time spent with them, they are little computors, we must learn how they function, even in the most basic form. thats the part they forget to tell you at the store.

Now take the day off from work and play with the Korg...A bad day of recording is still better than a good day at work !

t

Leroy Golden · Post by **Leroy Golden** » 22 Mar 2007 4:30 am

I agree with Tony to leave the compressor off, on my latest tracks for a friends album I didn't use any comp. and I've been getting great comments about the tone of my Mullen from my colleages and friends, even people that are not steel fans said it sounds good!!

Henry Matthews · Post by **Henry Matthews** » 22 Mar 2007 7:34 am

Thanks again to you all for the help. I agree with you both about the compression on the steel. I don't like the pop that sometimes get when compression is added but I do use the limiter on the Korg and found that it does help.

Tony, the Korg does have the ability to use several effects and or EQ at the same time but haven't quite figured out to master that option.I'm able to use it in that manner but still lack the tweaking know how.

A recording engineer here in town told me that the secret to good recordings are EQ and effects and in that order. I think I was expecting to much and thinking that what I did would sound like it was recorded in Nashville and one of those $1,000,000+ studios but realize now that that can't be done on a $1000 machine. Besides that, I can't play anywhere near Paul Franklin.

Leon Grizzard · Post by **Leon Grizzard** » 22 Mar 2007 7:51 am

Henry - We are using Smooth Hall as our basic reverb on the CD tracks we recorded, as a Master Effect. Everything is recorded dry. For the limiter, I have used, I think, MN3 under 1X1X8 insert effects. If you have recorded dry and are adding it, you have to have selected play track rather than insert in the menu reached by the button at the top of the insert effects screen. I have tweaked the limiter and saved it as a user setting, with a very short attack, 6.5 to 1 ratio, I forget the gain makeup, maybe 5db, and slow release. I run vocals, and sometimes fiddle through that after recording, and blend both tracks during mixdown, which Korg calls bounce recording.

Remember that you can almost unlimited use of the effects by copying a track to the clipboard, pasting it in a new song, processing it, and then pasting back in the original song.

I have been through the learning curve you are starting, and would be happy help anyway I can. Either call me at the office (512) 476 - 6640 or e mail me at leon@leongrizzard.com. I'll give you my home number and home email.

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 22 Mar 2007 9:23 am

Henry above wrote:

Besides that, I can't play anywhere near Paul Franklin.

-------------------------------------------------------

thats becasue you live in Texas and PF lives in Nashville, if you wanna play near PF you are gonna have to move closer to Nashville

sorry Henry, I couldn't resist...

tp

Bob Martin · Post by **Bob Martin** » 23 Mar 2007 8:09 pm

Well guys there's a lot of good info in this thread. I'd just like to add one thing. No matter how much you can learn about the digital multi tracker you are recording on it will never sound any better than the worst player that plays on it.

To kind of prove a point a few months ago one of ou r forum brothers and his brother decided to do a complete CD on a small 16 track digital machine. I believe it was a zoom.

Well it was Randy Mason and his brother Brent and a few other friends and when I got my copy I couldn't believe my ears. If I had not known better I would hae thought it was done down town on a big machine.

I talked to Randy a little bit about it and he chuckled about a lot of the limitations of recording on a porta studio like the one they used.

Well you sure couldn't prove it by me it sounded great. I'm pretty sure they used only onboard effects and just some great playing.

So it's kind of like this the old saying "junk in equals junk out" Now please don't anyone get their feelings hurt we can't all play like Randy and Brent but we can concentrate on doing the best we can and then worry about the technology secondly.

That would be my advice and by the way if you haven't heard Randy and Brent's CD get in touch with Randy and buy one it's killer!!!!

Bob

Henry Matthews · Post by **Henry Matthews** » 28 Mar 2007 8:45 am

Leon, if you are still out there, I have been able to do alot more with my recorder and thanks for the help. One thing I quite don't understand, on mixdown, will it only mix down to tracks 1 & 2? What if you have something on track 1 or 2, will it be lost in the mixdown or do you need to move them to another track? Also, don't understand virtual tracks. Thanks, Henry.

Leon Grizzard · Post by **Leon Grizzard** » 28 Mar 2007 10:05 am

Hey Henry -

Virtual tracks are just like alternate takes, although you can record anything on them of course. You just can use only one of the eight at any one time. The most common use is for alternate takes; you do a take, select the next virtual track, do a take, etc., then pick the best one, or parts of different ones to assemble.

Mixing down to two tracks does not record over a virtual track if that virtual track is not selected as the record to track. In other words, if your performance is on trk 1a and you mix to 1b-1h, it will play track 1a and record to the other virtual track. A lot of folks seem to like to mix (bounce) to virtual track h. Make it a habit to not track parts to h's and always use them as the mixdown tracks, and you will never record over anything you want to keep. You can bounce to any pair of tracks, but you can only burn a CD from tracks 1 and 2.

PS: Get in the habit now of backing your stuff up, on song at a time, under System. It takes about 10 -15 minutes per song, but you will sure sleep easier knowing a machine malfunction won't cause you to lose your work.

Randy (Fuzzy) Whitener · Post by **Randy (Fuzzy) Whitener** » 7 Apr 2007 7:07 am

Henry, I have a home recording setup based around a Roland 1680 and the 880 ( the rackmount unit). What I have found is if it has great playing and arrangements and mixed by a good engineer it will come out very good, maybe better than Nashville to some peoples ear. (listen to your friend sounds like he knowes his stuff) Also there have been major lable recordings done on these type recorders. Good luck with your recorder and have fun!

Fuzzy

Henry Matthews · Post by **Henry Matthews** » 9 Apr 2007 12:52 pm

Thanks guys for all the helpful info about the Korg and recording. Have been spending a little more time with it and have actually made some good recordings and Leon, thanks for the Korg forum, alot of good info on there.-----Henry