Korg Electribe ES-1

Cool sampler and sequencer. Comes with lots of sounds, patterns, and songs built-in, and it's pretty fun just messing with those, or replacing the samples and hearing the existing patterns with new sounds.

Only downsides for me are that I can't freely play a sample across the notes of a connected MIDI controller, and that loading samples is a bit tedious.

Loading Samples

Loading samples from a SmartMedia card has a few restrictions:

Files need to be named in order, EG: 00.WAV 01.WAV 02.WAV 03.WAV 04.WAV (extension can be upper- or lowercase)
100 files max in the root directory. Dunno about using subdirectories.
- You don't need to keep you samples here, it's more a temp space as you'll move the individual samples into sets/banks and save those back onto the card.
8- or 16-bit, 32KHz. .WAV or .AIFF. If you use a rate other than 32KHz playback speed will be distorted.
You can format the card in the ES-1. It's FAT-12.
If you get Er.3 when loading samples that means you're out of space.
- Actual sample space seems to be ~2.2MiB in my experience.
You have to load each sample one-by-one!

Renaming

I use GPRename, which I have hooked into my file manager, so I can select a directory and launch it.

Go to the 'Numerical' tab
Set 'Add numbers starting at' to '0'
Make sure 'increment by' is '1' (should be default)
'and after' field needs to have your file extension; so '.wav'
Make sure 'Keep existing names' is set to 'No' (should be default)
Hit 'Preview' to make sure things look right, then hit 'Rename' if they do.

It'd be nice to script the whole renaming and converting process, so I'll add a command line renaming guide at some point maybe.

Converting

With Audacity:

Select all audio, Tracks > Resample… select or enter '32000'.
If you want to make it mono: Tracks > Mix > Mix Stereo Down to Mono.
File > Export > Export as WAV and set encoding to 'Signed 16-bit PCM' or 'Unsigned 8-bit PCM'

With FFmpeg:

…

With SoX (and Bash):

for file in *.wav; do sox $file -r 32000 -b [8|16] -c [1|2] [optional output directory/]$(basename $file); done

-r is sample rate
-c is channels
-b is bit depth
'optional output directory' has to already exist

MIDI

Default mapping for a keyboard is (copied from the manual):

Part	Note name	Note number
Sample 1	C2	36
Sample 2	D2	38
Sample 3	E2	40
Sample 4	F2	41
Sample 5	G2	43
Sample 6A	C4	60
Sample 6B	C♯4	61
Sample 7A	F♯2	42
Sample 7B	A♯2	46
Slice Sample	B2	47
Audio In	A2	45

I would like to be able to take a sample and play it across the whole keyboard, but you can't. It doesn't even respond to a controller's pitch wheel.

You do have access to all the knobs via MIDI NRPN messages (which, to summarise, are just groups of regular MIDI CC messages), except for the effects section and the accent button for some reason. NRPN is annoying to do in Reaper, and the instructions in the ES-1 manual are obtuse, so I haven't tried this yet, but changing the Pitch/Speed would be useful. Theoretically, with the right software, you could map keyboard keys to notes and NRPN messages simultaneous to hack chromatic support.

I thought I may be able to do both with the pads on the Novation 61SL MKIII, but it only worked the first time I hit them :(

NRPN

These were given in hex, so I'm including those for completeness's sake.

Parameter	Hex		Dec		Values
Part 1 pitch	05	00	05	00	0-127
Part 2 pitch	05	08	05	08	0-127
Part 3 pitch	05	10	05	16	0-127
Part 4 pitch	05	18	05	24	0-127
Part 5 pitch	05	20	05	32	0-127
Part 6A pitch	05	28	05	40	0-127
Part 6B pitch	05	30	05	48	0-127
Part 7A pitch	05	38	05	56	0-127
Part 7B pitch	05	40	05	64	0-127

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