Korg Electribe ER1-mkll
Already owning the mk-I synth (EA-1) and sampler (ES-1) members of the electribe family I’ve been half on the look out for the drum machine for a while, so snapped this one up when it appeared for £139 in my local second hand shop. New there are still a few knocking about, usually at around the £179 mark, though they have now been discontinued by Korg, which I feel is a shame as the Electribes are all, in my humble opinion, fun, cheap and versatile pieces of kit both in the studio, or out live as part of a set up, or to add some spice to a DJ set.
Though I tend to say “drum machine” the correct title according to Korg is a “RhythmSynthesiser” – sound wise you get sampled hi hats (open and closed), clap, and crash sounds, with the remaining four sound parts being DSP Analog modeling. From these you can coax out some fat chunky kicks, a passable snare, and all manner of blips, bleeps, sweeps and gurgles. With careful use of the pitch control, you can also get a tuned bassline, though obviously with a fairly limited sound. There are also 2 audio ins which can be gated, routed to the delay or sent straight thru enabling you to connect 2 electribes (or other kit) in series without a mixer. However, I digress, and before going into the sound architecture in too much detail let’s have a look at the box itself.
The dusky pink brushed aluminum fascia certainly looks nice enough, and is an improvement on the plastic of the mk-I versions. The transport and part buttons are nice chunky rubber, light up red when down, and feel like they could take a bit of a hammering. Sadly the knobs are not so great. As is the norm on less expensive gear they feel as if they are only attached to the circuit board, not to the chassis, as there is a bit of give when you wobble them. Added to this they are quite stiff, and I would be a bit reticent to reach for one quickly in a live situation as they take a bit of force to move and do wobble first. My other minor gripe here is that the Mod type selector is not indented at each of the six positions (unlike the effects knob on the mk-I sampler), and the main jog wheel is smaller then the mk-I without the finger indentation, making it harder to quickly scroll to the desired pattern. The layout however is clear and easy to follow with sensible groupings of the controls. Along the back panel there is a headphone socket, Left/Mono and Right outs, 2 audio ins (all these on quarter inch jacks), and the welcome trio on midi in, out and thru.
Back to the sounds. Each of the main four DSP parts has a selectable waveform with a sine or triangle wave, the latter as would be expected giving a brighter sound. There is a pitch control, which by ear covers a good 6 octaves. There are six modulation waveforms – saw, pulse, triangle, sample and hold, noise and sweep, which with the positive and negative depth control and a speed control give a surprisingly expressive set of sounds. Using the sweep, you can get everything from a descending siren to a good solid analog kick, the sample and hold and noise forms can add enough noise to simulate a snare drum, or turn down the speed for burbling squelches and old school computer bleeps. Raise the speed and use the saw, square or triangle for bell like FM sounds, and so on. Occasionally some sounds do pick up a click at the start, particularly when using negative mod depth to simulate a slow attack, but one in a pattern this is not really that much to worry about. Part 2 can receive cross modulation from part 1 for more clangorous noises, and part 4 can ring modulate the audio inputs.
The PCM samples are less to write home about, as effectively the only control over the sound itself is pitch, and it would be nice to see these responding to the modulation. However the sounds are totally useable, though myself I tend to pitch them down into grungy scraping sounds and supply hats and crashes from other gear, when using my full set up. All the sounds then pass through the amp section, which gives control over decay (up to a good 2sec on the DSP sounds), level, pan and low boost, this last acting a bit more like a tone control as it also seems to cut the top end. This also could need a bit of care, it had my monitors distorting somewhat, it is possible though to overdrive this within the box and turn the level down for some low end rumble.
Movement of the part control knobs can be recorded as a motion sequence within a pattern, for more interest with sequences.
All parts can be routed to a global delay. The delay time can be turned right down allowing for this to also serve as a primitive flanger, which is fun if a little rowdy. However on both this machine and my ES-1 I have always thought the delay to be one of my main gripes. The problem is that it is global, so all your sounds and most problematically at times your kicks go through it equally. I can see how it would raise the price, or complexity of the machine to have each part switchable (as is the effect section on the ES-1), and it seems a shame Korg has not picked up on this. The other slightly daft thing is that you have an option of either tempo synced, or motion sequence. OK, turning off the tempo sync allows you to get the flanger effect, but without the tempo sync on it is hard to get the delay in time, but with it one you cannot record changes. Also setting the time with the sync on and then turning it off does not always seem to give you the correct timing. None of the other controls need motion sequence to be specifically turned on. Nevertheless the delay is there, and is useful, in my rig I tend to supply kicks from somewhere else, and do not record knob movements that much, allowing them to be done live, but for some applications I can see it being an issue.
So, on to the sequencer. This functions pretty much the same as every drum box from time immemorial. You select a pattern length of one to four bars, set your resolution (16thnotes, 32ndnotes, this allowing up to four half bars, or 16thnote triplets) and then select a part and press the relevant pad for each position. There is also a global swing, shifting every other 16thnote. Slightly annoyingly though you cannot listen to the effect of this when changing it. There is a button to let you move all data on a part up to 16 steps each way, this scrolling round so what moved of the end comes round to the beginning again. You can also copy parts within or between a pattern, copying the sound if they are the DSP parts, and just the sequence if copying between different parts. You can also clear the part, or the motion sequence from a part, however you cannot clear or copy a pattern in one go. One thing to note in a pattern, is that the hats and the crash/clap are exclusive within their pairs, cutting one another off – useful with the hats, less so with the other two. There is also an accent part, with adjustable level; this is programmed in exactly the same way as a part, just like the old Roland machines.
Playing patterns, you can mute and solo parts as you play, if you hit the shift button with a part button you can also select that part for knob twiddling without it sounding. This does lead me to my second gripe – it is not possible to store mute setting with the patterns. Again, how you use the box will dictate whether this is too much of a problem, but many types of dance music do rely on bringing in parts as a pattern repeats, and I feel it would be useful to have this. I often find I have to make multiple versions of a pattern building up to the full version, which wastes memory and with the lack of a copy pattern function can be a little tedious with up to 11 parts to copy. This again is I feel a simple thing which would enhance the machine’s usefulness.
You can assign patterns to each of the keys over four sets (64 patterns) so they can be accessed fast. This is not quite enough for a set, I find, with needing to use a number of patterns for variations, but grouping each tunes patterns together, assigning the first to a key and using the jog wheel from there gets round this. One thing to note, that is not in the manual, if you call up a pattern with a button, then change that with the jog wheel while playing, the next time you hit the button it will be where you left it. If you have saved the set, it reverts to the saved version at power on, so this is not too much of a problem, but is confusing until you work it out.
Coming to the end now, Song Mode allows you to chain together up to 16 songs of up to 256 patterns. Sadly though these can only be played one at a time, you cannot seque between them, but then those of us who playlivechange our patterns on the fly. This is useful for recording though, for me. Globally, you can set whether the metronome sounds, set the input gains, clock sync, protect the memory, set the midi channel, and note numbers for all parts (except accent) so that these can be played from an external device. You can decide whether the unit accepts certain commands, and dump the memory. Some brief points I have found with using electribes with midi: they dump fast, so if you are using this as a back up make sure your sequencer can keep up. I have also found that even with program changes filtered out, my ES-1 sometimes seems to change pattern if one is sent, and lastly, if you are using it on the same channel as a different machine and a lot of data is being sent (for example extravagant drum rolls at high speed) the unit can hang, even if that data is not playing notes. I’ve not tested this on the ER-1 mk ii however, but think I will make sure I work around it in case.
All in all, I love the Electribes, they are fun, easy to use and you get a lot of noise for your money. The sounds are good, and not just your run of the mill drum sounds, they are expressive too. I would not use this as my sole drum machine, but within my set up it has its place, and for simpler minimal and electro sounds you could go a long way pairing this with the EA-1. Gripes… I mentioned my main ones. When reviewing kit I try and avoid moaning what I don’t get, but like to flag up where things could be better – in this case the delay and the muting. I guess if pushed for one more extra I’d say maybe a part selectable distortion. I could say the effects section from the ES-1 would be nice, but remember these are different machines, and the ES-1 was in a higher price bracket. Perhaps a couple of extra outs, I always think in any serious application the kick needs its own, but again remember this is a loop machine. For me the audio ins are superfluous but I have heard them used to good effect and the thru is a nice touch for taking a couple of machines out as a small set up. None of these however change the fact the Electribe R mk ii is a nice little machine, they are all something that can be worked around depending how you use the box.