Korg M3: Editing A Drum Kit

Scenario

You want to change one or more of the drum sounds that are assigned to specific notes/keys of a drum program to some other sound in the Factory ROM.

Procedure

Editing the sounds on a specific note

1. Select a Drum Program to work within, such as A004 Studio Standard Kit.
2. Go to Global Mode, Page 5 Drum Kit.
3. Select the Kit you wish to edit in the menu at the top left.
4. To the right of the Drum Kit name field is a field for specifying which note you want to edit/view (set to C4 by default).
5. Select that field, and with it highlighted, hold down the [ENTER] key and play the note on the keyboard you wish to edit - the sound(s) assigned to that key will then be automatically selected.
6. On Tab-1 [Sample Setup] you will see the samples that are assigned to that note. There may be more than one, as they may be layered or velocity switched.
7. Edit away to your heart's content. Use the other tabs to change other parameters such as the tuning and filter and resonance of the sound(s).

Copying a Drum Kit

Note that this edit above would affect all programs and combis that reference that Drum Kit. If you wish to leave the factory Drum Kits (and Programs and Combis) as they are, you could first copy the Drum Kit you want to modify to another empty location:

1. Make sure you are in Global Mode, on one of the Drum Kit Pages.
2. (Note that this operation may seem slightly backwards.) First select an empty location from the menu at the top, so that the empty location is being displayed.
3. Touch the Meu Command button in the upper right corner of the screen.
4. Select "Copy Drum Kit", and choose the source kit that you wish to copy from, such as 000(Int): Studio Standard Kit, and press OK. The kit is copied into the empty location that is currently selected.
5. After you edit this kit, you must set a Drum Program to reference it. For example, if you put your new kit in Drum Kit A033, you must set a Drum Program to reference kit A033.
6. For example, go to Program A004 Studio Standard Kit.
7. Select Page 2 [Osc/Pitch], and on Tab 1 [Osc 1 Basic], select your new Drum Kit in the MS1 slot at the top.
8. You could then save this Drum Program into an empty location.

Saving your edited kits to memory

Note that the edits made above are not yet "permanent". If you shut off the M3 at this time, the next time you turn it back on your edits would be gone. Which takes us to:

1. Make sure you are in Global Mode, on one of the Drum Kit Pages.
2. Touch the Meu Command button in the upper right corner of the screen.
3. Select "Write Drum Kits" and answer OK.

Tips

If you screw up a factory drum kit, you can restore just that single kit from the internal ROM backup by going to Global Page 0 [Basic Setup] and choosing "Load Preload/Demo Data" from the Menu Command button in the upper right corner. Set the "Kind" menu to "Drum Kit" and take it from there.