Korg M3: Managing user drum patterns
korg_m3.jpg

Scenario

You want to understand how user drum patterns are saved, stored, or rearranged, perhaps because you've lost some patterns that you've created and don't understand why they disappeared. Or perhaps you just want to delete some old patterns, or you want to rearrange your user drum patterns in the USER bank.

The basic concepts

User drum patterns are stored in a special USER bank with 1000 slots, which can be saved into or loaded from a .PCG file just like any combi or program. The Preset bank, by contrast, has only 671 slots.

When saving the current contents of your M3 to a .PCG file, you specify to save the user drum patterns by selecting the Drum Track User Pattern checkbox. This checkbox is unavailable for selection if all slots in the USER bank are completely empty.

If you load a .PCG file that contains a Drum Patterns object, the entire USER bank will be overwritten with the contents from the .PCG file.

Procedure - To delete some or all user drum patterns from the USER bank

  1. In either PROG or COMBI mode, press PAGE SELECT and go to P1 Basic/DT/Ctrls.
  2. Select the Drum Trk Pattern tab.
  3. From the Menu Command button, select Erase Drum Track Pattern. It does not matter which drum pattern is currently displayed on this tab—the actions of the menu command are independent of what's currently displayed.
  4. In the window that appears, you can erase a specific slot from the USER bank, or you can erase all slots:
    • To erase all slots, select the All Drum Track Patterns checkbox and touch OK.
    • To erase only a specific slot, touch the > button, select the desired slot, and then touch OK.

Procedure - To rearrange user drum patterns or load a specific drum pattern from a .PCG file

There is no function to copy or move user drum patterns in the USER bank to another slot directly, so one method to rearrange the drum patterns in your USER bank is to first save the contents of the USER bank to a .PCG file, then drill into the Drum Patterns object in the .PCG file and load the patterns you want into specific slot numbers in the USER bank.

  1. In MEDIA mode, go to the Save tab and use the Save PCG command to save your current Drum Track User Patterns to a .PCG file.
  2. Select the new .PCG file and touch Open.
  3. Select the Drum Patterns object and touch Open.
  4. Select the specific pattern you want and touch Load.
  5. In the To: field, touch the > button and choose the specific USER slot into which you want to load the selected user drum pattern.
  6. Repeat this process until you have set up the USER bank the way you want.

Procedure - To rearrange drum patterns by using RPPR user patterns in SEQ mode

A Sequencer song can hold up to 100 user patterns in memory. Multiple user patterns can be loaded at once using the Load Drum Track Pattern command, and subsequently copied to the user pattern bank with the Convert to Drum Trk Pattern while in RPPR mode. Because you are limited to only 100 patterns per song, this procedure is best used when you need to rearrange a smaller selection of patterns. Otherwise, to load up the entire contents of the user patterns into SEQ mode, you would need to create 10 songs, each holding 100 patterns, which is impractical. The above .PCG method would be faster and more efficient for larger sets of patterns. Before using this procedure, it is a good idea to save your drum patterns to a .PCG file so you can restore them in case any errors are made while moving patterns around.

  1. In SEQ mode, select a new, empty song.
  2. Press the PAGE SELECT button and select SEQ P10: Pattern/RPPR.
  3. Touch the Menu Command button, and select the Load Drum Track Pattern command.
    • To load multiple user drum patterns, use the Select Range From (Drum Track) and To (Drum Track) fields to specify the source user patterns (up to 100 patterns).
    • To load one pattern at a time, set the From and To fields to the same number, and repeat as often as necessary.
  4. Select the Pattern Name tab on the screen to confirm the patterns have been loaded.
  5. (Optional) Delete user patterns from the USER bank using the first procedure above if you want a clean bank to work with. Then return to SEQ / RPPR mode.
  6. Next, select a pattern to copy in the Pattern Select field (e.g. U00).
  7. Touch the Menu Command button, and select the Convert to Drum Trk Pattern
  8. In the To field, choose a specific location in the USER bank for the pattern and select OK. Any data that exists in that slot will be overwritten. Repeat steps 6, 7 and 8 as necessary.
    • Note: If you tick the All Patterns available in song box, all of the loaded patterns in RPPR will be sequentially stored in the USER pattern bank starting with the pattern number chosen in the To field.

Refer to pages 307 and 308 in the M3's Parameter Guide for more information if necessary.

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License