One of the great things about using the KARMA section of the Korg M3, is that your easily able to create stuff that would not be possible on your average music workstation. The KARMA generated effects – or better known as GE’s, give you the ability to take your music in many different directions. Some that you’ve never been before. More info on KARMA can be found at Stephen Kay’s Karma Lab website. 

In creating the M3 Soundtrack Mix, I’ve started working with the “Atonal GE’s” for the first time and quickly discovered that you can do a ton of cool stuff with orchestral instruments. The first combi in the collection is titled “Schoenberg Orchestra” – named for the Austrian/American composer Arnold Schoenberg. In case your not familiar with Schoenberg, he is credited for his pioneering innovations in “Atonality”. Atonality is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Schoenberg developed twelve-tone technique, a widely influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale. 

I set up a three part combi using a piano, strings and orchestra hits and assigned the same Atonal GE to each of them. Very little actual playing of notes is done. Rather, I trigger the part and then let the GE cycle though it’s atonal pattern. KARMA randomizes the pattern so you don’t hear the same loop over and over again. The key is to know when to play and when to change notes or parts. The fun is it’s never the same twice so make sure you have your sequencer recording al all times! No overdubbing was done on the track. It’s all played live into the sequencer.

I thought I’d have a little fun and create a video when playing the audio through the iTunes “Visualizer”. It seems that the Visualizer and KARMA are a perfect match for creating all kinds of wonderfully random stuff. I simply set up my video camera in front of the computer monitor and hit record, imported the video into Apple’s iMovie, added some effects and here are the results.

Click for more info on our Korg M3 Soundtrack Mix