DS-10 in a band - any tips?

[epicentre]

Hi guys, I'm just wondering if you have any tips regarding using the DS-10 as one of the instruments in a band. I've started one with my two friends - a guitar, and bass guitar players (fortunately both are great musicians unlike me, I just make weird noises ). We're taking part in a small amateur bands event thingy in about a month and could use some advice

[The Industrialism]

Make the main DS-10 synthesizer. Use the synth like Pink Floyd, Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead) and other artists use to make real synth to sounds great. The portability of the DS-10 is something that can draw attention and its sound is far superior to workstations keyboards that most of the bands use. Some custom patches will be good and a good patch sound can be misterious for some people... thet can be with a "WTF face" ( )

Try writing a song, in which the DS-10 and make a guitar "riff" that synchronize seamlessly, this may be one of the techniques.

I also took part in a band in 2009, but when I took the DS-10, they'd "kicked" me of the band, then get back to taking to them my release of this year, "OK Impulsecity" soon after they wanted to put me in band again, saying "we loved the DS-10 sound, I think we need that sound too..." haha

[soultron]

Finally, something I can add to. What are you running through now? The main PA is fine if your doing like us and using it sort of as a drum machine, but if you're using it as an instrument, you may want to use an amp of your own... gonna want something you can EQ with. I use a mixer, but a bass amp would be fine.
Check my sig for my bands website and see what we're doing. If you have any specific questions, just ask.

[Geolm]

Sometimes I play the korg ds-10 with acoustic instruments, I found two "modes" that work :

- do only synth and lead stuff in live mode (with the virtual keyboard) if there is a rhythm section in the band (drums + bass)
- use the korg ds-10 as a drum machine which means that the band has to follow the tempo of the korg ds-10

My 2 cents

[epicentre]

Thanks for the tips guys!

I actually figured out a new and interesting way to use the DS with other instruments

Don't know if anyone else is doing it, so maybe it's just obvious stuff, but it was enlightening for me when i thought about it.

We have some songs ready, made on a laptop earlier and with a guitar and bass parts as well so i had to figure out a way to make use of the DS somehow, or I'd be just standing there like an idiot

What I figured out is to use the DS as a sort of sampler (a sampler with DS-10 sounds only ). I wanted to create some weird/atmospheric noises, drumrolls etc. and trigger them when I feel like it during the song. I cleared all the patterns, lowered the BPM and made a different sound at the beginning of each pattern. Now I can just use the patterns as pads to trigger each sound (I have to stop the sound each time I use one, but still)

[soultron]

Not bad. I'd like to hear that actually. Similarly, I use the KAOS pad to solo in songs where the gameboy does more of the owrk, or in DS stuff that only has drums and a bass line.

[epicentre]

I try that sometimes, but it never seems to sound right to me, unless I make the whole song with the kaoss pad+record first...

[epicentre]

Damn, we had a gig yesterday (with 5 other amateur bands) and it was a NIGHTMARE

Jesus...

The tech guys just couldn't handle our awesomeness The other bands were mostly your typical high-school thing, playing Nirvana covers with a guitar, bass, drums and vocal. Then we came in with a laptop which run some backgrounds, midi keyboard, microphone that went through software effects on the laptop, the DS-10, bass, and electric guitar with a multi-effect You should have seen the panic in their eyes

Half of the sounds didn't come through at all (and it switched to the other half every few minutes).
What happened with the DS I completely don't understand, I had all the levels set nicely beforehand, but once i turned it on it was chaos - one of the synths could be earsplittingly loud while you could barely hear the other one. One song got completely destroyed, after about a minute of drums and base I unmute the rather loud piano lead and the notes sounded completely random, scrambled in a weird way, it sounded like a five year old playing with a Casio keyboard o_O I can't understand how could this happen? I checked the DS before and after the "gig" and everything was perfectly in place...

We only managed to get two songs going - one DS-driven with half the sounds turned of (and not played very convincingly, I was affraid to touch things, they all head the potential to unleash a horrible noise at any moment). The other song had a background made in Ableton, that worked ok, as did the bass, the guitar was awfully quiet, my vocals were non-existent (I kept screaming at the microphone though, show must go on ). At the second part of the song I have no vocals and I just make some nice noises on the DS, and with the midi keyboard - of course there was no sound coming out of either of them

Lessons learned: BUY A MIXER! And just send them the ready signal (I'm not entirely convinced this will help, but it should in theory...). Don't use processed vocals live. Expect things to go wrong (I could have at least kept only the DS-10 drums when other stuff was not working and lean on the guitars more, I was too surprised and confused to think about that though...).

At least we had a smoke machine and we look like rock stars on the photos

[soultron]

Yes, a mixer is what we use. The DS(s) and Gameboy and MicroKorg go through the mixer. You should look for one with a solo switch, which allows you to pre mix the sounds... well, I don't explain it well, but it's helpful. Here's sort helpful page http://www.evl.uic.edu/tomk/data/evl-audio/mixer.html There's a few live vids of us, but I have no pictures of our current set up. I should really get on that.