The Unofficial Korg NanoRack, Pt. II

Do you remember the ridiculousness of my homemade Korg NanoRack earlier this week? Well, despite my better judgement, the NanoRack is now filled with the entire nano Series line.

It's hard to really justify the purchase of the nanoKey, given that I have a couple of different keyboard controllers available to me, but seeing as how my "studio" is also my home office, I don't always have the keyboards out and ready. The nanoKey, with its odd keys and limited usefulness, is much easier to pull out and set up. So, despite it not being as expressive or versatile as my other keyboards, I suspect the nanoKey will see quite a bit of use.

The Unofficial Korg NanoRack

I've been pretty open about my love of the Korg NanoPad controller. And, my review of the Korg NanoPad has shown this blog quite a bit of love, turning my review into an impromptu tech support chat room. So, inspired by my frequent use of it, as well as the purchase of a new Korg NanoKontrol, I decided to build a simple tool to house my Nano series devices.

It's a pretty simple design, actually. A piece of 11.25" wide board, cut to a length of approximately 13" inches, with a few chunks of shaped molding glued to its front, is the extent of it. I also took another piece of wood (a 1" by 1" square), then glued and nailed it to the back, to provide a small rise to the rack surface.

Finally, I took a couple of eyehooks and screwed them into the underside of the holder to help hold and organize the USB cables running to the Korg devices. They're ugly, but functional, and keep the cables nicely organized. If I added a third Korg device to my "rack" I suspect I'd be even more thankful for the eyehooks keeping the wires in control.

I didn't bother sanding down the edges on the bottom of the rack to make it flush with whatever surface its sitting on, which would have make it even more stable, but I added little adhesive feet to give it some cushion and to keep it from scratching things beneath it.

As you can probably see, I applied a couple of coats of stain to finish it. It's a little darker than the can seemed to suggest it would be, but it looks nice enough.

If you plan to build something like this yourself, I have a couple of suggestions for you. First, make sure that the main board you use is nice and sturdy. When I was originally planning the NanoRack, I was thinking I'd use a small piece of press board, similar to what you get with a clipboard. While the piece would have been much lighter, I'm not sure I'd feel very comfortable with really pounding on the drum pads of the nanoPad if there was just a skinny piece of particle board behind it. The board I used was about 3/4 of an inch wide and feels rock solid.

Second, try to use or borrow a good saw. The one I used to cut the molding for the front had too course of a bite and really tore my pieces of wood apart. Closer inspection shows big, ugly gaps where the wood splintered and broke. So, either use a better saw, or buy plenty of extra molding in case you have the same luck I did.

Third, if I were building another one for myself, I think I'd want a higher riser, so consider the angle you want for your devices while you're in the hardware store purchasing wood. The 1" x 1" piece I used to give my holder its angle is fine, but I think I'd be even happier with a 2" piece. I have more of the 1" x 1" board, so I suppose I could glue it to the bottom of the first piece, but more pieces means less long-term strength. It might work, but I don't know how long it would last.

I'm not what you would call "handy," so someone with a bit of wookworking skill and access to quality tools, should be able to make something a lot nicer without a whole lot more effort. Still, for a simple hunk of wood, its surprisingly nice, turing "portable" control surfaces into something a little more sturdy and useful "in the studio." I'm imagining all sorts of possible improvements, such as drilling a hole into the piece of wood I'm using as a riser to allow you to run your USB cables out the back of it. Or, even better, building a mini USB hub into the rack, making it possible to run just one cable from your Korg Rack to your computer.

I was concerned about the strength of the molding on the front of the piece and thought about using some nails, in addition to the wood glue, to hold them in place. However, my fear of splitting the wood by hammering into it with nails eventually made me decide against it. It should be fine, but might also be an area where you could improve on my design, if you try this yourself.

As you can see, I designed it to hold all three of the Korg nano series devices, even though I only have two at the moment. Use a smaller piece of wood or increase the size of the gaps between the nano controllers, if you want to build something like this for two devices. Or, build it for three, and find something else to put in your controller rack, like I did. The Casio VL-Tone is nearly a perfect fit.

What does this have to do with Reason? Not much, but I was pretty pleased with my weekend project, and thought I'd share.

Check Out Ned Rush's YouTube Channel

Fellow Reason and Renoise user Ned Rush, who I "met" over on the Renoise forums, has been posting a number of really clever Reason videos on YouTube. There's some interesting stuff to be found in his conversational style videos, so if you enjoy watching tutorials on YouTube, definitely take a look at what he has up.

• Ned Rush on YouTube
  

Ned's videos are great proof of how flexible Reason really is and really show how far a little creativity can go in this "closed" piece of software.

Get LoFi Fuzz Kit demonstration

Okay, I admit it, I'm a bit smitten with this thing. Here's a short video showing off the Get LoFi Fuzz Kit, as per Circuitmaster's request:

.125 Yamaha RX120 Digital Rhythm Programmer

I just picked up another oddity from eBay this week, the Yamaha RX120 Digital Rhythm Programmer. Unlike a traditional drum machine, the RX120 doesn't actually allow you to write or setup up drum patterns using its built-in sounds. Instead, the Yamaha RX120 provides you with a number of preset drum patterns, grouped into songs/genres (Rock 1, Rock 2, Funk, Ballad, Slow Jazz, etc.), that you can then program into sequences to build a complete song. Each song/genre has 8 patterns, so you're able to line up Intros, Fills, and Pattern Variations, to program a rhythm track for a song. Think of the RX120 less as a drum machine and more as a dedicated (and closed) loop player and you'll get a better understanding of how it works.

The design on this gadget is very strange. It doesn't provide a Midi Out, so you can't use it to trigger other devices, but it does have a Midi In allowing you to trigger its built-in sounds from an external keyboard. It's many buttons are used to select the rhythm patterns and their 8 variations, not individual sounds, but it does have buttons to trigger Cowbell and Claps, so you can manually play along to a pattern using these two samples. I get the impression that the RX120 was dreamed up by someone who wanted to create a drum machine for people who didn't know anything about how to program rhythms, so rather than give you sounds to mold into a song, it provides you with preset pieces to build up a song. This impression is reinforced by the fact that the RX120 doesn't provide any panning controls. Each sample is stereo and is panned across the soundstage in a predefined way, essentially laying out a set drum kit.

Having said all of that, the RX120 does contain some intriguing sounds inside its strange, little box. It's list of "38 percussive instruments" doesn't have anything that stands out as particularly intriguing, except maybe it's Electric Toms, FM Percussion, and China instruments, but what it does provide under the usual descriptors (Bass Drum, Rim Shot, etc) are pleasant to the ear, and like the RX11, RX15 and RX17 machines I already own, have a different character than the tried and true Roland machines everyone seems to be sampling.

Download the full RX120 sample set and a Combinator backdrop below:

• Yamaha RX120 Sample Pack ( Zip File | Combinator Backdrop )
  

If you find yourself with an extra forty or fifty bucks in your pocket and are looking for something from an earlier generation to experiment with, I don't know if I would recommend the RX120, unless you'll be using outboard gear to overcome its lack of pattern editing. I think the RX11 and RX17 are incredible values, given their going prices on eBay, and the RX17 is quickly becoming my favorite little piece of gear (outside of my laptop). The RX120 isn't going to be replacing either of those machines for me, but it's still a lot of fun and I found myself really enjoying the samples as I was recording them. While not necessarily "natural" it does sound more like real drums than a lot of drum machines out there.

Did you miss the drum hits I shared from my other Yamaha machines? Check out the previous posts:

• Yamaha RX11 Digital Rhythm Programmer
  
• Yamaha RX15 Digital Rhythm Programmer
  
• Yamaha RX17 Digital Rhythm Programmer
  

Don't Forget to Brag!

As I mentioned a few times before the patches provided on the Patch-A-Day blog are "bragware" meaning that if you use a patch in one of your projects, I want to hear about it. Leave a link to where you've hosted your project in the comments section or send me an e-mail and I'll highlight your project and the patch you used here on the blog.

Of course, you're also free to submit patches of your design. Mad Wax submitted a few patches in October, and then again in January, and Meowsqueak provided a patch last month.

Let me know what you've done by posting in the comments.

Meowsqueak's New "Off White Noise" Blog

Meowsqueak, who recently submitted the Wealthy Pad Combinator to Reason Patch A Day, has started a blog of his own called Off White Noise. The blog is quite a bit more technical than what you might find here, but if you give the tutorials a little time, I think you'll find a lot of value in them. Be sure to check out Designing a Noise Gate in Reason 4. Not only is it a useful effect to add to your Reason toolbag, but it's also a great step-by-step walkthrough that outlines what Meowsqueak did to get the effect he wanted. Really excellent stuff!

Note: Have you noticed that all of my "editorial" style posts have the tag "Boring?" It's not meant as any disrespect toward Meowsqueak. His blog is anything but "boring."