Korg R3 Patches: Welsh's Recipes

My third post on this blog was talking about a book called "Welsh's Synthesizer Cookbook." It describes the basics of subtractive synthesis and then at the end it contains 101 or so recipes or patches for various sounds that can be built with a simple 2 oscillator synthesizer. The recipes are extremely generic so that they can be programmed into almost any synthesizer and I implemented them all for the Korg R3.

I've uploaded the bank and have placed it here. It's also available at the Korg forums in the R3 section found here. This file can be uploaded to the R3 through the R3 sound editor software.

For the most part, these patches generally approximate acoustic instruments such as horns, strings, and drums, though there are a few more exotic synth-like sounds near the end of the bank. The recipes are generally based on a simple, generic 2-oscillator synthesizer with a single LFO and no effects. I programmed them as closely as I could from the recipes, though I occasionally modified a sound or two to attempt to sweeten it up a little based on the R3's capabilities. The values in the recipes didn't always directly correlate to the 0-127 input values of the Korg R3, so much of the programming was done through dial approximation and by ear with no audio examples to build to. Hopefully I was able to get close to what the original programmer intended.

I'll be the first to admit some of these patches sound awful. For example, the piano patch is rather pitiful and I have no idea what the timpani is trying to do. Still, it was a valuable learning experience for me as someone who had never programmed a sound three months before doing these and hopefully these patches will serve as a jumping off point to better sounds in the future.