Greetings Korg Kronos users. I thought I would start dishing out some handy Korg Kronos trickery. I wll focus mainly on SysEx (System Exclusive) tricks. Don’t have an idea what System Exclusive is? Go here for a primer.

Back already? Cool.

Now that you are an expert in System Exclusive, let’s get cracking.

We’re going to be using System Exclusive messages to change the main modes on the Korg Kronos. I refer to the main modes as Set List Mode, Combi Mode, Program Mode, Sequence Mode, Sampling Mode, Global Mode and Disk Mode.

Truth be told, there wouldn’t really be much use in switching to some of these modes in your DAW. Set List, Combi and Program would probably be the modes you would most likely use in a sequence. I could be wrong but I could not see a situation where you would want your Kronos in Global mode while a sequence in your DAW is playing.

The following technique should work in any DAW that can send System Exclusive event list data as part of a sequence or from a built in System Exclusive manager. Sonar, for instance, has a System Exclusive Manager where you can store chunks of SysEx Data with your sequence. You can set it to send the Data when you load up your session. You can also send these same messages in any program that will send SysEX such as the awesome MIDIOX.

Let’s say for instance you always want to start a sequence in your DAW with the Kronos in Program Mode. As the first event of your sequence, enter the Following SysEx event:

F0 42 30 68 4E 02 F7

That will put your Kronos into Program Mode before the track starts playing other data. In fact, it might be good practice to use the first measure(s) for sending SysEx data then starting your actual track just to make sure the Kronos is set up properly. A lot of times I will start the actual music at measure 3 or 4 for this very purpose. It’s probably overkill given how fast MIDI transfer is over the USB connection on the Kronos but this is a habit that comes from using Cakewalk back in the DOS and Windows 3.1 days.

So now that you know how to to do a little mode switching with SysEx messages, here’s a list of System Exclusive statements to change the main modes on the Kronos:

  • SetList Mode: F0 42 30 68 4E 09 F7
  • Combi Mode: F0 42 30 68 4E 00 F7
  • Program Mode: F0 42 30 68 4E 02 F7
  • Sequence Mode: F0 42 30 68 4E 04 F7
  • Sampling Mode: F0 42 30 68 4E 06 F7
  • Global Mode: F0 42 30 68 4E 07 F7
  • Disk Mode: F0 42 30 68 4E 08 F7

Next time I’ll talk about stringing  a few System Exclusive messages together to do something a little more useful.