Korg Prophecy Editor Now Available

by Chadwick Wood
October 19th, 2021

Patch Base for Mac (v1.15) and iPad (v3.21) now include editors and librarians for the Korg Prophecy, a virtual analog lead/monophonic synth released in 1995. I'd been hoping to come across one for quite awhile, and thankfully a generous fellow Texan named Jesús Navarro contacted me awhile back to offer some of his gear for testing and development! Many thanks to Jesús. This synth is capable of a wide variety of sounds, especially due to its different oscillator models, including some physical models of wind and plucked instruments. Lots of fun to be had for sound design.

Voice Editor

The Voice editor shows all of the voice parameters in 4 pages. To the right of these pages are the Envelope and LFO editors, which are always visible for editing, as they are used for modulation across every part of a voice.

The Osc page (above) has oscillator-related settings. Using the “Osc Set” parameter you choose which of the 7 oscillators models to use (Standard, Comb Filter, VPM, Mod, Brass, Reed, and Pluck). Each oscillator model has its own individual control page, shown based on which model you've selected.

To the right of the main oscillator settings are the waveshaper controls for the selected oscillator, to add harmonics and distortion to your voice.

And below all of this are the Noise and Sub-oscillator settings, as well as the Mixer, which allows 2 separate custom mixes of your sound sources, for feeding into the Filters.

The Filter/Amp page have all the parameters for your 2 filters and 2 amplifiers all laid out on a single screen. Above those are some general voice settings such as Portamento and Scale settings.

The FX/Ctrl page shows the settings for Distortion, Wah, EQ, Chorus, Delay, and Reverb. Chorus/Delay or Reverb are shown or hidden depending on which is active.

Below that are the settings for which MIDI controller numbers the on-board wheels and ribbon will control.

Finally, the Perf page shows a full overview of the performance knob settings for the voice. Each knob can be mapped to up to 4 different parameters at the same time, to create highly playable voices. 

Arpeggiator Editor

You create your own custom Arpeggiator sequences in the Arp editor. It's a no-nonsense editor that gives you a knob for every parameter of every step in your Arp sequence, as well as the general arp parameters.

Edits to the Patterns will be immediately saved to the synth, as the Prophecy has no “edit buffer” for the arpeggiator. The top selector lets you choose which pattern you want to edit.

Bank Editors

Patch Base also has support for organizing, storing, and loading banks in your Prophecy. Easily save your banks to files, rearrange sounds, and build custom banks from your patch library.