MIDI IN, MIDI Out On The Korg Monotribe

This video, via Gameboygenius, takes a look at the hidden MIDI in and MIDI out support that’s built into the Korg Monotribe, including .

The video demonstrates two ways of using MIDI In to control the Korg Monotribe:

1) As a TB-ish synth.
2) Creating instruments on the fly by sending new automation data for each new note.

For more examples of Korg Monotribe mods, see:

If you know of other cool Monotribe hacks, share it in the comments!

12 thoughts on “MIDI IN, MIDI Out On The Korg Monotribe

  1. Brilliant, been waiting for someone to crack this.
    As much as people bitched about lack of midi (including myself) this was a very smart move on Korgs part as the development of modding this unit has kept people talking about it long after its release.

  2. I believe if they did MIDI, there would be more positive talk because it would not be restricted to the modding community.

  3. I don't understand why they didn't just include MIDI built in if the capability is there. I can't imagine it would have added all that much to the cost. While I'm still tempted to pick one up somewhere down the line, basic MIDI in would have made this an immediate must buy for me, and, I presume, many others.

  4. Cost.. To use MIDI protocol internally made sense because Korg probably has TONS of source code already in place for doing so. To give it IO would have involved spending money on the necessary connections and engineering them into the case. They would also have to build more features into the hardware to support MIDI channel selection and so forth. The margin on these is probably razor thin, so Korg is leaving it up to the modders to make discoveries like this.

  5. Actually, making it cheaper and hackable seems like a great design choice,, because you pay only for what you need. Also, they get a community of people discussing their synth online out of the deal.

  6. Hi! I’ve done the MIDI IN mod but it works just on one of my keyboards! The working one is a masterkeyboard, the others are a normal yamaha keyboard and a Microkorg. I can’t really understand why and why should it work on the masterkeyboards but non on the other ones! The problem is that the working one always had problrem on the midi out part so actually I can’t play my monotribe with any of my three keyboards? Did any of you have the same problem?
    Ps: I did the “easy” mod and I tried even to replace the 820ohm resistor with a 1k one, but nothing happened!

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