First off, you need to know how to play a pattern (this is a series of drum sounds and synthesizer parts that sound together to make kind of like a song or part of one). The EMX-1 comes with lots of preset patterns ranging from hip hop, to ambient and Electro/house.

First press the pattern button. (just below the screen).

Turn the big knob(at the right of the screen) and select a pattern number or name.

Press the play/pause key it will start playback meaning the drums and the synthesizer will start playing. a pattern in the EMX-1 is composed of 8 steps, when the 8 steps end it will loop again from the beginning. you can see in which step it is going by looking at the green LED just above the 1-16 keyboard (yes this acts as a keyboard). the red LED below the green one is the indicator in which step you are on when you want to edit it.

While you are listening to the pattern you can select any synthesizer (1-5 on the right side just click on it) and play notes on the EMX-1 keyboard (1-16) you can change the octaves with the two arrows (<)(>) up or down.

To play and edit the sound of a drum part you just need to click on it, this will play the sound assigned to the each part. (1-5, 6A,6B 7A,7B) you can change the assigned sound on each of the drum parts by selecting the part you desire to change, then clicking on “Part Edit” right beside the pattern button and turning the wheel next to the screen, the EMX-1 will provide you with a wide variety of percussion samples from kicks to hi-hats, snares, cymbals and much more.

if you feel like recording something that you played while the pattern was playing you just have to click on the rec button at the left side of the play/pause button and start playing on the keyboard or clicking the desired drum part at the desired time. when you finish you just press the rec key again. if you liked how it sounded you can save it by clicking twice on the write button.

More to come soon. any questions i will be glad to answer, see you and hope you learned something about this awesome machine.

Also check out the amazing videos on Youtube of this baby in action!