Korg Forums

[zersiax]

Hi,

I think the subject line may strike some of you as odd, but I have been looking at getting myself a professional arranger for a while now. I am mainly into detailed acoustic instrument representation as well as ease of use. I want to have some ways to modify the bread and butter sounds I get, but no intense tweaking is absolutely required. I have been looking at different brands and one of them is Korg, especially the PA900. Here's the kicker though: I am fully blind, which makes the touch screen, at least to my knowledge, completely unusable for me. Now I have two questions for Korg veterans out there.
1. Can the PA900 be controlled without the touch screen? If so, to what degree? What features would become completely inaccessible? I know the dial wheel and joystick exist on the unit as well, can this take over all or many of the PA900's specific functions?
2. This one is mainly for if the question to answer 1 is rather negative. What arranger, if any, made by Korg would you guys recommend that WOULD let me do all these things?

Thanks in advance,
Zersiax

[BillyHank]

I think the touch screen, which is the best thing about the Korg, will be a very big problem for you.

I understand that Yamaha has software for their arranger keyboards developed for the blind that gives verbal response through the headset port only. I suggest you investigate the Yamaha because the newer keyboards have very good sounds and mostly button navigation.

Bill G

[zersiax]

Hi,

Yamaha building a screenreader into their keyboards? Never. There has been talk of this, but it was never actually developped. A blind person who tried in the past was actually kindly requested to shut down his operations, because what he was doing could lay bare information that could be used by the competition. I own a MOTL Yamaha arranger right now, an s750, but I grow tired of hearing the same styles again and again, the same sounds. I have been playing Yamaha for 15 years now and was looking for something different. There's roland with their bk9 or even the fantomG although that really isn't an arranger, and then there's Korg. Which is why I came over here.
So my questions remain: Can stuff actually be done without the touch screen? I have already seen in the video manuals that for example selecting sounds is done by touching for example upper 1, followed by your sound. Are these locations memorizable at all, or can the buttons be used to somehow focus and activate these on-screen regions in any way?

[Nemik]

is possible to control many function (not all) using external midi controller, but required setup on touch screen first.
some of them can be assign to pedal controller or assignable buttons.
_________________
Nemik
Korg Kronos2-61, Korg Pa600, Novation UltraNova, Akai Professional MPK49, Akai Professional MPK225 , Alesis QX-49, APC25 Keys, Launchpad MK2, Korg nanoPad2
MOTU Midi Express XT, FCB1010 with UnO, Behringer X2222 USB, TASCAM Model 24 Mixer, Presonus AudioBox96, M-Track Plus
Fl Studio 21, Ableton Live 10 Suite.
Korg Pa5x Sounds at Performers Heaven

[BillyHank]

Florian

Oh Man - I am sorry to learn that Yamaha abandoned the blind project.
You know me from the PSRTUTORIAL and we have had several conversations before.

Like you, I have used Yamaha only for the past 12 years, but grew tired of the limitations of the Operating System and moved to the Korg recently.

Korg has so thoroughly integrated the touch screen with the operating system, I believe it will be a nightmare for you. And, by the way, it is this integration that makes the Korg such a great keyboard for those of us who can see.

However, knowing you at one time had or still have the Motif keyboard, you may be able to do something with the Korg too. Will your dealer allow you to try it at home for a period before purchase?

To me, the Pa900 is nearly the same as your current keyboard as far as the button control access on the face of the keyboard, but as soon as you press one of the style group buttons, you are then faced with the touch screen for you individual style selection from that group - same goes for voice selection.

Now you do have the Song Book which is very powerful and the performances, but every one of those is still dependent on the touch screen for individual item selection from within the group category.

This keyboard does in many cases remember your last button press and pressing it again usually takes you back to where you touched the screen for your selection. So that might be helpful to you for navigation.

I realize your mental map is very, very strong and no doubt you can navigate these keyboards with great expertise after some time.

I hope you get some postings here from other folks with similar experience to yours.

Regards,

Bill G

[andreidelait]

Hi. I am visualy impaired too but I still have somthing like 10% of sight.
What can I say. Unfortunately you cannot find an easy way to use a touchscreen korg arranger. You can memorise all the buttons and shortcut combinations but you cannot select individual items like styles, voices, pads. The only solution I can think of is to have a screen overlay made of plastic or samthing that can help you to find the standard 8 positions that are used to display the styles or sounds etc. But as far as the touchscreen is a resistive one is quite easy to activate somthing that is under the plastic. I hope it makes sense.
But even using this you will not be able to edit any parameters in the keyboard, because they are displaied in very different positions on the screen.
So my advice is to try something different from Yamaha (maybe Tyros) or even the BK-9 or maybe the Audia.
I don't know anything specific about them but I'm sure you'll find your way much easier without the touchscreen.

Good Luck

[DonM]

Bk9 has the ability to select sounds, styles and performances by button and numerically. It would be my choice if I couldn't see. You can also use 7-button foot controller, totally assignable.