Korg Forums

[karmathanever]

[Bachus]

[Veren]

Hi All

My personal view is that "I don't really care for somebody else to make styles for me" ... but cannot deny that there can be a need when they are really well done.

I think the Arrangers should be more of an arranger before leaning heavily towards synth/workstation... Korg arranger is basically no different to the others and is very low on real time user input.

I appreciate the editability of the Korg however its and arranger and the arranger should have the crux of the editing capability not everything else excluding the arranger.

At least AMS in styles will put the Pa3x in line with the competition from an arranger perspective.

Between manufacturers, it should be "who makes the best INTERACTIVE...sorry DYNAMIC arranger" not who makes the best synth with arranger functions.

Please update OS with AMS in styles. Emotions/feel/moods are the life blood of "captivating music"

Pete had commented on another post saying that he doesn't think that we will get another update for Pa3x... I hope he is wrong as there is this "more" that Korg can incorporate.

Wonder what would happen if somebody makes a proper software version of arranger to run off a Kbd controller or so or better still, Mr "Midi Maxed" Steven Kay create a karma arranger (may not suite all music but at least he understands that music feels different at various parts of a performance and would intelligently steer all away from the rigidity the current arrangers presents and unfortunately more so with korg). Software arranger with the computing power of full PCs could make almost everything possible.

The person that makes this software to function successfully will dig himself into a virgin Gold mine... Just look at what people pay for arrangers and its popularity

[karmathanever]

[Dikikeys]

I'm unimpressed with Karma except for electronica. So far, I haven't yet heard a Karma preset that makes legacy musics (rock, jazz, old school R&B, country... you know, 20th century hits!) vary in any way that I thought that a human was varying the pattern.

It's wonderful for synth stuff, but you don't have a century's worth of 'rules' that make you go 'this is real, this is NOT' for electronica. But listen to real music, and it quickly becomes obvious that, if Karma is being used to make a piano part busier or simpler, or a jazz guitar part 'dig in' or comp lighter, it isn't doing what humans do!

And, let's be honest here... Karma presets are even more difficult for a player to program than style divisions! What you see is what you'll get. Once again, with no copy protection, what incentive does any really skilled programmer have to make something that MIGHT be better, when you are all going to 'share' his file the minute you get it?!

I took a close look at Karma when it came out, and, for the musics that I tend to make a living off (not electronica, I'm WAY too old!), I never really thought that it was the future. Styles get MUCH closer to sounding like humans, because, well, they were written by humans! But humans don't play ever evolving arpeggios... they play MUSIC.

And Bachus... I wasn't really referring to the aftermarket styles that Yamaha sell... those don't strike me as being up to the quality of the ROM styles. Plus, my comment wasn't really intended to address the 'density' of the styles. You can't please everyone with that. One person may be ecstatic that the style thins out after the intro, another, who plays less, may be dismayed that the style support needs them to play some comping too.

But, the point I was trying to make was primarily about the MIX... Nothing's too loud, nothing's too quiet, nothing sticks out like a sore thumb. I wish I could say that about most Roland and Korg styles!

I also found the Audya's a complete dead end... Sure, if you want the style EXACTLY the way Audya make it, you are good to go. But I find myself doing a lot of style editing, moving a kick here, a snare there, fine tuning a bassline, getting rid of a ridiculous fill, that sort of stuff. Audio styles, forgetaboutit! If the kick pattern is slightly wrong for the song, too f 'in bad!

I like the work for me to be done, sure, but I don't like being told 'can't touch this!'

[karmathanever]

Great response Dikikeys !!!

"KARMA" does confuse some new Korgies - it is sometimes depicted as an "arranger" function when it definitely is NOT.
Kronos/M3/Oasys etc are workstations, not arrangers. I couldn't begin to see how KARMA technology would fit into an arranger keyboard unless Korg want to produce an "everything-to-everyone" keyboard (not much $$$ in that!!!).

Current (and hopefully. future) arranger technology is really providing some very realistic and usable instruments.
Right now we have Tyros and PA - would love to see Roland pick up the pace too.

There's still a way to go but let's face it, one could easily use the PA3X (and Tyros 5) as a straight workstation-synth-piano like a Kronos - there is such a lot of great sounds and editing features on these keyboards.

To the point of my topic, I have wondered (reviewed) whether to just keep the one keyboard - the problem is which one? PA3X or Kronos? I always seem to come up with - "keep them both!!!" Not from a GAS point of view (GAS="Gear Acquisition Syndrome") - these 2 keyboards really do not double up much - they are very different. Talking of "GAS" - I've just bought the amazing Roland VR09 - what a fantastic stage keyboard with awesome sounds - well done to Roland on this one - it is a great asset to my set-up let alone the best value for money keyboard I have ever bought. Whoops, Pete, this is a Korg forum!!!!

Enough waffle from me...


_________________
PA4X-76, Karma, WaveDrum GE, Fantom 8 EX
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## Please stay safe ##
...and play lots of music
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[worth]

But What if Karma could be demonstrated to show real sounding evolving basslines and drum riffs that actually sounded authentic to the style of music being played.... is it capable of this ?

[karmathanever]

Worth, my man, so great as always to hear from you.

You make a very good point my friend - hadn't really thought of it that way.
I suppose making the flexibility of KARMA (realtime control surface etc) applied to styles' ACCs would be quite amazing but I think the development of such technology would be a major task for Korg....

Take care buddy

Pete
_________________
PA4X-76, Karma, WaveDrum GE, Fantom 8 EX
------------------------------------------------------------------
## Please stay safe ##
...and play lots of music
------------------------------------------------------------------

[Dikikeys]

[Veren]

Hi All

So fair to say AMS in styles is quite achievable (than other means) therefore should be a reasonable request for NOW ... in PA3x?

Thanx

[worth]

I hear you Dikki and Pete.

But what I am talking about is the illusion of responsiveness to how you play. We know that no computer created to date can bring the same creativity that a human being can in any given musical context. But what we do know is that we can program say 6 -10 musical riffs that would normally occur at the end or the beginning of four bars eight bars or 16 bars for example. And we can trigger them based upon the density of chords the velocity of chords or the complexity of chords.

What I am asking is is it possible for an algorithm based software such as karma to trigger "randomly " these phrases , let's say 6 -10 based upon a combination of these characteristics? So the end result is that these musical phrases can be triggered randomly in terms of the phrases used but intentionally (in terms of the velocity , density or complex nature of the chords ) . Kind of like the way cv's in styles work now but with that added randomness ? That way the musician is kind of in control of when the randomness will occur but can be surprised by the riff or phrase karma or whatever we call the algorithm selects .

We could go even further. We know that certain styles of Music have similar characteristics Funk blues gospel soul R&B rock have similar licks and runs . Is it possible forr a programme such as karma or one not created yet that could , to identify families of music and "randomly pull through " phrases used from those styles of music. The arranger already has all those styles of music as a vast library on board the instrument . And often when creating new styles we intentionally will copy and paste a riff a baseline drum pattern string line from one style to another seamlessly. All we do is match the selected style we want to borrow from to the measures of the new style .
All the hard work in terms of creating the styles from the style library are already in the arranger keyboard . All that is required now is for some algorithm to identify the families of styles and the instruments contained within them and randomly select end of phrase baselines and drum licks . This wouldn't be all that difficult as we know the drums are always contained on track ten the bass is always contained on track three the percussion is always contained on track two . For the most part we would only need the bass drums and percussion and possibly guitar to have the random variation element. The rest of the tracks could stay pretty much as they are with the 1-4 variations per style as they exist today .

[Veren]

[siebenhirter]

Hello,
I agree with all of you seeing no significant steps forward in development of keyboards - meanwhile we can do:

-better use of ensemble (brass, reed, dual), set ensemble-track-assign (mute/play), set note-velocity/note-transposition, set track-controls (poly/mono/mono-l/mono-r), use fx and try to make our own ensemble voices as good as possible
- want better piano-feeling in styleplay-mode - use assignable footswitch-function chord-latch
- want reaction to our keyboard-feelings use velocity-controls and extensive use aftertouch, legato, staccato
- want some more style-variations use pad-sequences in combination with assignable soloing style-tracks, use mode-fill, cue-mode etc; use loopings of variations assigned to intro to expand possible variations of a style etc; use expert-mode with no chord to only stop chords and bass etc
- use features of sound edit to make better sounds for usage with AMS, aftertouch, use velo-multisample-switch, osc-triggermode (legato, staccato, up/down, osc-off)

Sure, it is a disadvantage to spend time for customing a keyboard for its need, but it is also a beneficial that customing is possible - and maybe some features to built in we are looking for are discovered as already existing.

[congan2]

Hello Guys,

I hope korg can make improvement more spaces for users and Favorites area, because the Vietnamese people use to be custom their songs to a Style for performance, 1200 spaces including 15 banks was not enough to use for them, So many people said that they wish Korg can read the style direct from USB or make an improvement more spaces in the internal users and Favorites area. We can have about 10K of custom custom styles to use for the performance, We use to play in the Wedding or Party as a One Man Band that's why we need so many custom styles with intro ready to play....Because I don't know how to play the intro for alot of songs....

Thanks

[Dikikeys]

To be honest, the best NEW thing I've heard on an arranger in quite some while is Yamaha's T5 Ensemble Mode. A simple, yet practical way to voice ensembles in realtime, and the end results are spectacular!

And no need for a more complex style engine...

As we have already discussed, for more responsiveness to our playing, the workload for the style makers is going to have to climb radically. And this is precisely the area that has been troubling for years. Great styles take time and effort and massive skill to pull off at the ROM styles level, and adding new layers will only make that harder.

But we want them for free!

I don't see an easy way past this.

For now, baby steps. Let's just work on Korg adding the easiest thing to do, velocity offsets of style Parts based on our own dynamics. If Roland can do it, Korg can too! Remember, with sufficient control over the feature, you can get Parts to drop out altogether. With the right kind of style writing, this could also be used to actually have Parts be busier at louder playing, simpler in quiet passages.

There's a LOT of hidden potential in even this simple feature.