Korg Forums

[psionic311]

A feature I saw on a Roland keyboard was the ability to automatically voice a brass section. For example, if you played a Cm7 chord, with a section consisting of a bari sax, trombone, tenor sax, and trumpet, it would give one note of the chord to each instrument so that you have 4 mono voices spelling the Cm7 rather than 16 voices (4 for the bari, 4 for the trombone, etc).

Is there a way to do this with Karma? Or perhaps even a close approximation, say using mono brass voices and having Karma always assign the top of the chord to the trumpet and the bottom to the bari sax?

Come to think of it, maybe I can do this with RPPR, but I'm still curious if Karma could do this somehow...

[GregC]

[psionic311]

Greg, that's a possibility for sure. But to fulfill the one instrument per note requirement, I'd have to lay out 4 zones across the keyboard, all on MIDI channel 1, and with each zone dedicated to one of the brass instruments. Then I would have to spell out each chord by pressing and holding the bari sax part, then the trombone part in the next zone, then the tenor sax and trumpet, and finally assigning that to a pad. Then repeat for each chord.

My current funky brass and keys combi already takes up all of the K61 keybed real estate. I suppose I could create another combi and offload the main parts onto the second keyboard controller, and reserve the K61 keys to spread out the parts as above. I usually use the FCB1010 to trigger the pads, but in this case I'll need quick and velocity response. I take it the NanoPad is velocity sensitive.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll give it a shot. Still would be neat to use Karma for automatic voicing though, if possible...

[GregC]

[psionic311]

The only reason I'd use the SEQ instead of a combi is because of RPPR. This is for situations which are less scripted and more dynamic... the drummer won't be using a click track at all. At best I'd just trigger optional phrases that aren't too dependent on exact timing.

Regarding 24 or 32 note chords... I'm trying to achieve the opposite, actually. Cm7 has 4 notes, so the bari would play the root, the trombone the 5th, the tenor sax the 7th, and the trumpet the minor 3rd. That's it. No more and no less, unless there are octave or unison riffs. It's not critical, but it would add a bit of realism and, if panned, a lot of space while filling up the space, if you know what I mean, instead of a generic MIDI cluster chord...

[19naia]

A great feauture.
Wondering if that is a roland with supernatural™ ?
Always considered roland a good second keyboard but not a replacement or substitute for Kronos.

Smart Scan and note map come to mind from Karma, but i have no real clue about that. I never do anything with Note map other than look around in there, and only thing i ever did with smart scan was disable it when it was doing stuff that ran against the grain of what i wanted. Seems the Karma features are more arppegiator related anyway, while the roland feature seems like an auto-zoning arranger.
I know Karma can come up with accompaniment chords as you press a note but i think you set up how it does it and it may be limited to arppegio style functions rather than zoning various programs into a chord. Seems like 4 modules can each take a program and then set each module up to handle/zone just one note of the chord and then the Master module may be able to coordinate the four modules into arranging the programs into the chord. Wishfull thinking and still i have no clue.
I have something to really think about now. I know i will explore this and end up with something new on kronos even if it is not close to the Roland feature described.

I do know how to set up a combi with 4 brass timbre programs only and each brass timbre zoned to one note of the chord and in the order that i want.
Then play the chord and resample the combi as i play the chord. Take the resulting sample to covert to a new program and assign that program to one note in one timbre or even one note in a chord pad setup, all in the combi I intend to perform in. Its not as natural-playing friendly as the Roland feature and is work intensive by comparison, but the end result is effective and minimal drain of polyphony.

[psionic311]

Hmm, re-sampling... I hadn't considered that, thx 19naia.

I'm not up to speed with Karma, but I do know it has 4 modules that you can work with to do certain things like re-direct MIDI channels. Was hoping maybe there was some feature there that would take the lowest note of a chord and assign it to a specific instrument, then the next note to the next instrument, etc.

Here are some examples of the Roland ARX-03 Brass Supernatural expansion demoing the automatic chord voicing feature:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmtGc68dNMc (about 3:05)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmtGc68dNMc (about 3:19)

[mikeyd]

Have you thought about posting this on the Karma Lab KRONOS Forums? Maybe others have had this question as well. Stephen is also really good about being helpful with a his kind of request.

Let us know.

[psionic311]

Thanks for the tip about the Karma forums. I just registered and asked there.

The forum and the Wiki is chock full of good info! Looks like this might be the year I get a good working knowledge of the Karma...