Who here is a really inspiring user of the KOpro?

[SMK]

I have been coasting this forum hoping, that somehow someway we would start seeing some users out here who actually have taken the time to make the Kaossilator Pro work for them.

For example: I posted an awesome tip on how to use the KP3 to help you all with the gate/arp feature.

k0va5 posted an amazing tip on using slower BMPs and making Broken Beats.

And that's it!?!?!

All the other threads are about slamming, dissing, pissing and moaning about what the KOPro is not doing for them. I mean grant it all these feature requests are valid, but really, guys can we come up with ways to make music with this gear and share in tips that we have learned through using the KOPro instead of harping on the negative?

If you need a start here's a clue: use your KP3 (if you got one) with your KOPro. Really, I'm not kidding when I tell you that the KOPro was designed to work with your KP3!

Playing around with the different scales and gate/arp setting with different BMP will net you very different results. I can't tell you how many times I have stumbled upon really cool new beats because I tried different things.

Everyone here is so focused on how it is syncing with their gear, with their computer and so on. How the loop is not just perfect or it glitches or 10 other minor nit picky things that really can be worked around.

When it comes to syncing my KOpro to something, im syncing it to the KP3 and it works just fine In fact I am amazed at how well it works synced to my KP3 via midi. If the KOPro has a loop at 8 beats and I set the sample feature on the KP3 at 8, then hit record, it's like the loop copied itself from the KOPro to the KP3 sample bank. It blows me away every time I do this. It makes for a fantastic work flow (no thinking involved here)when working with the KOPro and the KP3...it nails it every time...that's how good the syncing is between the KOPro and KP3.

Yes there is room for improvement on the KOPro but lets be serious here...everyone who owned the Kaossilator Toy made that thing do amazing stuff. Where are all of those guys? The KOPro is like having 4 Kaossilators!

Come on guys lets stop bitching about what this tool cant do and focus on using the gear and show off what you can do...it will be a long while before we get a new firm ware update, so lets make the best of it!

[SMK]

I'm just going to copy this statement about syncing KP3/KOpro from xmlguy. This really is the smartest thing I have read all day on the subject. It's not enough for me to say that I got my stuff working great. Really, for all of you who want your macs to work with your KOPro and it won't you need to read this:

The problem is that the KP3 and the Kaossilator Pro are not designed to sync up with external gear. They are designed to keep their own loops in sync with each other. This is not really a failure with the design, because it's the nature of what they do. Audio looping is not the same as midi looping. With a midi looper like Ableton, it has a midi score that triggers small samples or synth notes, so that it can change the tempo without much problem because the notes can simply be fired more quickly since the "dead" time between the notes simply doesn't exist except as a measurement of time.

An audio looper only has the sampled audio to work with, so increasing or decreasing the tempo is a much more difficult problem. If the tempo increases, you can't just push the audio together and slice out the time between the notes, even though the audio can be pitch corrected, you HAVE to lose something when you try to play 20 seconds of audio in 18 seconds. You also have a problem with audio looping when increasing the tempo because you can't just insert dead time to stretch 20 seconds of audio over 22 seconds.

To properly do audio looping, you really need to manually slice the samples into snippets/individual beats that can be played back faster or slower by converting/deleting audio dead time into midi/score rests between the audio. This can be hard to do manually to get a glitch free result, particularly if the track contains continuous music with no clean space to slice.

The KP3/Kaossilator Pro do a pretty admirable job doing a virtually impossible task to get right. So mostly you've got to understand the limitations with audio looping and work with them to get clean loops. Usually this means bringing the samples and loops into the computer to edit them visually so that the loop points are normalized so that you don't get clicks/pops.

A sampled drum track is usually much easier to slice than a song with no breaks in the audio. The KP3/KPro have no clue what the audio contains - audio is just a bucket of bits. The beat detection is just using a threshold on the audio level to guess where the beats are - which is used to set the BPM, but often it guesses wrong if there isn't a clear and consistent level to identify the beat. Sending midi clock to the KP3/KPro only sets the BPM, but it doesn't fix the inherent problem with adjusting the audio to precisely sync to the beat.

Ableton has individual midi tracks for each instrument, so in that respect, it can just trigger the notes faster and it all works out. The KP3/KPro can't do that.

Here is some more useful info from xmlguy...he discusses a good work flow to work with your loops and sample using the software you get...love how he relates KOPro and KP3 looping to that of tape looping, good analogy:

Only because syncing audio is a shitty problem.

The KP3/KPro do fine keeping audio sampled to different internal tracks synced together if they were recorded in sync. Think of them as 4 tape loops where the tape has holes with splined gears to prevent slipping. A tape machine can keep the loops synced together very easily. Keeping the audio recorded on the tape synced with the audio of other gear is a different and much more difficult problem. On the KP3, the length of the loop is based strictly on the BPM and the # of beats when the loop is recorded.

If you use the KP3 editor to view the sample, it's easier to see the nature of the syncing problem. Record a beat to pad1. Examine the sample. You'll usually see a gap of dead space at the beginning of the sample. While that pad is looping, record another sample to pad 2 that sounds nicely in sync with pad 1. Example the sample, and you should see a similar gap, and the waveforms on pad1 and pad2 should match rather closely across the whole sample. So the KP3 can keep pad 1 and pad 2 synced to each other. The problem is that any external gear won't have that gap. That gap will vary based on when you press the sample button relative to the beat.

So one of the first things I do after recording the samples on the KP3 is to move them to the computer to edit them to normalize them by trimming any leading gap and to be sure that the start/end of the loop have the same level, so that there will be no click/pop at the loop point. Then I move them back to the KP3 or to the flash card. That makes it much easier to keep the KP3 in sync with external gear if you hit the pad precisely on the beat, since there is no delay that requires compensation. Then I keep everything at the same BPM.

Another option is to use the KP3 as the only device that keeps the music in sync, then cueing up external gear by beat matching to the KP3 like a DJ. If you've got a headphone CUE, like on all DJ mixers, then it's not too hard to get the external gear synced up to the KP3 to prepare for sampling it. The audience hears none of this cueing, only the final result that's in sync.

So there you have it kiddies, some good tips from xmlguy about dealing with your looping issues and understanding what kind of looping you bought into.

I hope this helps some.

BTW these comments came from a thread asking about syncing KOPro to Ableton live...

[samartin]

Some of you may know I was an early adoptor of the KPro, I've not really bitched but certain things would have made my life easier in the beginning, longer measures in the lower BPM ranges. But...

I bought my KPro at the end of February this year and it is also the first time I've ever made an original composition (I say original as in MY creation). I have learnt a lot (at least I think I have) in creating music. I have also expanded my collection in investing in a MicroBR, Alesis Micron and Reaper.

So the KPro has allowed me to experiment and come up with ideas, and really quickly, basically creating a tune in an evening.

THANK YOU KORG!

[salamanderanagram]

i have a feeling many of us passed on the kpro. i certainly did.
the people that didn't pass don't seem too psyched on the implementation - therefore it's not too surprising we're not seeing many virtuosos.

"The KOPro is like having 4 Kaossilators! "

it doesn't seem like the kpro does much that wasn't already obtainable with a kaossilator and a kp3.

on a deeper level, i think being limited to 200 (or whatever) sounds is a serious hindrance towards innovation. stack that on top of how hard this s**t is to use with other gear and quite frankly i don't see a lot of *sonic potential* in the device.

[Mr36]

Well, Mr. Anagram, I once again agree with you quite a bit. I think on many levels an original Kaossilator and KP3 is a much more powerful and versatile set-up. Aside from the extra synth sounds and the ability to overdub external audio, it's pretty much better.

HOWEVER, I have kept mine (despite the various little things that irk me about it) because, as far as I can see, it is the only thing that does what it does with respect to live (audio) looping.

[Bazildon]

I really love my pinky Kaossilator, its a marvel that you can hand to anyone and they will be baffled for 20 seconds and then go "Hang on....this is bloody marvelous!". It had a quality that no other bit of music tech seems to have had - certainly in my experience.

So when I read and saw the KPro (in Jan @NAMM I think?), I wanted one and promptly got one thanks to my lovely wifey who'd heard me going "oOOooOOo" over the vids.

But I was really rather disappointed. Its a lovely bit of kit, but I'd seen "this" on the interwebs and I had a green flashy grey slab thing that did "that" instead.

Now that I've dropped another few pounds on a SoundBite Micro it fits in with my setup better, but I still await a firmware update that adds something useful to my Really-wanna-love-KPRO.

[Mr36]

What in particular were/are you disappointed with? What would make it worthwhile for you?

[Scott M2]

"The KOPro is like having 4 Kaossilators!"

I wish I didn't keep reading that description.

It's like 1 Kaossilator (with an expanded sound-set) and 4 loopers (which can't loop more than 2 bars at 108BPM or lower).

[Mr36]

So four Kaossilators then...

Another comparison with the KP3 though: you can get 16 beats of loop out of a KP3 as low as about 73bpm (I think). I didn't think the overdubbing would take more memory because it's only the same length of audio. This assumption is based on sound files being the same size no matter what the content.
Again, odd.

[curtaineater]

i've been out of the country for a few weeks and without my kp3. i still really like it, regardless of its many flaws. i don't have many tips or tricks but maybe i'll get around to recording some of my tracks and posting them on here to play my part in keeping things alive.

[beyoung]

These are the things I love about my K-Pro and(use)

I have learned a tremendous amount about the overall flavor of music that comes from different scales.

I can plug a mic into it and come up with some pretty interesting vocal effects.

I can take any keyboard I own. (Casio cz-101) (Korg M50) (Juno-106 or Korg legacy Virtual Synths) (Dave Smith Mopho) and I can control it via midi then dump the scales that I can play by hand into an Mpc 1000 and chop, sample, sequence and make a beat.

I can loop 4 tracks

I can save on a sd memory card


These are things I wish Korg would update on a machine that used to be 100-150 bucks and now cost 400

The ability to load more program sounds presets from older korg products
such as program files from the Korg R3 and Microkorg

The ability to control the K-Pro in a user friendly way with a midi keyboard that doesn't have to be reprogrammed on a computer.

They ability to somehow control other keyboards via midi and have the audio signal record into the K-Pro

The ability to have 4 bars of recording in 90 BPM since I make Hip-Hop music and most Hip-Hop is not in 108.5 tempo or above

The ability to input my own analog drum samples into the K-Pro and control in on the touch surface.

The ability to save all settings of the K-Pro - BPM, Scale and Note into the save all mode, instead of having to write it down on paper and dial to those settings when I power on the K-Pro again

Faster Load time from the SD card.......its 2010 Korg I want load times faster then my 2004 hard drive multitrack so I can keep the feeling of a quick hands on Hardware experience. Instead of lagged PC experience.

A Personal Email from Korg letting me know that they saw my post on this forum and will work on some of these things ( I know some of them are not really reasonable with a firm update)


I know you guys cant send everyone a personal email....but a response thats not generic would really at least let me hope that you guys are working on something better......whether its a K-Pro 2 or a K-Pro update Assuring me that the small fixes like on the BPM are important to you guys is critical.

It lets me know I should keep buying great Korg products.



I love the K-Pro for its endless possibilities.....but I do hit a lot of dead ends sometimes that I have to work around.

I knew I mainly bought this for its Midi features and although they lack a bit, I am really stoked about being able to play a Japanese scale on an older Keyboard like my CZ-101.......so Im not really complaining that you wasted my money


Im just asking Korg if we can make it better with a few updates?

[Mr36]

@beyoung

If you want the world, I think you'll need to do more than post a message in a forum.

An invasion, perhaps?

[beyoung]

Meh,

Your saying that I am asking too much?


I dont want to argue for the sake of arguing. I am here to spin off ideas and see what others are saying.



like I said


I still love the Kaossilator Pro

I used it today in a culture awareness class to teach some kids a run down one hour session on music theory.


It couldnt have been easier to demonstrate scales.

I Just want to be part of the reason this machine gets better

It would be great to see it improve......so If I think of anything else I really want from it Ill be sure to post

[DaveMachin]

I've recorded a couple albums worth of music on the KO-Pro (with a little yellow KO1 thrown in). I'm using the SoS recorder and mini-kp as well and the whole system is is so portable and easy to use that recording comes very naturally and quickly. There's some features of the KO-Pro I really like:

Changing scales - I can't even play the KO1 any more since I can't change to a 1 or 2 octave scale on it. Limiting the octave range really helps play exact melodies.

Volume control - for me this is really important, changing the volume of the line-out for different tracks or adjusting the volume of a recorded loop.

The grid on the touch-pad. As much as the squares don't line up 1:1 with notes (which makes sense if you think about it) - the lines help me hit the same notes twice.

Saving/Loading presets - very handy to pick a set of sounds and put them into the shortcut keys for later.

Better drum patterns - I like the extended drum patterns and the combinations you can get by sampling one pattern over another.

The new gate arp - I really wish you still had the gate arp patterns, but I do use the new method a lot too. It's really good for setting exact and even beats and modifying the sound within that setting. Very handy for adding cymbal patterns over drum loops etc.

The text on the touch pad - I use that a lot to confirm I'm on the right program.

Larger touch pad - I've got big fingers, so this helps.

Line-in/Mic-in - lets me play the old KO1 with one hand and the K-Pro with the other or do some vocoder effects.

So, I really like it...

FYI - the stuff I've recorded with it is here:
http://dmachinemusic.blogspot.com/

[SMK]

Meh,

Your saying that I am asking too much?


I dont want to argue for the sake of arguing. I am here to spin off ideas and see what others are saying.



like I said


I still love the Kaossilator Pro

I used it today in a culture awareness class to teach some kids a run down one hour session on music theory.


It couldnt have been easier to demonstrate scales.

I Just want to be part of the reason this machine gets better

It would be great to see it improve......so If I think of anything else I really want from it Ill be sure to post

@beyoung

Don't pay to much attewntion to Mr36...I've noticed he just likes to make fun and sometimes a little trouble