No... it cannot be possible

[Mike Conway]

I am just sitting before my OASYS and I have checked it out to be sure, although i knew it already, but the Mute/Play function in Seq-Mode affects only the notes played from the sequencer, but not the notes you play on the keyboard, they always sound, even if the tracks are muted. So therefore this solution never occured over the past years on the OASYS section as well...-

Confirmed on my OASYS, too! So, does Kronos' sequencer Mute kill the notes? I have no Kronos.


Anyway, Stephen Kay has a solution using the KARMA scenes to switch sounds on/off. You can also assign a Foot Switch to turn KARMA on/off, if you need both hands on the keyboard.

[Synthvalley]

There are so many reasons to get a Kronos but one of the main motivations for me was to replace a rack of romplers and within one keyboard, create a stack of timbres that I can mix and match as needed in a live situation (just as Aron has described). Thanks to all for working through this issue - clearly detailing the problem, describing the constraints (polyphony of the various engines), considering possible system upgrades, and digging up a crazy cool KARMA work-around.
Thanks all (after some concern - still excited to be getting my K88 soon)...

[Chriskk]

Unless we have a synth capable of 1,000 note polyphony, one needs to keep a few other sound sources. For instane, a single Kronos piano note can actually play 20+ voices. If you play a 4 note chord, you can be using 80+ voices and left with not much for other parts.

[drchris]

This is an issue that I finally understand after reading the whole thread. I'll likely never run into needing the kinds of things that you guys are talking about.

This thread is a great example of what this community is about, however. Thanks to all for a really informative thread with lots of heads working together to work around a problem, and with Dan taking back the issue to Korg for possible modifications.

Very cool thread!

[Synthvalley]

Unless we have a synth capable of 1,000 note polyphony, one needs to keep a few other sound sources. For instane, a single Kronos piano note can actually play 20+ voices. If you play a 4 note chord, you can be using 80+ voices and left with not much for other parts.

Yes, good point... As noted, one must really understand the tradeoffs of layering different engines together and the impact this has on available polyphony.

[aron]

>This is an issue that I finally understand after reading the whole thread. I'll likely never run into needing the kinds of things that you guys are talking about.

If you play live, you will want to layer several sounds together. The sorry state of synthesizers is that something like the Motif cannot layer a piano + strings without stealing notes. Forget about layering 4 layers like it can.

The Kronos can do a little more, but right now with the way it is set up, it's not optimized to do much in combi mode. Not like it could.

> Unless we have a synth capable of 1,000 note polyphony

The PC3 only has 128 note polyphony, but the voice stealing algorithm is so good, you hardly notice it. It optimizes polyphony like no other synthesizer. You just have to try it to believe it. Right now, I would need 2 Kronos to replace the one PC361 I have for my live use.

BTW: can someone besides me try Stephen's karma trick. I cannot get it to work. I think I don't understand what it is trying to do.

[aron]

Here are my Karma settings. I must be missing something



I cannot uncheck run on the module A



And are these the switches that are supposed to turn the sounds on/off?

[StephenKay]

BTW: can someone besides me try Stephen's karma trick. I cannot get it to work. I think I don't understand what it is trying to do.

I just tried it. Worked for me.

Did you start with an Init Combi?

1. Init Combi.
2. Set 4 different program sounds in the first 4 timbres, i.e. piano, strings, organ, brass.
3. On the KARMA GE Setup page, turn off Run on Module A (on by default).
4. On the Perf RTP Page (which has nothing assigned), set rows 1 to 4 to Key Zone, Thru In Zone. Default settings.
5. Check Modules A, B, C, D respectively on the four rows, in sequence.
6. Set Assign to the 4 rows, in sequence, to SW1, SW2, SW3, SW4.
7. Switch the Control surface to RT/KARMA.
8. The first four KARMA switches (yes, you circled three of them) should now activate the 4 timbres individually. Since these are stored in a scene, you can turn on SW1 in Scene 1, SW2 in scene 2, SW3 in scene 3, SW 4 in scene 4 (while turning the others off), or any mix of them in a particular scene. The reason to use the Scene switches is that one button push turns off one timbre switch and turns on another, or turns on several while turning off several. You could just do it manually as well within a single scene.

BTW, "Thru In Zone" refers to sending notes thru, if they happen to be in the range of the KARMA input zone key range on the KARMA GE Setup page. So you could actually set up different zones here, for different timbres. By default, the zone is 0~127 (the whole range) C-1 to G8 or whatever it is.

The concept of how this works is: A KARMA Module can take input notes from the input key zone, and "do stuff" with them. It can also, in addition, simply send them thru to the timbres. With the "Run" checkbox off, KARMA is not going to do any arpeggio or riff generation, but the Thru In Zone/Out Zone feature still works. You can send them thru "In Zone", whereby they are layered on top of what the KARMA GE is generating (or not, if Run is off), or you can send them "Thru Out Zone", in which case, you can make a split, and the bottom or top half goes into KARMA, while the rest of them (outside of the zone) are sent directly thru to the timbre.

In this case, with an INIT Combi, the key zone is set to the full range, so turning on the switch sends the notes thru to the timbre, for the entire keyboard; turning off the switch sends NO notes thru to the timbre. Hope that makes sense. This blocks the MIDI notes from going to the timbre; hence, it uses no polyphony.

If you don't start with an INIT combi, there are all sorts of other settings that may interfere or interact with what you are trying to do, because they are already programmed.

I can explain more about that if necessary, but the first step is to see if you can reproduce the example with an INIT combi.

Caveat: I didn't write the PDF in the referenced post, in fact, if you read the thread, the whole thing was a surprise to me...although they tried to say I told them about it myself (!), well maybe, but I really don't remember that. In any case, it's a really useful "trick".

[Mike Conway]

Awesome trick, Stephen! Don't doubt yourself as being the source material.

In the documentation, there are some errors in that he means to say:
SW1
SW2
SW3
SW4

instead of SW1, SW1, SW2, SW2, etc. But, yes, it works!

Aron, you could alternately save different versions of of your Combi to different Setlist buttons and even name them - "1 layer", 2 layers", "4 layers."

[aron]

What did I miss. AFAIK I missed this:


3. On the KARMA GE Setup page, turn off Run on Module A (on by default).

How do you turn it off? If you look at my picture, it's on and grayed out.

Yes, I started with INIT combi.

[Mike Conway]

You missed assigning Switches 3 and 4 (the error I pointed out in the documentation). Are you in R. TIME KNOBS/KARMA mode, on the Control Surface?

Turn KARMA on. Assign the 4 Scenes - press top row switch 1, then bottom row switch 1. Repeat with all 4. The top row switches (KARMA SCENES) will actually turn on the bottom row switches.


Or you can wait a little bit and I'll post a quick video...

[SoulBe]

Hi,

as mentioned above it is described in the Oasys tips section. As far as I see you´ve put up the settings right.
Initialize the karma module before assigning. Uncheck the karma modules.
Keep in mind to change the midi channel changed, because scene 1 affects sounds on midi channel 1, scene 2 on midi channel 2 etc. Be also sure that you have switched the real times knobs/Karma switched that you are switching karma scenes.
You can also assing more than 1 timbre to a midi channel to have more timbres layered per midi channel.
Finally you can have more scenes switched on at the same time, to combine midi channels.

A copy of that togehter with using the karma/on/off here:

SoulBe
Senior Member


Joined: 21 Oct 2008
Posts: 309
Location: Germany
Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2009 12:55 am Post subject: Re: Live switching between sounds

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tokke wrote:
Hi all,

I might be repeating something that has been said before, but I think this might be useful for live gigging people.

I've found a workaround to switch between four sounds without having the unused sounds eating up voices. It is as simple as this:

The only condition is that Karma is not used in your setup.
- Start from an initialised combi.
- Activate Karma.
- Uncheck all 'Run' Checkboxes on 0-5 (Play->Karma GE)
- Go to 7-5 (Karma->Perf. RTP)
- In Group, select Key Zones.
- In Parameter, select Thru Inside Zone.
- Check 'A'.
- In Assign, select SW1.
- Repeat this 3 more times, for every next line take the next checkbox (B,C,D) and the next SW (SW2,3,4)
- With the Control Surface on Karma, select the first scene and activate SW1.
- For the next 3 scenes, activate the correspondig Switches.

Now you have 4 scenes, each selecting the programs using midi channel 1,2,3 or 4. This way you can select which program belongs to which scene by setting the correct midi channel of the program. Actually, you can extend this with more scenes if you want layer together two or more groups of programs simply by activating the right switches under the scene you want to have it.
Like I said, this way the muted sounds are not being triggered at all so there is no polyphony wasted. Furthermore, a note still sounding prior to switching to another scene is not suddenly broken off, but will continue until you release the note.

Hope this can be useful


was usefull though posted 3 years ago ; here is an appedix:

if you use the "By off/by on" function in timbre-parameters you can use the global midi channel twice and can switch sounds 5 times:

Same settings like Tokke wrote but:

1. sound uses global channel / timbre parameter page Wave Seq/Karma "by on" - timbre plays when karma is off
2. sound uses also global channel, but "Seq/Karma" is set to "by off", timbre plays when you switch karma on
3.-5. sound using midi channels 2 - 4 "Seq/Karma" is set to "normal"

good thing is, that you can switch to the scene you want while playing the first sound(s)/Global channel with Karma of, so you can directly use the selected sounds on the Karma switches when turning Karma on

in addition I use for the solo sounds limiter or compressor in the ifx and modulate the volume / db with the foot control asingned in the ifx to have more control on the volume of solo sounds

SoulBe

Hope that helps
If it is not working please tell at wich stage you have problems.
SoulBe

[aron]

>Turn KARMA on. Assign the 4 Scenes - press top row switch 1, then bottom row switch 1. Repeat with all 4. The top row switches (KARMA SCENES) will actually turn on the bottom row switches.


hmmm ok thanks Mike. I don't have the Kronos here with me, but I will try tomorrow. (At the studio).

Hey, I appreciate the help!

[StephenKay]

What did I miss. AFAIK I missed this:


3. On the KARMA GE Setup page, turn off Run on Module A (on by default).

How do you turn it off? If you look at my picture, it's on and grayed out.

Yes, I started with INIT combi.

It wouldn't be grayed out if you started with a truly INIT combi. So perhaps you already loaded a GE, or something, or did something to that combi. Try one in the User G bank or something.

[aron]

>It wouldn't be grayed out if you started with a truly INIT combi. So perhaps you already loaded a GE, or something, or did something to that combi. Try one in the User G bank or something.


That's strange. I don't know how to load a GE and I really did choose INIT COMBI - if you check out the name, it says INIT COMBI.

I will try the User G bank tomorrow. THANKS!

Maybe I can't have 8 sounds at once like my Kurzweil, but maybe 4 will do.