"Take" vocal patches and digital drawbars question

[jazzmammal]

I've been reading this forum for a few days now and there's some really good, friendly people here, looking forward to joining in. I found the thread about using Band in a Box styles, I'm one of the beta testers for PG Music and have all the latest and greatest from them so if anyone has any questions about that, I can probably help.
I bought a used pa1x pro last Wednesday and did a gig with it last night. I've been gigging with a Kurzweil PC2X for over 5 years. It's a heavy 88 key weighted keyboard and I need to downsize a little and the pa1x is perfect for me. I probably won't gig using the arranger functions but the arranger is a real blast to play with at home. The sounds are outstanding and easily comparable to the Kurzweil with one glaring exception: The vocal patches. I'm mostly a jazz player lately and have become quite good at playing the Kurzweil Take 6 vocals. The "Take" patches in the pa1x are terrible. Any suggestions besides buying a Kurzweil module?
The second thing is the digital drawbars. I'm also a B3 fanatic, I toured with one for over 25 years and some of the presets in the Korg are really good. I was looking forward to playing with the drawbars live but how do you activate the chorus and leslie when you're in the digital drawbars mode?

Bob

[admar]

Hi jazzmammal,

Welcome to this forum and congrats on your new toy Pa1X (Pro?).

The sounds are outstanding and easily comparable to the Kurzweil with one glaring exception: The vocal patches. I'm mostly a jazz player lately and have become quite good at playing the Kurzweil Take 6 vocals. The "Take" patches in the pa1x are terrible. Any suggestions besides buying a Kurzweil module?

The best suggestion I can think of right now is buying the great package called "Vocal Assault" from Sharp, our host and moderator of these Korg Forums and owner of Irish Acts, where his commercial activities are found. Look at this collection of human voices at:
http://www.irishacts.com/ezypal/index.p ... al_assault
You can hear demos for the Pa1X at: http://www.irishacts.com/vocal-assault/ ... n-demo.mp3 and http://www.irishacts.com/vocal-assault/ ... x-demo.mp3
On the first link you'll find more demos from the same package taken from the Triton Synth.

The second thing is the digital drawbars. I'm also a B3 fanatic, I toured with one for over 25 years and some of the presets in the Korg are really good. I was looking forward to playing with the drawbars live but how do you activate the chorus and leslie when you're in the digital drawbars mode?

If the (preset) sound is setup with leslie, and many are, then in most cases this is activated by moving the pitch-bender upwards (changing from slow to fast leslie and back). This also is the case for the Digital Drawbars. But you can assign this leslie function to one of the assignable switches or to the optional EC5 (5 Switch Multi-function Pedalboard).
Another suggestion might be to ask karmathanever, a kind member who owns a Pa2X now, for his Hammond B3 samples, with slow and fast leslie sounds you can easily mix with the volume sliders.

Have fun with your Pa1X.
Regards, Admar.

[jazzmammal]

Thanks for the suggestions. Those "Vocal Assault" vocals are all orchestral styles and are very nice but the Kurzweil Take 6 vocals are a pure jazz style Manhattan Transfer type of scat singing and that's what I need. I didn't hear any jazz styles in Vocal Assault. Do you know of any jazz vocals that are compatible with this keyboard?
You're confusing me with the comment about the drawbars. Are you saying I can activate the digital drawbars to control a preset organ patch? That's what I thought I tried at first and it didn't work but I'm brand new with this board and could have easily done something wrong. When I did get sound out of the drawbars, I only got a straight organ sound, no modulation or leslie at all and the joystick did nothing while it works great for the leslie on most of the presets. I'll play with it some more.

Bob

[admar]

Do you know of any jazz vocals that are compatible with this keyboard?

I'm sorry, have to skip on that but will keep an eye open.

You're confusing me with the comment about the drawbars. Are you saying I can activate the digital drawbars to control a preset organ patch? That's what I thought I tried at first and it didn't work but I'm brand new with this board and could have easily done something wrong. When I did get sound out of the drawbars, I only got a straight organ sound, no modulation or leslie at all and the joystick did nothing while it works great for the leslie on most of the presets. I'll play with it some more.

What I meant was try a preset drawbar setting and switch leslie speed by moving the pitch-bender upwards.
Now when you have selected a drawbar preset, press Menu and then Effects. Go to tab Effect D and look at the settings and remember them (or write them down). When you want the same leslie setting, just select the digital drawbar sound, press Menu, press Effects and go to Effect C (mostly used for reverb) or Effect D and make the settings as on the preset, or change it to your liking.

Admar

[jazzmammal]

Thanks, I think I get the drawbar/leslie thing. This is like being with the same woman for years and then suddenly changing. I'm used to the Kurzweil. It has the KB3 mode that turns the whole keyboard into an organ clone. You have dedicated buttons for percussion, chorus, leslie plus the drawbars and can simply play it live and make whatever changes you want. The Korg certainly has all the functions but it sounds like it requires some setup ahead of time. The good thing here is some of the Korg organ sounds seem to be based on the CX3 and that unit blows the Kurzweil organ away. At least the older PC2 model, the new PC3 is much better but also much more expensive and I'm not into expensive. Those voices are going to be a problem though. I just did a rehearsal with another group of players and got the same comments when I told them no voices on the Korg. Those Take 6 voices have almost become a signature sound for me even though I only use them once or twice on a gig. When I do use them they really have an impact. This is a classic example of finding one keyboard that does everything I want at the price I want. At age 63, I'm not into hauling a van full of stuff around and setting up my old "keyboard god" rig. Simple and light weight works for me now. I don't think I'm going to give up the Korg just for the voices but I will keep looking for a solution and if anyone knows of something, please let me know. Kurzweil sells the Take 6 samples on a CD but in Kurzweil format and afaik they're strictly for the K2500/2600 keyboard series and I doubt they can work on the Korg but maybe someone knows about that.

Bob

[admar]

Kurzweil sells the Take 6 samples on a CD but in Kurzweil format and afaik they're strictly for the K2500/2600 keyboard series and I doubt they can work on the Korg but maybe someone knows about that.

I saw the Take 6 voices you mentioned at Sweetwater: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Take6
I guess it's no good for the Pa1X, because of the format they are in. Pa1X only imports samples in Korg's ksf format, Akai S1 and S3 format, or aiff (MAC) or wav (Windows).
Found a sample library at Spectrasonics that might fille your needs, but rather expensive and more than you're looking for.
See: http://www.spectrasonics.net/libraries/vocalplanet.php
If I understand you correctly only the jazz library (a la Take 6) would be sufficient. The whole 5 cd package goes for $399,-
Will look around some more.

Regards, Admar.

[NikeVille]

Hi Jazzmammal,

Thanks for bringing up the subject of jazz/scat voices. I fell in love with the Roland scat voices several years ago (not familiar with Take 6). The Roland programming with falloff and other effects is addicting. I share your hope of finding a way to use them on PA1X.

About 3 years ago I asked the moderator about this. I'm surprised there doesn't seem to be much familiarity with that sound here. The guys are great and very helpful. Could you send a demo of your sound by MP3? With a little bit of exposure, maybe something more will emerge?

Gary