My Rather Daring Message to Korg

[MinorKey]

Hi there guys,

for a couple of weeks now I have been trying to reach Korg via their US site, however, so far I haven't received any kind of response. At first I didn't want to contact my local distributor, because I kinda hoped I'd get a direct answer. Silly me, right?
Anyway... 2 days ago I contacted my Slovak distributor afterall and got the recommendation to post my message here, so here it is:

Hello,

my name is Matej and I come from Slovakia. In April I bought my first Korg, an M50. I did not regret my choice as I absolutely love the way it sounds and feels. There is one thing, however, that could be better - and I mean a lot! Here I have to admit that this complaint of mine can be owed to the somewhat 'unique' situation I'm in.

Namely, I'm visually impaired. In fact, my condition is such that from the practical point of view I can be considered blind. Perhaps you can alredy guess what the reason I've decided to contact you for is - the touchview display.
Because of the level of my visual impairment, using it is not possible for me without the assistance of a seeing person. Here I must be honest that I knew that the M50's interface is not too 'blindfriendly' even before I bought it. Therefore, you may rightfully ask the question: Why did you buy it then?
The answer is plain and simple: Because it's a Korg! I wanted one for as long as I can remember. I love the superb sounds of Korg instruments and the endless musical inspiration they provide. Furthermore, all the keyboardists I admire have had at least one over the years. This, among other reasons, led me to buy the M50 despite of the fact that I knew I wouldn't be able to use all its features - at least not without help. And I'd do it again, because I wouldn't be happy with any other brand!

This brings me to my question. Actually, it's more of a feature request, but anyway...
If there is an OS update in the future, please, do add something as an 'accessibility mode'. One could turn it on/off via a special shortcut. Once turned on, one could use the buttons '4' and '6' as the left/right arrows and the buttons '8' and '2' as up/down arrows to navigate through the display. If a display item was activated (such as an edit field or slider) via the 'Enter' button the M50 would temporarily exit the 'accessibility mode' untill 'Enter' or 'Exit' is pressed so that numbers could be typed. This way the way the touchview display currently works wouldn't have to be altered.
Another solution could be to use the joystick as the arrow keys.
The touchview display wouldn't be such a huge problem, if there were alternate means to do everithing by using the physical buttons as well.

So my suggestion:
Even if my wishes don't come true, please, let there always be a second (and equally good) option for those that don't want to or can't use the display. And let's not just picture blind people here. There are other situations where using the physical buttons is much more convenient.
For example, the Microstation has four nice navigation buttons. Why not have them in all future Korg products?

Please, forgive me if I sound rude, but I'll keep on bothering you untill I receive some kind of response and untill Korg musical instruments become more accessible for all groups of people.
As I wrote: I don't mean to be rude, I just believe that this is a cause well worth fighting for - all should have the chance to enjoy their Korg as much as possible.

Hope my message reaches you.

Best wishes
Matej Golian

Now... I don't expect any kind of miraculous improvement (such as a built-in screen reader ), because I know that guys like me are a minority, which means that the demand for such improvements is just not worth considering from Korg's perspective. I can understand this to a great extent, because at the end of the day it's all about making more money to have the capital to put out new products. However, at the same time I also believe that some things could be done differently without dramatically increasing the production costs.
My condition is such that even if they incorporated my suggestions into their new products, I couldn't become fully independent, but it could make a difference. I'm happy with my purchase, because I don't think things could get any simpler with machines of this complexity. In terms of functionality the M50 is what I've always wanted. The only down sides to it are that I need someone to help me set it up the way I want it and that I just can't experiment with the effects and settings. But I like most of the factory presets, but as I wrote before, I don't believe it would be simpler with another synth. And I can always get some nice patches from the internet.
Here I must also thank Michel Kejzers and his PCG Tools - it has been of great help to me.

Thanks for reading, Korg.

[michelkeijzers]

MinorKey, I don't think a patch for the M50 will be launched ... for a commercial company it is mostly more worthwhile to spend time on newer products.

I'm glad PCG Tools works for you.

[MinorKey]

MinorKey, I don't think a patch for the M50 will be launched ... for a commercial company it is mostly more worthwhile to spend time on newer products.

I'm glad PCG Tools works for you.

Hello Michel, actually I'm of the same opinion, but I still think it's worth a shot. I can understand if nothing gets done with the M50, but I hope that they'll at least consider including some of my suggestions in their future products. I can even understand if there's no interest to do anything differently, but I'd really appreciate if I got at least some kind of answer.

[mocando]

The way I see it, you are asking for some kind of mouse behavior, of some sort. That would be a whole game changer, and a feature too difficult to implement. Can you imagine the precision you must have to pinpoint the exact spots where to click to do what you need?

As far as I'm concern, once you select an object, say a combi name, and back list, etc, you can move through the list with the wheel. And, in the case of needing to select a specific sound with buttons, you can save programs and combis in different banks, but using the same number, and once you select bank A, for instance, you can switch to bank B, and the number will be kept, actually changing to that program or combi.

If you give us more information about what specific thing you want to do, we might try and find a workaround. One thing I learned with Korg's is that there are many ways of doing the same thing.

You might want to hear at Rich Formidoni's video about organizing favorite sounds: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... O4-zohQ8pg

[MinorKey]

The way I see it, you are asking for some kind of mouse behavior, of some sort. That would be a whole game changer, and a feature too difficult to implement. Can you imagine the precision you must have to pinpoint the exact spots where to click to do what you need?

As far as I'm concern, once you select an object, say a combi name, and back list, etc, you can move through the list with the wheel. And, in the case of needing to select a specific sound with buttons, you can save programs and combis in different banks, but using the same number, and once you select bank A, for instance, you can switch to bank B, and the number will be kept, actually changing to that program or combi.

If you give us more information about what specific thing you want to do, we might try and find a workaround. One thing I learned with Korg's is that there are many ways of doing the same thing.

You might want to hear at Rich Formidoni's video about organizing favorite sounds: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... O4-zohQ8pg

Thanks for the reply.
I know the video you recommend and I organize my sounds just like it's being suggested in it. As I wrote before, selecting programs/combis is not a problem, because I can store these exactly in the order I want.
However, I would like to be able to perform some basic editing tasks as well as being to change some global options without the need to use the display.
Here are a few examples (maybe they aren't so basic after all):
Programs: changing the pitch and octave for each oscillator
Combis: making basic splits and layers, changing the pitch and octave for each timbre
Global: changing key transpose and the velocity curve

I admit that I'm not the one to know what can and what can't be done - only Korg can do that.
In many cases it seems that the problem is that there's no way of selecting the next item on the display using the buttons. For example, on the first global page 'master tune' is selected by default (if I remember correctly) and besides touching it, there's no way of selecting 'key transpose', fcor example.
Obviously, it's more complicated when working with some other pages, such as the one where you edit timbres, because the table-like structure of the page.
I can't get a few things.
For instance, why are the categories numbered on the display, if you can't actually select those by entering the category numbers on the numpad?
Secondly, in the manual it mentions that you can access specific tabs in a page by entering the page number followed by the number of the tab. So forexample, 'page select' + 32 should give me the second tab on page 3 (just an example, don't know if this tab actually exists), but it doesn't seem to work and I have no idea as to what I'm doing wrong.

[mocando]

Maybe what you need is a MIDI controller or a pedalboard for those kind of things. Since you can't do much with the M50 buttons, you can literally assign almost every MIDI message to an external controller and do what you need.

I'm not familiar with what it is on the market right now, though. But a quick search found this:

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/keyboard ... controller

I can see it has an octave up and down button already, so I imagine you can assign the rest of the features you like to the other buttons.

Good luck with that.