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M50 and Blind Users?
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michelkeijzers
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Joined: 08 Feb 2007
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 19, 2012 8:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A Korg is great, and even though the touch screen may not benefit you, everything can also be controlled by buttons/keys as explained earlier.
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rajarshi_sl
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Joined: 04 May 2011
Posts: 114

PostPosted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 3:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

@ minorkeys
what is the status of ur eyesight ?are the anywhere below 3/60 in both eyes as per snellen's chart?or way upwards?

it surely will be a challenge to get around with the touchview interface Neutral Neutral


and i think given the state of your eyesight,like u said in ur posts,it seems that u are headed towards rough roads...basically a musical instrument should be something that can give unbound joy/happiness rather than some challenge that places its player under a lot of struggle.....!


a korg keyboard is really a priced possession ...but basically it is no different from keyboards of other manufacturers....some keyboards from roland,yamaha are genuinely remarkable,considering their ease of use,navigability,build and above all sound quality ...some people tend to think that having a priced machine from a particular brand makes them expert....but it is not the company of the keyboard but the expertise of the keyboardist himself that makes him a real hero.expertise is primary,brand is secondary or may be tertiary....ur craving for korg is very similar to mine....i also wanted a korg all since my entire childhood but when i got one in my 26 th year of my life ....i started learning or rather realising out of my craving!just think that above all u dont want to get messed up with something like touchscreen which u r not meant for and that too becoz it is A KORG.what worse could it be had it been roland?

i wd recommend u to reconsider ur decision as m50 would entail a huge investment apart from some other profound difficulties owing to your poor eyesight.change m50 with any other thing even from korg provided that it is as simple as abc to operate.ask ur dealer.he could be of some help before its too late.as far as i can imagine m50 is clearly not meant for u...it will necessiate ur fingers to touch precicely at areas on the lcd that vary depending on the current screen on the display.....keyboards with dedicated buttons for program changes allow their users to operate even in the dark coz they have had all the buttons memorized in due course of their practice....even with gw8 anyone can rapidly(note i mean on the fly in a song by the word rapidly) swap different voices using the assignable favourite keys with 2 eyes shut provided they have some experience with the assignments of favourite keys.....this can never be done in m50 with 2 eyes closed and that too rapidly...


lastly the thing that u accept challenges is fine....but at the same time u should be clever in chosing the category/nature of challenges.if u really love challenges,then practice turkish march by mozart or works of chopin l day in and day out....those are real challenges for any keyboardist....dealing with complex engineering issues like touch screen by visually impaired person is more of a foolishness than a challenge....pls dont get seduced by brand.....and dont get me wrong...

wish u all the best Smile
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MinorKey
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Joined: 15 Apr 2012
Posts: 77
Location: Slovakia

PostPosted: Tue May 29, 2012 12:17 pm    Post subject: What's new! Reply with quote

Hello guys!

About a month passed since I have bought my M50 and although I only have had limited time to test it due to my ongoing studies, I thought I'd update you at least briefly on how I'm getting along with it.

I must say that I'm very satisfied with this instrument. I have no complaints as long as the key action is concerned. On the contrary - I actually like the way the keys feel.
I've read so many people complaining about the M50's 'poor' construction. I have to admit that I was afraid of the fact that they might be right. But again... No complaints. Could be that other Korg synths are constructed differently (didn't have the chance to compare), but the M50's construction is not bad at all - and this was my impression from the begining.

And now to the more personal part. I'm able to find and switch between my favorite programs and combis
without any problem. I can also copy a program I choose into a comby. For the time being these operations with patches are well enough for me, because there are many good factory presets in the machine I can use. I think that even if I saw properly I wouldn't be able to make my own patch, because I wouldn't even know where to begin.
However, this is not to say that the situation couldn't be better. Unfortunately, at certain points touching the display becomes unavoidable. For such cases my bro made me a special template (for now a piece of paper) I put over the display when needed. It has holes in it at exactly those spots on the display I need to touch. With it I'm for example able to choose the category of instruments I want.
By the way... Does anybody know why are the categories numbered?
- I guess it's only for a better visual orientation, because I haven't found any way of switching between them byy usingthe physical buttons yet.
- Any suggestions?

That's all from me for now.

Have a nice day!
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MinorKey
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Joined: 15 Apr 2012
Posts: 77
Location: Slovakia

PostPosted: Sat Aug 13, 2016 11:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

rajarshi_sl wrote:
@ minorkeys
what is the status of ur eyesight ?are the anywhere below 3/60 in both eyes as per snellen's chart?or way upwards?

it surely will be a challenge to get around with the touchview interface Neutral Neutral


and i think given the state of your eyesight,like u said in ur posts,it seems that u are headed towards rough roads...basically a musical instrument should be something that can give unbound joy/happiness rather than some challenge that places its player under a lot of struggle.....!


a korg keyboard is really a priced possession ...but basically it is no different from keyboards of other manufacturers....some keyboards from roland,yamaha are genuinely remarkable,considering their ease of use,navigability,build and above all sound quality ...some people tend to think that having a priced machine from a particular brand makes them expert....but it is not the company of the keyboard but the expertise of the keyboardist himself that makes him a real hero.expertise is primary,brand is secondary or may be tertiary....ur craving for korg is very similar to mine....i also wanted a korg all since my entire childhood but when i got one in my 26 th year of my life ....i started learning or rather realising out of my craving!just think that above all u dont want to get messed up with something like touchscreen which u r not meant for and that too becoz it is A KORG.what worse could it be had it been roland?

i wd recommend u to reconsider ur decision as m50 would entail a huge investment apart from some other profound difficulties owing to your poor eyesight.change m50 with any other thing even from korg provided that it is as simple as abc to operate.ask ur dealer.he could be of some help before its too late.as far as i can imagine m50 is clearly not meant for u...it will necessiate ur fingers to touch precicely at areas on the lcd that vary depending on the current screen on the display.....keyboards with dedicated buttons for program changes allow their users to operate even in the dark coz they have had all the buttons memorized in due course of their practice....even with gw8 anyone can rapidly(note i mean on the fly in a song by the word rapidly) swap different voices using the assignable favourite keys with 2 eyes shut provided they have some experience with the assignments of favourite keys.....this can never be done in m50 with 2 eyes closed and that too rapidly...


lastly the thing that u accept challenges is fine....but at the same time u should be clever in chosing the category/nature of challenges.if u really love challenges,then practice turkish march by mozart or works of chopin l day in and day out....those are real challenges for any keyboardist....dealing with complex engineering issues like touch screen by visually impaired person is more of a foolishness than a challenge....pls dont get seduced by brand.....and dont get me wrong...

wish u all the best Smile

Hi again.

Four years (and a couple of Korgs) later I realized that you were right. I recently got a used Motif XF and after only one week of playing with it I can do more with it than I ever could do on my Korgs. This is greatly due to nicely accessible 3rdparty software available for the Motifs.

Initially I thought that the level of “accessibility” Korgs provide would be enough, but I was wrong. Overtime I became more and more frustrated. After all, I had a couple of amazing instruments, but due to my condition (or the design of Korg products) I couldn’t use them to their full potential.

I thought that the Korg TR would solve a great deal of my problems, but again I had quite high expectations. Navigating it was better than the M50 and maybe I would have learnt how to do a lot of things on it without help, but I found that after some time away from the board I simply forgot where some of the less frequently used buttons where. I guess sometimes you just have to learn things the hard way.
In short, it seems to me that the XF is a lot more accessible than even the TR. This being said so far I’ve only made edits on the computer. As a matter of fact I generally prefer the computer route because you always get spoken feedback and you can see everything – for example how the factory patches were done.
When I think about it I don’t necessarily desire Korg hardware to be more blind-friendly. It would be well enough for me if the accompanying software was accessible, but it seems that even this is wishful thinking.
My only gripe with the XF so far is that there are too few velocity curves and often you have to smack the keys really hard to get the tone you want out of it, but that’s another story. Worst case I’ll solve this with an external controller.

So now I’m selling 2 of my Korgs. I don’t have the heart to part with my M3, because it sounds and feels amazing and I got it for a great price. I would like to develop an accessible editor for the M3/M50 in the future, but it would require a lot of work and time to implement even the most basic functions. That’s why I decided to get me something very accessible out of the box – something I can enjoy right away. Only too bad that a lot of folks over at the Yamaha forums are not all that friendly. Sad
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Current:

  • Korg M3 Xpanded 61 + EXB-M256 & EXB-FW
  • Yamaha Motif XF6 + FL1024M

Past:

  • Korg M50 61
  • Korg TR 61 + EXB-SMPL & 64MB RAM


Last edited by MinorKey on Sat Aug 13, 2016 8:31 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Darkside
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Joined: 16 Jul 2009
Posts: 57
Location: Estonia

PostPosted: Sat Aug 13, 2016 5:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hello again! So it's nice to find, that I'm not the only blind guy on Korgforums, hihi. But seriously I definitely think it's not a smart move of any kind for us to choose a product heavily based on touchscreen. Actually I'm not free of the damthing myself. Working with Volca bass and keys is quite OK, but my recently bought Yamaha ReFace DX needed some slight modification. No, I didn't smash it's touchscreen with a hammer, but instead used sighted help to mark out the areas between the touch sliders with small tape strips and it works just bombasticly! Now I have a nice little fm synth in my arsenal! As might be noticed, I'm somewhat a synth nerd, actually quite alot. There are probably a couple of secrets, that help me quite alot to get along in this wonderful land of synths and technology in general. It might be really down to my asperger's tendencies, so that my memory is very detailed and thinking is deeply based on logic and again small details. Electronic music is just my deepest interest and biggest love in this whole life. I enjoy reading manuals, so statements like "rtfm" generally don't apply here as I read as much as possible before buying anything. When I started more seriously exploring and learning this whole electronic music thing, there was only an old Pentium II with Windows98, but the more I learned, the more it became obvious, that hardware is a better rout for me. Computers break down, operating systems change and most anoyingly it isn't that easy to find a nice software package, that is both screenreader friendly and powerful enough for real good sound. So nowadays there are a bunch of synths and this little devil called the Microsampler, that is quite a center of my production really. Of course computer is still important for recording, editing and publishing, but not for gigging. As I also have a live project, it is very important to be able to get your stuff out and not just press play on a cd and prettend to play along. Sorry for somewhat ranty and lenghty post, but I found it a suitable place and time to put it here like that. You can still check me out on soundcloud as dRxId and make your impression on my music. I hope that more blind folks will not be afraid to achiev their dream, if that dream is making true electronic music.
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voip
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Joined: 27 Nov 2014
Posts: 3758

PostPosted: Sat Aug 13, 2016 8:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Would a CCTV/Video magnifier setup be of any use with things like the M50 touch screen?

.
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MinorKey
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Joined: 15 Apr 2012
Posts: 77
Location: Slovakia

PostPosted: Sun Aug 14, 2016 10:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi, Darkside.
Great you wrote It's always interesting to read what solutions/workarounds others come up with. Your post was definitively informative for me and I'm sure that other blind or partially-sighted visitors to this forum will also appreciate it.

Darkside wrote:
Hello again! So it's nice to find, that I'm not the only blind guy on Korgforums, hihi. But seriously I definitely think it's not a smart move of any kind for us to choose a product heavily based on touchscreen. Actually I'm not free of the damthing myself. Working with Volca bass and keys is quite OK, but my recently bought Yamaha ReFace DX needed some slight modification. No, I didn't smash it's touchscreen with a hammer, but instead used sighted help to mark out the areas between the touch sliders with small tape strips and it works just bombasticly! Now I have a nice little fm synth in my arsenal! As might be noticed, I'm somewhat a synth nerd, actually quite alot. There are probably a couple of secrets, that help me quite alot to get along in this wonderful land of synths and technology in general. It might be really down to my asperger's tendencies, so that my memory is very detailed and thinking is deeply based on logic and again small details. Electronic music is just my deepest interest and biggest love in this whole life. I enjoy reading manuals, so statements like "rtfm" generally don't apply here as I read as much as possible before buying anything. When I started more seriously exploring and learning this whole electronic music thing, there was only an old Pentium II with Windows98, but the more I learned, the more it became obvious, that hardware is a better rout for me. Computers break down, operating systems change and most anoyingly it isn't that easy to find a nice software package, that is both screenreader friendly and powerful enough for real good sound. So nowadays there are a bunch of synths and this little devil called the Microsampler, that is quite a center of my production really. Of course computer is still important for recording, editing and publishing, but not for gigging. As I also have a live project, it is very important to be able to get your stuff out and not just press play on a cd and prettend to play along. Sorry for somewhat ranty and lenghty post, but I found it a suitable place and time to put it here like that. You can still check me out on soundcloud as dRxId and make your impression on my music. I hope that more blind folks will not be afraid to achiev their dream, if that dream is making true electronic music.

_________________
Current:

  • Korg M3 Xpanded 61 + EXB-M256 & EXB-FW
  • Yamaha Motif XF6 + FL1024M

Past:

  • Korg M50 61
  • Korg TR 61 + EXB-SMPL & 64MB RAM
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MinorKey
Junior Member


Joined: 15 Apr 2012
Posts: 77
Location: Slovakia

PostPosted: Sun Aug 14, 2016 10:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

voip wrote:
Would a CCTV/Video magnifier setup be of any use with things like the M50 touch screen?

I think that it could work, but than I have virtually zero personal experience with magnifiers of this kind. My eye-sight was always too bad for 'em. Maybe the colours used or the display size could be an issue. As far as I know, however, black and white is fine in general.
_________________
Current:

  • Korg M3 Xpanded 61 + EXB-M256 & EXB-FW
  • Yamaha Motif XF6 + FL1024M

Past:

  • Korg M50 61
  • Korg TR 61 + EXB-SMPL & 64MB RAM
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voip
Platinum Member


Joined: 27 Nov 2014
Posts: 3758

PostPosted: Sun Aug 14, 2016 12:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This link might give some idea:

http://shop.rnib.org.uk/magnification/video-magnifiers/desktop-video-magnifiers.html

The systems seem very expensive, probably because the economies of scale applicable to widely used consumer goods do not apply to the much smaller visually impaired market. I'm sure it could be done more cheaply, though, using a standard video input-capable monitor, video camera, and an adjustable stand, such as a microphone stand or an Anglepoise type stand.

There are also portable video magnifiers being sold on eBay that might be worth a look.

Or the PC-Eye from Steller:

http://www.steller-technology.co.uk/pc_eye

.
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