Korg Forums

[subkol]

If I record a song using one of the factory styles after adding my own interludes etc.,can I save it on the keyboard itself? Where do I save it - on the songbook or is there any other place? If so how many songs of about 4-5 mins can I save on the keyboard itself?I want to play these songs from the keyboard itself on stage.If I transfer them to a SD card or USB can I play them from the SD card or USB? I play the steel guitar,not a keyboard player per se, and am looking at PA700 to easily compose tracks and use them for accompaniment on stage.

[Biggles]

You do not need the PA to do what you want.

Unless you have already bought one.

If you have bought one then look at the Korg Video Manual series on the 700 to learn how to use the Recording function.

It is also documented in the Manual which is readily available to download.

If you have not bought a PA then please advise and we can give you cheaper alternatives.
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Biggles
Lancashire, UK

[subkol]

You guessed it right - I have not bought one yet - Please advise.

[Biggles]

Whilst the Korg will do what you want a MIDI keyboard controller and DAW software like the free Cakewalk is all you need to create a backing track.

Once created export it as a Wav or MP3 and play that via a mobile device connected to your Amp / PA
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Biggles
Lancashire, UK

[Reuben]

If you have some keyboard playing skills then having a PA700 wouldn't be a bad way to achieve what you want.
You would do a quick record in the sequencer using style backing as well as playing some parts. You can overdub or replace parts as needed.
Then save this as a midi file. Midis take up up very little room so you can have many 100's of these either on the inbuilt disk or on a plug-in USB flash.
You can record the ones you want as mp3's within the PA700 and use these mp3's in a small player on stage.
There are also lots of free midi's floating around the net that once edited in the PA700 can form the basis of your backing. Again when happy with the midi then convert to mp3 to use on stage.
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[jgorin]

As you said, you want an easy way to create backing tracks, and using styles is a great tool. If you don’t need the keyboard on the gig, you should look into using Band in a Box software. You enter your chord progression and it makes a full backing track for you. This is a lot easier than building your own drums, bass, keys accompaniment parts from scratch.

[Musicwithharry]

You can record backing sequences/songs/MP3s on the PA700 in a few of different ways.

The most obvious way is to select a style that you want to use and then go into the sequencer and when choosing to record, select backing track record. From there, you will be able to record whatever song you want in its entirety and then save it to a media source. You can save your MIDI files (the sequences save to SMF format). You can also put a USB Flash drive into the back of the unit and/or you can also install a MicroSD card directly into the unit. I currently have an 8Gb card in mine, but I think that you can go all the way up to a 32Gb card. Simply select the media device you want to save to and go from there. I use the USB Flash drive as the source of importing new songs/styles that I want to work on internally in the PA700.

You can also record an MP3 of each song that you want to play. This will require you actually playing the song while it is recording the MP3 in real-time. You can also save these MP3 songs to a media device listed above.

You can also record MP3 songs from a program like Band In A Box or whatever. Create an MP3 of each song externally in one of those programs and then simply copy/paste those songs to the media device on the Korg. You can do this by hooking up the PA700 to your computer and enabling the USB connectivity in the Korg itself. This will basically turn the Korg and any media attached to it, as another hard drive seen in your computer. You could also create an SMF of the songs in the external program but you would have to reformat it to use the non-GM sounds in the PA700. It is a bit more cumbersome this way.

There is another thing that you can do for backing tracks as well. There is a feature on the PA700 that allows you to put in chords for whatever style you are playing. It is very useful but is limited to chords for that single style - i.e. - you cannot put chords for two different songs in the same single style. If you wanted to play 100 songs with the chords programmed, then you would need to create 100 style locations on the PA700 and put the chords in for each one. This sounds a lot more difficult than it really is.

You can create set lists in the Songbook feature as well and use whatever song/style, no matter its location (whether it is in internal memory (Korg Disk), MicroSD or USB Flash. Simply create the entry, point to the desired style/mp3 and set up the sounds you want to use to play over the top of them with. I do not think that this works with sequences though. Additionally, since I do not use the USB Flash drive as a source for live playing, I may not be completely accurate as to how to choose from the USB drive. My experience is from using the Internal and MicroSD storage options.

I would recommend not storing this type of data on the Korg Disk (its internal storage) as the size is somewhat limited for the internal disk and in my opinion, should be saved for system stuff and samples, etc...

I use a combination of styles and MP3s in my PA700 when playing my original material. I have albums of original songs that I have saved the soundbeds to as MP3 and stored them on the aforementioned MicroSD card. I then created a keyboard set (the sounds I wanted to use for each song) and saved that set (or up to 4 different sets) with the MP3 in the Songbook entry. I can then create/program setlists with the songs and select the order I want the songs to be arranged in. It works very well.

If I want to play with the sequences I have made/rearranged, I have to go into sequencer mode in order to play them.

I also have hundreds of SMFs that I have updated to use the non-GM sounds in the PA700 and they seem to work fine. The problem is that the free and even paid MIDI files on the Internet are of varying quality and are subject to the interpretation of those who programmed them. Some are simply terrible and some are wonderful (especially when using the non-GM sounds in the PA700).

I hope that this helps a bit...

Grace,

Harry
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[jgorin]

Harry has done an outstanding job of describing his process! Just wanted to know if there is anything else someone would add, like your microSD capacity, differing access times for various types of files, file management tricks - stuff like that will be very helpful to me, a new owner of a Pa700. Thank you!

[chediski]

I'm guessing I can play, let's say, some string riff on the keyboard and record it as a separate file and save it. Then do the same thing with various voices and save them. Then take them off via USB, transfer to my PC and import them into Adobe Audition, and mix it there and output as a single file to bring back into the Arranger as a one-touch background?

[jgorin]

Well, yeah, if the final file is an mp3, you can store it on a USB drive plugged into the Pa700, play it and play along to it using a kybd set. But, you cannot play an mp3 and run a Style at the same time. Korg rules.
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[Biggles]

Great job Harry.
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Biggles
Lancashire, UK