Korg Forums

[Jan1]

Expressive E will launch a new synth/key-based controller in Summer 2019: Osmose.
On the homepage there are videos demonstrating the different controller options available, very impressive.

But I have mixed feelings about the Osmose.
On the one hand I am glad that finally someone releases a key-based controller with various real-time controller options.
A larger keybed would have had my preference (76 or 88 keys), but I can get by with 49 keys for solo instruments, and the various control options allow for much more real-time expression than a traditional keybed, even though it lacks modulation through an up and down motion on a key (Y-axis motion).

On the other hand I do not like the sounds I have heard coming from the engine in the Osmose, the kind of 'depressing post-industrial type of sounds', and some of the emulations like for instance the overblown flute sound artificial, 'not quite there yet'.

Since I already have a Seaboard Rise 49 and the Osmose costs 1079 Euros (early bird pre-order price) I'm in doubt, especially since I will be buying it for the controller options only and not for the onboard engine.
So far there's nothing on the market which offers this kind of expression with a traditional keybed, that's the big plus of the Osmose.

[voip]

Hmm, reminds me of the Sinclair QL, for some reason.

The expressive possibilities are rather impressive.

A 61, 73, or 88 keys version would be better still.

.

[Jan1]

[Jan1]

Just two days ago I decided to make a deposit for the Osmose, and when I checked the Expressive E site again tonight I noticed that the first batch is sold out already.
It shows that there is a great demand for traditional keybeds featuring more expressiveness.

[Narioso]

Yamaha had breath controllers but stopped manufacturing those like 10 years ago.

Not even that took off - not sure what the hype is about with this key bed.

I had an Arturia keyboard with breath controller input - nowhere to be found.

There were some doing breath controllers trying to collect interest in a thread somwhere - but seems it did not happend.

You want as you play a note be sure
- that you didn't shake
- that you didn't tap
- that you didn't both tap and press

Musically what is lost not having those?

I feel a bit inhibited when doing eDrums - not enough zones or expression like a hit with a rod, brushes or mallets instead of sticks - you have to switch articulation in receiving midi gear doing that.

Maybe this keybed can make that happend in a flash - to get another percussive sound - but you still have so many things to consider that you "don't do the other things".

I was looking at getting a really high end strings library - and were facing all kinds of strokes and articulations and techniques.

Here is sample
"60 Violins - Short
60 Violins - Short Pizzicato Bartok
60 Violins - Short Soft Col Legno
60 Violins - Long
60 Violins - Long Super Sul Pont
60 Violins - Long Super Flautando
60 Violins - Long Soft CS
60 Violins - Long Col Legno Tratto
60 Violins - Legato
60 Violins - FX"

so had to look at glossary to even grasp some of this

So this is just the LONG techniques

"LONG TECHNIQUES
LONG
This is the most vanilla of the ‘long notes’ we have record-
ed. The basic standard playing style, recorded with and
without vibrato, and sometimes with ‘molto vibrato’ or a lot
of vibrato! Occasionally you’ll see ‘senza vib’ which means
‘without vibrato’. You’ll sometimes see ‘dolce’ which means
‘sweetly’ and this refers to a tasteful amount of vibrato. You
can use the Modwheel, or a slider set to CC1, to control the
‘dynamic’ of the sound, this smoothly crossfades between
very soft (or ‘pp’) recordings, through to very loud (or ‘ff’).
Also you can use a slider set to CC21 to control the amount
of vibrato, smoothly crossfading between no vibrato all the
way up to the maximum vibrato.
CON SORD
This is short for ‘con sordino’ which means ‘with the mute’. A
small rubber mute is attached onto the bridge, and this has
a damping effect on the strings, that produces an extremely
beautiful sound. This is softer than the ‘open’ sound, but
still very dynamic in range.
SOFT CON SORD
As above but only the very quietest dynamic layer.
HARMONICS
If the player holds down lightly on the string a perfect 4th
interval up from the note they are fingering, you hear what
is called an ‘artificial harmonic’ sound - two octaves up from
the note being fingered. This is called ‘artificial’ to distin-
guish it from the natural harmonic series of the open string.
These ‘natural’ harmonics can be heard by moving the fin-
ger up and down the string lightly while bowing.
SUL PONT
Short for ‘sul ponticello’ - meaning ‘on the bridge’ - here
the player bows very close to the bridge which produces
a brittle and edgy sound, always reminding us of nails on a
chalk board!
SUPER SUL PONT
As above but taken to the extreme! Played as close to the
bridge as possible.
SUL TASTO
Playing with the bow over the fingerboard, to produce a
thinner more delicate tone. This is different from ‘Flautan-
do’ in that it is not specifically required to be ‘flute like’ or
‘harmonic like’ and therefore is more of a very very soft del-
icate but yet ‘normale’ sounding tone.

SUPER FLAUTANDO
This refers to a soft ‘flute-like’ way of performing on a
stringed instrument. Often the bow will be near or over
the fingerboard, which gives a very different character to
the sound from the usual bow position. Sometimes we de-
scribe this to the players as ‘harmonic like’ and this gives
them a steer toward a more ‘glassy’ and delicate, often non
vibrato sound.
TREMOLO
The player rapidly moves the bow while keeping the left
hand fingering a single note. The effect is a shimmering
one when played softly, and a very aggressive one when
played loud.
TREMOLO CS
As above but with the mute attached (Con Sordino)
TREMOLO HARMONIC WAVES
Combining the “Tremolo” and “Harmonics” techniques de-
scribed above but also played from side to side across the
band at a conducted speed.
TREMOLO CS SUL PONT
Tremolo, played with a mute on (Con Sordino) and also
played close to the bridge (Sul Pont)
TREMOLO CS PONT WAVES
Combining a number of the techniques described above,
Tremolo, Con Sordino, Sul Pont and Waves.
COL LEGNO TRATTO
Literally, ‘Drawn With The Wood’. This style of playing is to
turn the bow over and play the string with the wood of the
bow. Usually players will bring a practice bow or a less ex-
pensive one for this, as their main bows can cost tens of
thousands!"

So are you going to have immediate access to those as you play on keys?
It really makes it harder to play, doesn't it?

It's hard enough to get a nuance and right timbre anyway. You want to be sure you don't shake or tap anything - unless that is what you are going for.
_________________
MIDI gear: Sequential REV2.16, Prologue-8, Hammond XK-3C, Kawai MP7SE piano, Nord Lead 2X, Roland D-05

[iowagold]

PRETTY HOT ITEM!!
well for me an 88 key version would be a deal breaker!!
just think for a roland integra7 supernatural
this would unlock a few things for me!!
and think on any midi chain this could be HOT!!
yea percussion!!
this would be cool for any B3 player!!
the touch could control lots of parameters!!
think on that one!!

hope they send one to us!!
I will give it a go for the current in progress sessions here in the studio!!

and as far as breath controllers
yea I have them here!!
this would work perfect with them!!
one more dimension of control!!
_________________
my site klimaco.net
Current Gear: korg m3 expanded radias firewire 88 key Radias r on mat, korg radias r on mat on 61 key bed, Korg triton rack w 96mb ram scsi port, 5) korg RADIAS-R on big rack, korg kaossilator pro plus, 6) roland integra7, 4 Roland sc55, 2 roland sb55, 5) fostex 2016, behringer fx2000, 2) roland a800 pro, 2) roland a88 and 2) a49, roland juno, Doepfer MAQ 16/3, 2 Manikin Electronic Schrittmacher, most soft synths. cake walk all old and new versions.
3 schecter guitars, 3 elevenracks, most mxr effects, 2 zoom r24, avid pro tools 11.
MRT midi Breath Controller. 6 studio rooms.

[Kevin Nolan]

I put down the deposit for one when they announced it. I agree that for a polyphonic aftertouch keyboard at least 61 notes would be desirable.

However - this is more than a polyphonic aftertouch keyboard, it has those other 'dimensions' of expression on a per key / voice basis - so even for solo playing, you get to control three parameters on a per key basis - and that's the reason I bought it.

Coupled to the fact that it comes with its own synthesizer engine than includes the likes of virtual acoustic and FM synthesis among others, where the voices are likely to be optimised for playing on the device; and the all round very keen (discount) price - it just seems like a no brainer. Its build quality looks very good and I have to say its great to see a very different looking device too.

Note that the OAYSYS and Kronos Synth engines are truly polyphonic in every way. And, the offer _very_ deep modulation possibilities too - on a per voice basis - so I'm really looking forward to linking this up to my OASYS to see how that plays out.

Simply put - there is a gargantuan side to OASYS and Kronos that we never get to harness through the keyboard supplied - the polyphonic aspect to the voice architecture, so I'm hoping this device will finally unleash that potential; and actually - for that kind of 'exploratory' synht type access, the form-factor and 49-key size work quite well in a studio environment already dominiated by the OASYS.

A win-win-win

[Jan1]

From the Expressive E site:

"Will there be other form factors of Osmose than 49 keys?
For the moment, we concentrate on finalizing Osmose as it is advertised, and making it the best product possible, featuring 49 keys with Augmented Keyboard Action.
Depending on the market response, we might consider bringing A.K.A. to other form factors as well, but this is something for the farer future and there are no current plans. It means that A.K.A. will be exclusive to the Osmose for quite some time."

If an 88 key version had been available I would have chosen it immediately, but since it is going to be a long time before that will happen I settled with the 49 key Osmose.

[Kevin Nolan]

Actually - you can map those articulations to MIDI velocity ranges, or mod wheel (or any CC) value-ranges - where you'd likely get to know the feel of it quite quickly to affect the articulation changes you want in real time or near realtime, and where inaccuracies occur just MIDI edit in your DAW recording.

Cinematic Strings 2 already offers this, out of the box where at higher velocities legato-type articulations change to pizzicato. There's no need for a multi-dimensional keyboard for such articulation changes.

And of course - if you really want seamless articulation and acoustic timbral changes within the live performance - there's Supernatural Acoustic on the Jupiter 80 which implements virtual acoustic and behavioural modelling on 77 acoustic instrument 'models'; while of course the Yamaha VL variants, and indeed the OASYS/Kronos STR-1 all offer virtual acoustic models where the timbre of the sound (and in many cases the articulation) changes with a range of existing MIDI controllers - velocity, aftertouch, breath control, modulation wheels, ribbons. the possibilities are already endless.

Indeed many OASYS/Kronos Programs and Combi's across strings, woodwind and brass are actually programmed exceedingly well in this regard with articulaiton changes affected by a combination of note velocity ranges and controller movements / selection. I'd go as far as to argue that OASYS/Kronos are among the very best, if not the best, workstations in this regard. If you go through many of these programs you'll find the quality is there due to a combination of factors - the sheer size of the HD1 library, the detail in the programming and how well all that marries to the OASYS/Kronos hardware keyboard and controllers. Some _very_ capable programs across HD1 in this regard that have gone frankly totally under the radar and unapprecited because of the on-slaught of more dedicated sample libraries.

I use the VL1, OASYS and Jupiter 80 and truly, all of those, without polyphonic aftertouch, offer stunning virtual acoustic instruments of extraordinary performance capability at highest possible quality.

Almost none of this needs polyphonic aftertouch because it's mainly solo instruments that we are interested in modelling for solo ultra-realistic performances. Channel aftertouch and all of the above mentioned MIDI and workstation-specific controllers work wonders when you practice with them (it took me about a year to learn how to get passable results from the breath controller on my VL1 ). The limit was me - not the existing controllers !!

But as said - if you want complext articulation changes in polyphonic strings, the likes of Cinematic Strings, or indeed NI Symphony Series - and I'm sure a plethora of others - allow for complex changes (up to 8 articulations in the case of NI Symphony Strings) to be affected in real time from any single MIDI controller or CC value-ranges on bog-standrd MIDI controllers.

In any case - where keyswitching is needed, you effectively have "polyphonic" means of affecting those keyswitches whether the key switches are allocated to the lower octave of, say, an 88 note controller because that lower octave doesn't play sound - it only changes articulations - so there's no interference and they act effectively as two separate controllers - one for keyswitching and the other for performing. All possible on any MIDI keyboard.

Or as many media composers do - have a separate small one or two octave keyboard controller just for articulaiton switching and it leaves your full 88 note controller for just playing.

If you can master that, on standard MIDI controllers you're doing amazingly well - and any limitations encountered won't be in the capabilities fo the keyboard contoller - it'll be your realtime skills in articulation switching. Lack of multi-dimensional keyboard surely not the issue.

[Narioso]

[Jan1]