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realkuhl

Dudes, please allow me to introduce you to my boss and the head of Korg Inc.'s voicing team, Taiki Imaizumi. I've worked with Imaizumi-san since 1989 on over 15 Korg products and follow-up voicing support for many of those products. In this video, he introduces you very simply to the 9 different engines in Kronos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-Xfm_5Wuqc

Things of note in the demo:

The demo song at the start/end uses one of the new drum kits I created called Acoustic Freak kit. I sampled hitting guitars, rubbing finger on balloons, drills powering up and down and lots of other acoustic "found" sounds created for this unique drum kit.

Here's the list of the new "dance" drum kits:

Human Beat Box Kit

Urban Hip Hop Kit

R&B Kit

NuHop Kit

Granualr Acid Kit

80008 Kit (I made this kit compiling only 80008 "type" samples for kick/snare/hat/percussion)

90009 Kit (I made this kit compiling only 80008 "type" samples for kick/snare/hat/percussion)

Techno Klub Kit

Mad Analog Kit

Acoustik Freak Kit

There are then 19 new Ethnic Percussion kits including Daf, Tar, Tabil, Rek, Sabaat, Cajon and Djembe and more. So as you can see, there is seriously a TON of new Drums to work with in Kronos that are not in OASYS.

After the intro song:

Please listen carefully to the Piano patches - he clearly shows the features with damper noise and string ON noise that make the Pianos jaw-dropping.

Electric Pianos - the CLUNK when you hit hard is amazing. I have Scarbee Electric Pianos and they are 2 dimensional compared to these new EPs in the Kronos.

The rest of the Engine demos are nice and show both the flexibility and audio quality of KRONOS which is identical to OASYS in every way.

At 12:25 he shows briefly (too briefly!!) some of the new Wavesequence Programs I created for Kronos. There are10 new Wavesequence Programs - some of these taking a very long time to create Cool

At 12:37 he shows the 2 new Acoustic Drum kits that we created. The Fusion kit was recorded in Los Angeles (Dan Philips was there, too) and the rock kit I recorded here in Portland Oregon at a studio that has a massive wooden ballroom upstairs that is wired into the studio downstairs (Secret Society). These 2 kits represent hundreds of hours of painful work to get 8-velocity drums that have phase locked matching not one, but THREE different ambiances that you can control the balance between. I won't even tell you how many months it took to make each kit, but I hope you hear the end result even in this short demo....

There are actually 8 different variations to the Rock Drum kit - 4 variations with Snare ON (Dry, Ambi1, Ambi2 and Ambi 3) and 4 variations with Snare OFF (Dry, Ambi1, Ambi2 and Ambi 3) . I FREAKING LOVED the drum kit with the snares off. It's such a beautiful sounding kit - you can hear it at the 15:00 part of the demo.

Also, you won't hear these in the demo, but I created a bunch of new DSP Synth Programs and Jack Hotop and Myself created over 90 new Combinations for Kronos. The voicing team also went thru every Program and Combination and added drum track and in many Program cases, stronger KARMA settings to further fire up everybody's inspirations.

Hope you enjoy the video and I can't wait till you all get a Kronos of your own to start a new musical journey with.....
_________________
John "Skippy" Lehmkuhl
Composer, Engineer, Independent sound designer (Korg, Spectrasonics, Camel Audio, Native Instruments and many others)
Sound designer / Rhythm Monkey

Custom Sounds and Free Video Tutorials for
Virtual Instruments: www.pluginguru.com

My comments and opinions are not official statements from Korg Inc. I'm not official !!

jimknopf · Platinum Member Joined: 17 Jan 2011 Posts: 3374

What you tell us sounds quite exciting and promising, besides the demo.

Do you happen to know what kind of drums were used for the L.A. Fusion kit?

After the first demos in January I still preferred my Scarbee samples over what I heard from the Kronos EPs (not speaking of my real Mk I). The reason simply is that while I DO like the incredible stepless dynamics of modelled sampling, I often find the results to sound MUCH too artificial, especially in the high range of the various Rhodes models. So I heavily dislike the completely unreal sounding thin bell ringing (instead of a substantial sustained tone) in some of the presets: this is just not how ANY real Rhodes sounds, rather like an artificail Lounge Lizard modelled sound does.

BUT: meanhwile I also heard more realistitic (in this case meaning: more dry and more round sounding in the upper ranges) preset sounds, and I'm more confident, that you can get nice dynamics while still preserving enough of the real Rhodes sound/s even in the upper range.

The simple thing is, as long as it does not sound like the real deal, I would most times still prefer a less dynamic Scarbee Rhodes over an artificial sounding thing with great dynamics. The basic sound just has to fit, and I hope and think that can be achieved without still having to rely on Scarbee samples or the like.

The demo was nice and added some things to the well known, but the repetition of the same presets over and over in most of the demos becomes tiring. There should be lots of other interesting patches to test, especially from the VAs. The Metheny Piano Preset just sounds great!

EJ2 · Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 11:56 pm Post subject:

Thanks for keeping us posted, Skippy. I can't wait to get my hands on KRONOS. Although with a Karma, M3-73, and OASYS 76, I have enough to keep me busy till my Super-K comes in. Frankly, I really don't consider any redundancy here. A KRONOS will be a lot easier for me to transport when I migrate back and forth between my larger studio in Canada and smaller one in Florida.

Kudos to Korg's KRONOS team.

Cheers,
Jim (aka EJ2)
_________________
Cheers,
Jim (aka EJ2) Karma-Lab Associate Combi Developer

CATALYST v 2 Blast of Inspiration for KRONOS & OASYS: http://www.karma-lab.com/sounds/catalyst2.html
CATALYST v 1 Combi Explosion for KRONOS, OASYS, M3, & K-M50: http://www.karma-lab.com/sounds/catalyst1.html
CHEMISTRY 3, a Groove Injection for Your Karma: http://www.karma-lab.com/sounds/chem3.html
SoundCloud MP3 Demoshttps://soundcloud.com/ej2-sc

Bertotti · Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 12:38 am Post subject:

Nice, but my only problem with all of them so far is they just blow past the orand section, play a bit and whiz on by. I would love to see what someone could do with it using some of the other functions and controls, tweak people and let us see. I'm probably one of the few organ fans though.

rrricky rrrecordo · Senior Member Joined: 26 Jan 2011 Posts: 448

The high pitched artifacts in the epianos are way too prominent and would drive me nuts - although it might be ok live with screaming geeters. I hear some (albeit very faintly) in the acoustic pianos, not too bad really, and the piano samples seem quite well done. I still prefer my first gen Ivory and Pianoteq though. The synths are ok to my ears, nothing I don't already have covered though with legacy collection, omnisphere, logic synths and my AAS and NI plugs.

Kronos ain't gonna replace the macbook for me. I was hoping, but ah well.

blinkofanI · Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 3:31 am Post subject:

Dude, make your mind once you'll have heard it in real, not through compressed MP3 YouTube videos. Until then, you didn't hear Kronos. I can tell you this because i heard it at NAMM and i'm a pretty converted softsynths/MainStage musician. This thing made me wonder...

Blink
_________________
System 1: Korg Z1EX with UA Apollo Twin X and M1 Macbook Air. System 2: Korg Trinity V3 with HDR, DSI Mopho DT, Korg 01/W Pro, Soundcraft NotePad-8FX.

Dave Ferris · Joined: 09 Jul 2010 Posts: 45 Location: Glendale, Ca.

Can anyone identify the first tune he briefly plays on piano at the very top of the vid ?

A test. Smile

_________________
http://soundcloud.com/dave-ferris

2005 NY Steinway D

rrricky rrrecordo · Senior Member Joined: 26 Jan 2011 Posts: 448

Sure blink, I'll give it a whirl once Kronos lands in Toronto.

burningbusch · Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 4:08 am Post subject:

Too funny, high pitched artifacts in the EPs. The EPs sound great especially the Mark I. I'd like to hear the Mark II without effects.

Busch.

burningbusch · Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 4:11 am Post subject:

Dave Ferris · Joined: 09 Jul 2010 Posts: 45 Location: Glendale, Ca.

Good one B.. Cool

_________________
http://soundcloud.com/dave-ferris

2005 NY Steinway D

rrricky rrrecordo · Senior Member Joined: 26 Jan 2011 Posts: 448

Listuened again thru akg 240 phones, much better!

billysynth1 · Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 8:44 am Post subject:

Thanks John for posting this demo and all the explainations of the meticulous work you went through to get some of the required sounds.
The new 90 combi's sounds great.

I cant wait to get my K-88. This will definately compliment my O-88.

Regards
Billy
_________________
Yamaha C1 Grand Piano.
Korg Oasys 88, Jupiter 80
Kronos 88, V Synth GT
I am a student of classical piano...I am not a classical pianist.

Randelph · Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 9:32 am Post subject:

Realkuhl,
Thanks for the heads up and all the great work. Those drums sounded amazing!

It's great to see the head programmers playing the board. It gives a clue as to how they approach the sounds- their use of controllers, dynamics, KARMA, etc.

And to have a picture of the personality behind much of the sound creativity is refreshing. Is Korg yet another faceless, impersonal mega corporation, or is Korg an innovator with many talented faces dedicated to outstanding sound quality and musician-ease-of-use?

These days it seems like the latter- nothing like the Oayses / Kronos to get your team excited! Must be a dream come true to finally have Oayses quality at standard workstation prices- the future is good indeed!

As a further thought on all this- I just finished watching the 3d season of Kyle XY on Netflix. It's the best genius-superhero depiction I've seen (probably because they were so starved for family life, so they cared about other people and wanted that experience of tribe), in large part because it showed the effect of having really smart and emotionally connected people around- EVERYONE got smarter and more on top of things, it was a collective boost.

And of course, this was a totally fictional story. But I vote for that kind of world- it's like admiring the players on a sports team or the members of a band, and getting insights into how they do it and being further inspired and connected. You all are our mentors and sponsors on some level, and with the Kronos you've delivered the most powerful single musical instrument ever devised (at least at these prices) so it's great to see more participation and face time.

And if Korg has a runaway hit with the Kronos, I would hope that means there could be on-going Korg sponsored instructional videos, or even just the budget to have a someone running contests for instructional videos- winning the worlds most compelling keyboard would be a huge incentive(!), and you could maintain standards by only putting videos up on the Korg Youtube page that judges determine are worthwhile. Ditto for wiki-pedia style info and written tutorials.

And some kind of involvement/sponsorship of 3d party sounds/samples/etc. Motifator.com figured out a sweet partnership with an interested 3d party who apparently does a lot of the leg work keeping the website up. I would think with the Kronos and its mass adoption, that there'll be a renaissance in sound design-

Randelph

jerrythek · Platinum Member Joined: 28 Jan 2002 Posts: 2931