'This is all well and good, but doesn't seem easily do-able live onstage. I understand well about combining styles to make them more suitable (unfortunately, Roland's don't have multipads, so that option is out), but it seems a non-realtime function'

I dont get it. Who deeply edits styles whilst playing ??????? How many hands do you have ???

On the PA products you can use the sliders to reduce the busyness of a style instantly and in real time whilst you play, you can mute the elements of a style you can save these alterations in performance banks for instant recall at any time in live play . You can trigger multipads that have preprogrammed musical phrases that follow your chords just like another set of arranger patterns effectly giving you yet another variation on the style instantly. You can change the instruments in a style live in real time whilst you are playing if you want !

You can do more detailed event editing offline when you are not performing including substituting individual drum sounds and composing your own personalised drum kits, you can micro edit individual notes of instruments in a style including note velocity, note position , sustain etc for each instrument in each style and then save that as your edited style so that you can have your new self created personalised styles again available instantly as an over written factory style or new style in performance. You can buy sample drum grooves from live drums and import them into your styles to get an even more live feel.

Even if you had the historic function on the roland it is very unlikely that y#the manufacturers idea of 'busy' or over complex in terms of styles will be the same for everyone and for a pro performer i am certain that they will still want to tweak the style to their specification. Afterall a button that changes a full brass band to a small combo might still not fit the bill right ?

I have used only two maufacturers instruments in my short life as a musician but from my view point Korg could not have made the PA keyboards more performance focused for live playing musicians than they have, Although the PA2X will probably make me eat my words!

How much more live performance geared control and flexibility do you want ?

Spalding great post ....
little by little Im starting to realize all your saying about the PA800....Korg has really done their homework this time around...this baby is packed with so many features, I haven't even scratched the surface yet....!!! Thanx for sharing your knowledge with us.

AWESOME!

Hi Dreamer,
what I tried to say is that korg have matched certain pads to certain styles ie they've been assigned to go with a particular style. A lot of them are interchangeable.
Some of them are definately used more than once.

I'll see if the manual has a listing of the pads, if not I'll try & count them for you.
Some of them are rhythmic like piano arpeggio's & guitars strumming, some are one shots. It's a mixed bag.

Have you actually downloaded the PA800 manual from the Korg site??

I also found an advanced 100 page manual on my cd rom in regards to sound editing & sampling etc.

I kept reading references to importing "Grooves" & time slicing, sampling etc
but couldn't find any reference in the main manual. Fortunately it's all written up in the advanced manual on the cdrom, haven't quite worked out what it all means, be great if it can do some of the stuff the sd1 can with wav drum loops. Probably too much to hope for. haahaa.

best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Dreamer:
[B]

Hi Rikki,
thanks for your help; I have downloaded the PA2-X-pro manual from Korgpa.com : there is both a full manual (26 Mb) and a manual for advanced editing only (4.3 Mb). You will find all the info you need about importing samples, time slicing, etc in the latter in the "Sampling operating mode", at pag. 28.
The same manuals are available also for the PA-800, only the sizes are different.
Importing sampled loops and creating your own styles the way Ketron does is for me one of the most attracting features of these arrangers.

Link for the PA-2-X-pro manuals

Link for the PA-800 manuals

Andrea good luck with your new Pa800 /Pa2x!

Hi Dreamer,
thank you, I actually have the advanced manual on CD rom (came with the PA800).
What I couldn't work out at first was what "time slicing " meant.
I think I've finally worked it out, & it sounds like it could be even better than the option of just being able to load audio drum loops into the sd1+ and using the loops in a style.
The time slicing it appears allows you to manipulate the audio drum note data similar to what can be done with midi . If so, that sounds pretting exciting. Not sure how simple it will be to do, but a very interesting function.

I may download the PA2x manual as well, & see what the differences are.

The audio is not really of that greater importance to me, but good to know the pa has this function.

best wishes
Rikki

p.s I noticed on one of the other threads something to do with fills. As far as I'm aware it has 2 fills & 1 break per style. Personally I haven't noticed any problem with that.
I rarely use all 4 variations for a song, so I would have the option of customizing a fill to suit the variations I do use
(IF neccesary).

I'd even considered using a pad as a self drum fill, though not sure if musically that would work?? mainly because the style drum track would be playing as well.
Might be an option. I'm not too good on programming fills.

Personally I prefer the way the psr fills work in prference to both the sd1 & PA800, but the fact that it only has the 2 fills & 1 break wouldn't have stopped me from buying it. I think my KN7 had 8 fills, & I found quite often they didn't suit, some were way over the top.

Anyway, my 2 cents worth. If you're half way interested, be worth checking out to see if styles & sounds suit, the onboard style, pad, sound editing functions etc etc are brilliant. The size of the manuals is an indication of just what this keyboard is capable of doing if one wants to go in depth.


[QUOTE]Originally posted by Dreamer:
[B]Hi Rikki,

I confess that I was attracted especially by the PA-2X pro, because I thought that it could offer an interesting option as a master keyboard.
It really has some deep features: the sampled loops/time slicing feature basically means that you can record or import a sampled loop -even stereo- sync it to a style or assign it to a multipad and then it will play correctly, no matter the tempo of the style. This is concept which has been implemented only by Ketron, with the big difference that their sampled loops (called grooves) are mono and, of course, Ketron arrangers lack the multipads.
Another interesting feature of the PA-2X pro is the ability to assign every part of a style to an internal sound or an external module/keyboard; this means that, for example, for a given style you could play the PA-2 own internal drums and then assign the bass to a Motif ES rack, the guitar to a Fantom XR, the piano to a Kurzweil, etc.
Finally, you can use it as a master keyboard, because for each channel of the right hand (R1, R2 and R3) it can send bank and program changes to external sound sources, and these settings can be saved within a registration, or whatever Korg calls them. This is something that no other arranger keyboard is able to do.
Add to this the internal sampler and the quick loading time of the samples themselves (at least compared with the Tyros 2) and you get a picture that makes you think.
Too bad for the fill issue and also the relative lack of support (Korg styles are even more difficult to find than Roland's...)
Anyway, I think that for now I will just wait and see...here is also the Midjay Plus coming out this month...

Errata corrige:
the above post should read:

This is "a concept which has been implemented"

and "there is also the Midjay Plus"

The fills are fine.....there is no issue.

Maybe, but there are still just two of them per style... (plus the break, of course)