Chris,

Can you give us sneek at the new keyboard coming from GEM this coming winter NAMM?

Sorry. All is under wraps until mid-september.

Chris

Thanks for your response Chris. I was out of town this weekend and just read this post. I believe I understand now what Joost was saying. When you play a minor chord and then press fill won't that change the tonality to minor? Unless when you say quickly you mean "very quickly". Do you play a minor or 7th, hit fill and then play a major? Sorry for being so dense on this one. I'll will try this when I get home from work. Any further clarification would be appreciated.

[This message has been edited by Vic01 (edited 08-13-2001).]

You only need to hit the approprite chord type slighty before or even once the fill has started, (or anytime during the fill for that matter). The actual content of the fill is not necessarily minor, 7th or anything else; it's whatever you choose to program in there.

The original intention, since the names of these fill riff are MINOR, 7th or whatever, was for you to program a fill which features appropriate notes for minor or 7th tonality. However, since we're using this feature for a different purpose you can program whatever you like into these riffs and that's what you'll hear when you hit the fill.

Basically each fill riff is an empty eight track sequence. you can program whatever you want in there.

If the minor and 7th fill riffs are empty, (as is the case with most factory styles), then, if you hit the fill button while playing a minor or 7th chord, the machine will simply take the one fill riff which does exist, (usually the major), and temporarily modify it's content to make it sound minor, (by flattening thirds), or 7th, (by adding flattened 7ths). However, if the minor or 7th fill riff does contain something then you will hear this exactly as programmed.

Hope this helps
Chris

P.S. For many factory styles, you may actually find that the MAJOR FILL riff is empty and the one and only fill for each variation resides in either the MINOR or 7th FILL riff location. Some of our programmers found that this facilited better conversion depending on the content of the fill.

Thanks for the detailed explanation Chris. This clarifies the whole fill issue for me. I did notice that many of the factory fills only contain riffs in the "major" section so when I fingered a minor or seventh, the fill sounded identical. Many of my user styles have riffs in the minor and seventh chord sections and I have now successfully use these to provide additional fills within the variation. Its a great feature to be able to program in new fills into my user styles or even copy over a factory style to a user bank and create new fill riffs in those. The WK8 has so many features under its hood that give me the ability to create a song just the way I'm hearing it in my head. It will be interesting to see what the new Gem arrangers offer. The sequencer in my WK8 rocks and I'm a veteran of computer sequencers since the cakewalk for dos days. Keep up the great work because you're helping so many people get the music out of their heads so others can enjoy it also.

Thanks for the encouraging words. I wish I could tell you more about what's coming down the pike. Not too log to wait now. I think you're going to be impressed!

Chris

Chris,

I am sure it is going to be great. We are thankful that you can join us here in the forum.