Many of us bemoan the lack of options in controlling exactly WHAT fill goes to WHICH variation, or the confusing plethora of buttons if ALL options are available. Perhaps there is an easier way.....

What about touch (velocity) sensitive variation buttons?

You only need enough buttons for however many variations your arranger provides (say four). Now, if you hit a variation button softly, the variation you are playing would go to the new variation without a fill, if you hit it harder (think MPC or Fantom trigger buttons for size and texture) it will trigger the fill supposed to go to your new variation. One button, two functions....... Brilliant!

Now it gets better....... if you hit the button for a fill hard, and then immediately hit the button for a different variation softly, it will play the fill you intended, but then go to the variation YOU wanted, NOT the pre-programmed destination. Far more control, with fewer buttons......

What do you think......?

Diki: I don't think this is a good idea. When playing and selecting variation buttons in real-time you sometimes have to hit the button very quickly to get your hands back on notes and you have to be concerned with time as well to hit the button in the right part of the measure. It's something that you have to practice on some songs. I don't see how adding touch sensitivity to the mix would bring anything but unexpected results.

well i think it is superbly an awesome idea!! for people who are not in favor of it,there should be a switch that deactivates the feature then,as i would use it heavily..clap clap Diki..any more to share?

[This message has been edited by mr9000 (edited 10-21-2006).]

A good idea, Diki, especially if there is a way of disabling it for certain situations.

Highly unlikely it will ever see production.

Ian

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Remember to leave good news alone.

It is already available on the Yamahas. One hit triggers fills, two hits moves to the new variation without the fill.

And, when you get good at it, and time things just right, you can use the fill for one variation and click into another variation on the last tick of the fill.

Eddie

I would love Ketron features on Yamaha KB's such as....
Manual bass, Bass Lock, Drum Lock,
Arranger lock,

These these alone or mixed can help you create in real time thousands of style combinations on the fly....it is much needed.

I wouldn't use such a feature, because I don't always hit the buttons with the same velocity.

It might be nice that if you hit two buttons together that it would fill-up or fill-down.

This way, if you are playing variation 4, and you hit button 4 and button 1 at the same time, you would get the fill for button 4 and then variation 1.

Beakybird

I like the Yamaha idea 'one touch, two touch' ..... that should be universal, it just makes sense.

However, I still kind of like my big touch-pad idea for the reason of - I like to keep things as simple as possible. The fewer buttons the better..... the bigger (harder to miss!) the better! I feel (and probably anyone that had a drum machine in their old keyboard rig) that it's not that difficult to hit a button with exactly the same amount of control that you hit a key...... especially if they are big and soft enough (think MPC). I've seen a LOT of keyboard players lay into a drum machine pretty tastefully, no problem there with inaccuracy.

Aftertouch is another thing altogether..... I find that almost useless for triggering 'stuff' other than vibratos. It's just too hard to know whenever you might 'dig in' to the keyboard and inadvertently trigger the action. But velocity........ well, we use that on every key (61-88 of them!).

But I feel a lot of things could be simplified with velocity sensitive buttons....