Problem with Karma is that its much more complicated to use/program then an arpeggiator or Arranger. While the demo's sound great and people like Stephen Kay and Jordan Rudes made some great performaces on the KARMA, its not yet usable for all and everyone with less musicall knowledge.

Next to that the musicall styles most arranger players use are based on static patterns, Waltzes Foxtrots and Polka's don't have much use for random patterns. Maybe one track with a little randomness to make your music more lively..

But many modern and Jazzy music styles have much more use for this randomness, people that love to improvise will greatly appreciate Karma, more basic musicians that just like to play/copy the orriginall music will not have that much use for it.

I can see many good things about Karma, but i am currently wondering if KARMA gets time enough to be further developed for Korg, Kay is currently doing a huge project to implement KARMA on Openlabs and is allready 9 months overdue.

Korg may even choose to step back to an ordinairy Arpeggiator with their next top model. Opinions over the success of Karma diferentiate from person to person. I really like the possibilities of KARMA but do performing musicians of all kinds and studio's have much use for KARMA.

Dude, please take this as constructive criticism and not as a malicious post. First, I'm only posting this because it sounds like, from your post, that you think this is a 'passable' performance. Trust me, it is not. The biggest and most obvious problem is the rhythm. Advice - better to hit a 'clunker' in the right place than to hit the correct chord in the wrong place. For one thing, you would never be able to play with anybody in the world. It is questionable (in my mind) whether musicality (rhythm, pitch, taste - knowing whether or not something sounds good) can even be learned. I know a few people who have none of the above but still love music. I think that's great, but realistically, they will never become even mediocre musicians. The lucky ones learn that early on. For instance, most kindergartners can sing simple songs both in tune and rhythmically correct. If you can't do that by the time you've reached adulthood, chances are, music is not for you (other than to enjoy at some level other than actually playing it).

One of the 'problems' with today's synths and workstations (and arrangers) is that they are capable of incredibly pretty sounds. Throw in automatic arpeggiators, 'Karma', styles, etc., and they can convince some very unmusical people that they have musical talent or at the very least, are capable of making beautiful music. In the early days of computers, there was a saying, "garbage in, garbage out". That also applies to today's wonder machines known as Workstations and Arrangers.

Here is what I would suggest. Give yourself another year??? and then re-access your progress - or better yet, have someone you trust not to feed you bulls--t, do it for you. If you don't like what they have to say, get another neutral but honest opinion. If it turns out that you're in that unlucky 1% than can't carry a tune or keep a beat, then take the money you were going to spend on the next 'latest, greatest' workstation, combined with the money from the sale of your M3, and treat yourself (or your spouse, if applicable) to something else you want (get a pilot's license - aviation is a great, if expensive, hobby).

I hope you don't find this post too hurtful as it was not intended that way, but sometimes it's in the best interest of an individual for someone to step up and inject a bit of honesty into a situation. I apologize in advance if this post offended you. It's intent was to make you aware of something you may not have been aware of.

chas

I hear you Bachus but its the randomness of Karma that makes it impractical for arranger play and most conventional music. No matter what mathmatical equations and parameters and rules concerning the range of notes , the velocity the sustain the tempo etc that all go into making a simple piece of music ,you cant programme imagination , you cant programme creativity and you cant programme musicality. You can fake it which is what arrangers do to a great extent by having set phrases and passages playedby skilled real musicians and having 3,4,5, or whatever number of preprogrammed variations that are provided. You can only programme music that obeys certain pre selected rules to govern the sounds that it produces which might make something that is remotely musical but it does not make it 'tasty'.

Even for music like Jazz Karma is no use. Musicians who improvise do not play random notes that obey mathematical rules for the sake of obeying those mathematical rules. The notes and phrasing is intentional not random! ! They play phrases or single notes that are in context with what was played before and after but diferent and tasty! Thats why korg and yamaha hire true musicians to play styles. You cant program authentic musicianship. You can only copy it that. Only experience provides the skill in the first place. Muscicians play phrases that are appropriate for the groove and tempo of a piece that are actually not just musical but pleaseing to the ear and speak to you. You cant programme a piece of computer software to develope 'skill' and taste and style and appropriate phrasing and creativity. Intelligent technology is still light years away from actually producing anything with even the intelligence of a worm much less a skilled musician .

Karma may well be the future for music and arrangers but that is more likely be because music wont be made by musicians as we currently know them but by people who think tweaking knobs and altering modulation and filters is making music. That in my opinion will be a sad day for music.

Chas, i'm not offended and nothing but i don't agree with you.

anyway thing is my rhythm is crappy because i'm overwelm with all this keyboard stuff, i'm VERY good at rhythms, i even gave advanced course in rhythms and percussions but i will have to be patient until i get over this harmony,notes.... stuff

When i started with hands drums i was also having much difficulty, took me many month to be able to get a simple rhythm stable but i have a very strong will and got over that with many thousand hours of practice

And now again i'm against a wall but it's no problem, it will take the times it take to get over it, it's only a matter of times and nothing else!!!

I agree that somes peoples are not musically inclined as me (or any other forms of art can suffer this also) BUT i disagree that they can't succeed, the only thing that make someone fail is when he stop.

Remember there is no try, do it or don't do it but don't try !!!

i got over so many of my limitations with years that i can say that we have very little of them, it's just a matter to overcame them.

I hope you also don't find hurtful to being told that but your truth is only yours and it can be very different for other peoples.

Have fun
MJ

Hi Guys.
Reading through this there I can see there is a huge misunderstanding of what KARMA is.

KARMA can function exactly like an arranger minus the fillin, intro/ending functions. On KARMA you have to actually select the Scenes (variations to you guys). So you have to manually press the button where you guys don't.

You can for example pull a factory style from the Pa2X and convert it into GE's which can be assigned to a COMBI sound. In short, that single COMBI sound is now both sounds and performs exactly like an arranger keyboard.

Where you guys are getting lost is everything I've just said above is about 5% of what KARMA has to offer.

It can do the basic style thing you guys are used to, and then if you want it can go WAY further.

The Random side to KARMA is not what you guys think either. There's no unknown random side to it, it's all totally controllable and assignable. Meaning you can take a predictable style and by moving a few faders build hear the same style playing back now as a new variation of the original. Much like you guys hear when you press the variation button only there is no limit to how far you can go with this.

You can use it to generate variations of the original, or you can push it to make entirly new styles.

So picture this, you load up an 8 Beat from a PA2X and instead of you guys writing styles, you simply share settings that turn the style into countless others.

Again, I'm still only scratching this surface of what it can do. As for why it does not exactly come from the factory preloaded with the typical type of content you guys are looking for is simple. KARMA is implemented on Workstations and not Arrangers.

If it was implanted on an Arranger then the GE's would be more suited to the type of music you guys play. The technology doesn't necessarily have to change, just the content it comes with.

A learning curve is required, but the same can be said about any sort of progarmming be it writing GE's or Styles.

Regards
James

I don't find it hurtful at all. In fact I agree with you 100% on that point. Furthermore, if something is very important to you, you should by all means, pursue it, but with eyes wide open. Truth is, I admire people with lots of patience and will power. I, myself, am on the verge of giving up on learning even the basics of drumming, something I started a couple of months ago but have only practiced about 3 times . The reason, it's kind of hard . Good luck.

chas

I suggest that you gave it a try again, and yeah drumming is hard but the payback are awesome, and as i allways say to people starting in rhythms just go slower, a fast rhythms is often what stop us to follow; just slow down until you got it

Lot of luck to you
MJ

James help me understand then what Karma does.

Say i am playing a funk groove 8 bar looped and that funk phrase may have dead notes, slides and picks in it. But it wont have 2 bars of dead notes or 2 bars of slides etc. The combination thats makes up the phrase is what has been programmed by a real musician and lets say that groove is called scene 1 (which in an arranger might be termed variation 1.) If i dont change from Scene 1 does karma keep playing the same groove unchanged for as long as that scene is selected ? And when i move the sliders how then does karma make a new variation that is in keeping with the style and tasty but different ?

If it can be altered please explain how karma does that without the use of algorithms that determine how the notes that are added (that you did not play into the instrument yourself ) are triggered.

I have been all over youtube and the korg website itself and i cant find any examples of of Karma sounding anything like a genuine 'real ' musician.

I am truly interested .

Cheers


[This message has been edited by spalding1968 (edited 02-11-2010).]

Take your pick.
Yes if you want, and no if you want to go beyond an arranger.

You can restrict KARMA to play the variation exactly like an arranger in that it always plays the same notes and responds to Chord Changes just like a normal arranger.

Or.... another example, you know the way bass inversions work, well imagine your entire style responding exactly like bass inversions work.

Or.... to go all out, you can have it fully respond to chord changes, inversions and controllers.

On top of all that, we still haven't even hit on it's ability to do random things yet.



There are many ways you can do it, for example Swing Shift a GE and then activate the note repeat settings. The more of both effects you apply the more the Style will alter.

You can add all sorts of things on the back of that to go much further. For example, note repeat and octave. Depending on how much note repeat you apply, KARMA might play a certain note more than once, and using the Octave function it might start scaling up through inversions and octaves of the notes being played.

That's just some of the straight forward functions.

Soon as you start turning on the Random functions you can create everything from variations of the style playing to a completely new style. It all depends on how much you allow it to run free.

In all cases you have full control though. KARMA's freedom is based on the users settings.



Not sure what you mean by real musican since an arranger is an automated and as locked down as you can get.

Karma can do that too, but improvise. So it can sound far more real than anything an arranger can do. Maybe why you haven't seen this on your search through YouTube is simply because your listening to Workstations doing what Workstatoin do.

The GE's that come with KARMA on a workstation are fro the type of music these people play.

That said, there are some factory sounds on the OASYS that offer things like Straight Country beats. It's not the sort of thing you will hear workstation users using though.

Regards
James

I'd be fascinated to hear some of the country Karma stuff, James (and any other 'real-world' examples). A bit of basic demonstration (leave off the right hand altogether unless it triggers Karma's actions, perhaps?) showing the potential for variation that does mimic what REAL players do. I'm sure you didn't QUITE mean that first sentence, as I'm sure you understand that, although the arranger's performance might be locked down, exceptional care was taken in its' creation to be VERY accurate idiomatically to what a real player would play.

What several of us are asking, I think, is just exactly HOW do you create rules for Karma that ensure that what IT generates past the basic pattern input in the first place (which can be as real as arranger patterns - often made on MIDI guitars, drum kits, etc.) is still idiomatic to the instrument it emulates..? Can you restrict it to only certain voicings that are guitar accurate? Can you restrict the drums to only play what is humanly possible?

You obviously have quite a bit of experience with it... do you find yourself making Karma the main base of a composition if you are trying for a real-world sound, or do you still find yourself reaching for the PA2X when you want to lay something down? How do you consider the differences, weaknesses and strengths, beteen arranger use and Karma?