We will see what the future brings us. Maby Korg will put it in their new arrangers maby not. And I agree at the moment it would be a great addition to any keyboard not a replacement.

Next PAX3 with Karma....

Somehow i get the feeling that Korg is done with Karma, Kay is currently not doing any work at all for Korg (According too his website), while certainly The M4 and PA3X (next generation KORGS) must be in development for a long time now...

But then every company can buy KArma and add it to their keyboards...

IF they can afford the licensing, and IF their CPU is powerful enough to run what they already are doing AND the Karma overhead...

But I agree that Karma is a great ADDITION to the 'arranger way', but not a great substitution for it, unless one only does what it does well (and invests a LONG time making new GE's for music it doesn't as yet address well). It seems that many are looking for something different, but throwing the baby out with the bathwater strikes me as counter-productive. We need things like Karma, VSTi players etc. in
ADDITION to what we currently have, not a complete substitute. There's a reason arrangers are so popular, and few of these 'substitutes' acknowledge that there is something that works just about perfectly with the arranger system. Yes, it's great to have something AS WELL, but it's obvious (at least to me) that nothing else does the same thing and ADDS their 'thing' yet...

One can only hope, though...

I agree..

They need to add KARMA in the same way they added Sequencers long ago to arrangers..and not only add it, bit also integrate it with the arranger part, but certainly not replace it..

The other big missing part on Keyboards these days is VSTi's, they should not replace the sound engine of a keyboard but be added as an extra feauture.

I personally would create an interface on the keyboard that controlls the VStís running on a sepperate computer. with a gigabit Ethernet connection to transport controll signals to PC and music/sound data/tracks back to the keyboard. Or route the local sounds through the vsti's processing and effects.
This way they don't have to build a very expensive computer intoo the keyboard, but it still allows people to controll and select their vsti's. Giving people that want this feauture the best of 2 worlds...
Many people in the arranger world wouldn't need it tough, so they could decide to sell it as a software expansion, and make extra money from it to repay for the development costs, while keeping the price of the TOTL arranger a bit lower.

Starting to sound a lot like a Mediastation.



chas

Somehow i get the feeling that you missed a point or two.....

Not everything that incorporates both VSt's and styles is like a mediastation...

Its much more like the approach of Wersi, but then with an intuitive interface and no VSTí limitations, and an added KARMA engine offcourse.
Or even better, an Audya/tyros3/PA2X and an Openlabs D-beat integrated in one machine

Point is, the arranger and basic sound engine needs to be on par with the current Arrangers, and thats exactly where Mediastations weak spot is... Their giga sounds are not spectacular, and there is no huge library of top quallity styles. But then this has allready been stated many times before and Lionstracs is now wisely aiming at a different (non arranger) market.

[This message has been edited by Bachus (edited 02-05-2010).]

I have yet to hear anything from a Karma driven product that sounded like music a human being would make. Music driven by complex algorithms that don’t actually rely upon established musical phrases and timing just doesn’t get my juices flowing at all. Part of the beauty in an arranger is that you always know the changes and progressions and "feel" of the music before hand and they will be natural and predictable even when the style variations add that Variable element, the music still follows licks and passages and timing suitable for the genre of music. I have not heard a Karma driven funk style or jazz style or blues style yet that actualy sounded like a funk, jazz or blues session player was playing. With the multitude of styles available both free and commercial at very affordable prices (like free) even if you get bored with a style you can get 12 more very easily. I am open to persuasion but like so many musical ideas that are driven by technological advance, the potential hardly ever materialises into something musically better than what has already been done.Mr Kay has gone to great lengths to distance the Karma function from arranger type keyboards. I suspect that is more to do with the fact of the limitations of the technology in terms of generating genuine variability that is not just interestingly musical but authentic and human and beautiful.

Obviously if Sharp or Nedim have some examples of this i am not set in my thinking. Its just that noone to my knowledge has.

[This message has been edited by Spalding 4 (edited 02-05-2010).]

I have now Korg M3-76 and Roland G-70 (and many other arrangers before: Roland VA-76, Yamaha PSR9000 etc.).

I turned on my G-70 a couple of times past 2 years. I use Korg M3-73 every day all this time.

I am not prefer trance or hip-hop. I like jazz and rock.

One thing that I miss at Korg M3-73 and have in Roland G-70 is Bossa-Nova (but there is several sambas). This is not technical fault, this is problem of absence of factory Bossa-Nova style ("combo") and my laziness to program it or to find it somewhere in internet.

!

[This message has been edited by Mystic Jammer (edited 02-13-2010).]

Any chance of hearing how well you are doing?

I must confess, I'm with spalding on this one... Yes, Karma is always doing something a bit different, but most of the styles (whoops! Sorry. GE's ) don't tend to fool me that REAL players are playing. They definiytely make me feel I am not being overwhelmed with repetition, but that variety doesn't come ON TOP of what would be expected if a REAL guitarist, a REAL horn player, a REAL bass player would do.

The 'rules' for genuine guitar playing are FAR more complex than any simple (or not so simple) conditionally random algorithm. So much so that some arrangers are now responding by 'cheating' and using actual recordings of guitarists....

Drums strike me as perhaps simple enough to get away with Karma's randomness (but I bet a drummer would disagree with me!), but I think spalding hit the nail on the head. It's interesting, it HAS variety, but at the cost of really correct idiomatic playing. Most of the music that arranger players in general play is based around REAL players, form the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's, before MTV made it impossible for ugly but talented players to get a deal And the skill of those players seems outside the range of what Karma can do.

But, as I said, I am always VERY interested in HEARING real users prove me misguided. Got some live Karma jazz, or rock, for us to hear what you are telling us?