I was just fiddling with my Korg M50. I hooked it up to my P250 piano, and loaded up a combi. The cool thing is that the arpeggiators follow my playing. I don't have to make a chord in a certain fashion, it just seems to follow my playing. I can play the way I play piano and it's like having a three piece band with me.

Why can't arrangers do this? Or can they?

I've tried "Full Keyboard" and "Piano mode" on several models, but I've never found one that follows my style of playing.

DocZ

Doc,
My friend Rob Sheratt in Corfu Greece showed me how the PA2XPRO works well in full KBD mode when I was there visiting last year...He plays piano style and it sounded great. Oh..he uses style play mode on the Korg.

Have you tried the PA series?
Lee S.

I haven't tried the new PA series. I have tried th PA 80. That didn't work well.. at least not for my style of playing.

Maybe the new ones does this better?

I wish I could test one out at a store...

DocZ

Hi Doc,
the guy where I used to buy my technics keyboards used to play in full piano mode.
He used to sell Yamaha & Technics, and, according to him, Technics did a far better job of following chord changes ( in piano mode) than Yamaha. He showed me on a number of occasions, the differences. Eventually it even sunk thru my thick skull. haahaa
He was even able to include piano runs ( in piano arranger mode) without affecting the chords.

I sometimes play full piano mode on my Korg, but I'm not expert enough to comment on whether or not the chord recognition on my pa800 would be better than on the pa80.

A check of the manuals might say whether or not something has changed as far as chord recognition settings go.

best wishes
Rikki

Hi Rikki. I owned a Techincs Kn5000 Arranger and enjoyed playing it in full keyboard mode, and concur that it's full keyboard mode chord recognition far superior to Yamaha's, of which I find useless as Yamaha's full KB mode chord recognition is adversely affected whenever piano runs are played that include chord scale passing tones. To avoid this chord reconition problem, for full keyboard arranger mode playing on Yamaha Arrangers, I'm retricted to playing in split mode assigning both rh and lh voices to the same piano voice. This said, I had an opportunity to try out and play ( at Namm) a Korg PA2X in full keyboard mode and recall it's full keyboard mode chord recognition being good, and though not as good as Techincs, certainly a close 2nd. - Scott

Ketron has a neat way to use full piano mode. You can use a pedal to hold the chord. You play a chord of at least three notes with either hand and the pedal holds it until you are ready to change again. Pretty neat. I don't know if other kbs allow this.
DonM

Hi Scott,
thank you for confirming that.

Good to know the piano mode chord recognition on the Korg is nearly as good as the Technics was. Unfortunately I don't play nearly well enough to to take full advantage of it. haahaa

best wishes
Rikki

i only play full piano mode when accompanying my choir using accompaniment and it does great. So long asn there are three notes held down the keyboard scans the full keyboard and plays the correct chord. Thats on the Korg PA1X.

yeah, this is my problem with these "Piano modes" because as soon as you push three notes down anywhere to form a chord. Then the sucker changes chord. I play a lot of blues / gospel style licks, and for instance a fast Sus4 double stop will make the keyboard change from C to F and back to C again, not a desired effect. The whole point of that technique is to get the short F over C sound. And I play a lot of synchopation, and that makes it change chords before or after it should giving a weird sound in the acomp.

I've never - until now with the M50 - tried a keyboard that didn't make me alter my style of playing to suit the chord recognition engine. A pity the M50 doesn't have intros, fills and endings - then I would have bought the piano version!

DocZ

The Generalmusic arrangers had this feature some 12 or so years ago. The current Korg Pa series also has this feature.