Exactly Chas....it's when people try to impose their beliefs on others that the friction starts... to me a Kb or any gear I buy is merely just a business investment which seeks a profitable return...

I did read it, Dennis. But, as I pointed out, this is a MUCH thornier problem than it appears at first (it took you a while to grok the implications), James may have missed some of the implications, and again, as useful as this seems to be, why no programmer yet has actually done it tends to let me remain a hair skeptical.

I am not sure why this skepticism is so upsetting. Just SAYING it can be done without example isn't exactly proving it. I realize you perhaps feel 'invested' in your choice of equipment, and may perhaps feel uncomfortable admitting that there MIGHT be something it can't do (mind you, as admitted, no other arranger or any hardware keyboard with the exception of that expansion board can do it either, so I'm not trying to put YOUR choice down), but my goal is not to denigrate ANYTHING, merely to suggest that this capability MIGHT be useful, and perhaps spark a little interest (by all other than Donny, who never heard of anything he doesn't currently have that he might possibly use!) in the idea of it!

Horn section parts are one of the least successfully emulated sounds, primarily because of the 'stacked' nature of them. The sample itself is either unison or octave playing of an entire section, so unless you only ever play ONE note, you get that issue of the ensemble doubling or tripling in size as you chord, and you ALSO have the issue of it only being accurate in a tiny section of the keyboard, because a real section would have some of the parts within it dropping down or up an octave as it gets higher or lower.

You see, unlike SOME here, to me a keyboard is a MUSICAL instrument, not an 'investment' for a 'profitable return'. But hey, if that's all anyone thinks about the thing they pour their heart and soul into (or not!), perhaps staying out of discussions where musical improvements are talked about, and stick to discussions of paid gigs, booking strategies, and contract disputes might be better!

If this ever gets added to an arranger you end up using, and you actually LIKE the sound, you can thank me later!

Hi guys.
Dennis asked me to swing by after watching that video. It's a great demo, but this is very typical of a KORG Workstation. COMBI mode on a KRONOS for example has 16 Prog sounds. Each prog sound has two OSC's and each of those OSC's can have 8 layers of multisamples you can assign mono and stereo multisamples to.

That's 2 parts times 16 layers = 1 Sound, times 16 sounds = one COMBI. That's well over 500 multisamples can be in a single COMBI sound.

For each stage of all this you have a massive array of settings, midi controls, cc filters, tuning, velocity zones, karma, 16 on/off switches, assignable sliders, assignable switches and way too many other things to mention that call all be tied into your sounds to reproduce and greatly surpass how the guy playing the Roland was able to have so many different sounds without changing actual sounds.

All this can be used to trigger and control pretty much everything. Play one area, you have a set of sounds, play the same area harder, you get a different set of sounds, play an octave higher you have a different set of sounds. Use a Switch, Controller, Slider,... you get more and more.

So in all fairness, what the Roland is doing is pretty basic compared to what a KRONOS can do.

On the Pa3X things are slightly different. There is no COMBI sound, but a single Prog sound has a whopping 24 OSC's. Each OSC can be assigned to a mono sample, and since each OSC is a full part, it has full and totally independent access to the entire sound engine, all 24 OSC's.

So from a single sound you can assemble 24 sounds / layers and kick in and out as required by any of the controllers or defining parameters you set. Each OSC can be controlled in countless ways, split, tuned and switched. Not to mention DNC Technology.


A key part in the roland demo... On a the Pa3X you can play a chord and hear one layer of the sound play all those notes your holding down, and second layer play a single note. This is dead simple to do by using the mono and poly options within a single sound and their additional settings. Remember, the OSC's are all independent of each other so mono and poly layers can exist within the same sound.

Mono Poly - Priority Mode (Last note, Lowest note, Highest Note) allows you to tell the Pa3X thatn when your playing a chord, the Poly sound plays everything your playing, but the mono layer will shift to the lowest, remain on the last, or go to the highest note. Then you have Note on control, note off control, Ploy Legato, Single Trigger, Unison mode, Layer Priority ....and so on...

Throw DNC into the pot and you have countless ways of making those interact with what you play differently and totally independent of each other.

Here's some DNC Technology for controlling and triggering layers within a singe sound.
Normal, when you play Legato, when you play Staccato, Sound Controller 1 and 2, Joy Stick, Cycle 1 and 2, Random, After Touch, Y+/- Triggering, Legato Up, Legato down.

Then there's RX....

and so on....

So I hope people can see how flexible the KORG way is. And that's without even talking about the EDS Sound engine and HD-1 as a programmable engine to shape your sound.

Not to mention the fact that a KRONOS has 9 Sound Engines.

Regards
James

James thankyou for the clear explanation.... Although I think we all have more then enough fluff on today's arranger kb, mostly never utilized....personally I DON'T REALLY THINK WE NEED MUCH MORE

i had the Technics KN1000 keyboard soem 20 years ago and it had this feature on some of its brass sounds where you had three sounds layered , typically trombone,trumpet and sax where if you played a single note you heard all three play in unison but if you played a triad say CEG the trombone would take the C trumpet E and Sax G.

This is old technology and not new.

It is not scepticism on my part Diki, far from it - do try to keep up

I WROTE I thought it a briliant idea, and now James has provided an insight into how it can be achieved on the PA, no dramas there either...although, it is going to be a huge learner for me (my synth programming began and ended with the Roland JX3P)....but I will have a go as to reiterate, I DO think it is good to give realistic horn sections, for the VERY rare times I ever use them...

And you should know me better than to think I am at all interested in the .."just because I bought it I have to defend it" crap!!!

As for the other part (re: You see, unlike SOME here, to me a keyboard is a MUSICAL instrument,) I am in TOTAL agreement....the day I start looking at my instrument as an investment is the day I stop playing, period!!!

Dennis

Performing is a job......Instruments are the tool...these tools are used to earn a living...plain and simple...when a better tool comes along that can earn you more make the change for the better....if not stay with what you have...$$$ will always be the bottom line.....enjoying your job is a benifit...

Sorry Donny, I really disagree with this...my instrument is not a tool, it is part of me..That it can help with earning some $'s is a bonus, not the reason for either owning it or playing it.....

Of course what you wrote is your view and that's fine, I respect that, and I am not saying your are correct or wrong. My view expressed above is simply that

And in line with what I wrote previously, the day it becomes a "job" is the day I stop playing altogether..

D

I take my tools to work and enjoy my job givenng 100% what is part of me is what comes out to my audience's night after night to survive......enjoy what you play...as far as divisi prob would never have a need for it just like the CS.....have fun.

James has shown only how to split a Part into TWO notes. If you have say four different patches, layered up. A bari a t'bone, an alto and a trumpet.

Mono Poly - Priority Mode (Last note, Lowest note, Highest Note) only allows the Korg to split a chord played into the upper note and the lower note. Play a four note chord, and everything will go to the upper or the lower note of the chord, and ignore the notes in the middle.

Look, I'm not putting Korg's down. I've posted many times about how much I like the Kronos, and there's much I admire about the PA3X (finally! someone gets how good a Chord Sequencer is! Good job it's not on Donny's Korg, or he would have to start defending it!), and I still regularly use my Triton, and of course, I am completely aware about how more comprehensive voice editing is on these than any other arranger.

But.... despite James' post, he has failed to show how TRUE 'divisi' operation can be achieved. Merely splitting any chord played into its upper and lowest notes doesn't cut it.

Look, I used to have an Oberhein XPander. It was about the last thing I ever had that could assign voices in this manner. But the section that enabled the divisi, rotational triggering and other modes came at the Master level, not as programmed into each independent voice patch. As Ian said, with the SEM modules, you program the sounds at one level, then the voice allocation routines were programmed in a different section.

Voice allocation is a LOT different to oscillator allocation. While several modern synths allow you to do some fairly fancy tricks with the oscillator allocation WITHIN a patch (but not this trick, AFAIK), nothing that I currently know allows you to customize the final, overall voice allocation. The example that Roland offer with the ARX is quite simple really. Up to six voices, each different, triggered as each note is played either sequentially or simultaneously, with an allocation that plays them in order of height in the stack.

Personally, I think there are other allocation systems that could be useful. For instance, if the interval between top and bottom note gets over a specified interval, perhaps triggering the low note (the bari) and the high note (the trumpet) might be handy. And so on and so forth. A three note chord might be asked to do voices !&2, 3&4 and 5&6, for instance.

But behavior like this cannot be programmed in at the individual patch level of anything that I have read about (and trust me, I'm a manual junkie!), I only wish it was. Even my K2500, perhaps one of the most comprehensively programmed voice and Combi selections, you can't do this.

For James to suggest that splits and layers can achieve this only suggests that he simply has not grokked the basic thing that is going on here. The voice allocation from the Roland ARX board has NOTHING to do with WHERE on the keyboard the notes are triggered. Any WS has been able to split the keyboard up into a myriad of zones. But that sound ONLY plays in that zone. The ARX allocation makes no demands on WHERE you play the chord. Play four notes in tight, and you get bari/bone/sax/tpt. Play then WIDE apart, you STILL get bar/bone/sax/tpt. Totally independent of position.

Look, I'm not sure why feathers here are getting so ruffled. No keyboard, no matter HOW much you love it, can do everything. Here is something that, to be honest, has disappeared from synth for DECADES, that I believe could significantly improve the playing of certain types of parts, and rather than a reasoned discussion about it, we have someone that is determined to insist that it CAN be done, despite it NOT having been done (despite its usefulness) and so far, no example and nothing written that demonstrates it CAN. James' explanation only further illustrates that the basic concept of this is a bit alien to understand. Positional splits and velocity splits are so far away from this concept, why they are brought up eludes me.

James is an excellent programmer, I am in no way trying to put him down. But, as Dennis initially did, I simply think he hasn't quite understood the subtleties of what is involved here. This truly IS in the voice allocation routines of the synth, not in the oscillator routines. Or, at least, the allocation routines offered by current Korg's (or anything else for that matter other than the ARX board and some VSTi) are not adequate for the task.

I simply hope we can get past this, and simply discuss the CONCEPT and possible uses for it, rather than get defensive when what we use can't do it. After all, like I said, NOTHING that I have can do it! I am not trying to turn this into a 'mine is better than yours', which I am starting to get the impression that it is heading down that road. This is a 'mine is no better than anybody's' thread!

Peace.