Diki, you mentioned somewhere that you love the super natural guitar sounds in the BK-9. Today I understood what you meant, I didn't know that supernatural means that you play like you would play a regular piano piece, while the sound engine would take your playing, process it, and put out a guitar sounding piece. I almost fell off my seat when I heard it how it sounds, especially that Nylon Guitar, it's unbelievable what this keyboard does.

Although I don't hear much in the Grand Piano, I don't know what to look for any suggestion?, but the guitar definitely stands out.

I'm a very vanilla player that was pretty content with GS / Sound Canvas stuff. But I've experimented a little... For some of the Supernatural sounds you have to press one of the assignable switches to trigger the special effects. Since I'm not a multi-instrumentalist, I would probably trigger the effect at the wrong time thus giving it away as a fake, so I don't usually try! In the right hands, they do sound great!

The unique thing about articulated sounds (as in the case of the SN guitars) is not so much the switch triggered effects (although I am glad they aren’t triggered by velocity like so many other keyboards… I want a harmonic or a mute when I want it, not when the keyboard tells me I must have it!), it’s its ability to tell when you are playing solo lines and when you are playing chords, and on the fly, adjust the legato/monophonic behavior of the sound.

Guitars are unique instruments… each separate string is a monophonic source, only capable of one note at a time, but there’s six of them capable of playing a chord! Roland’s SN guitars can tell when you are playing single note lines, and make sure there’s no overlap between notes, but the minute you finger two or more, it ceases this behavior. So, play a chord, then a line, there’s a distinct difference between them.

There’s also a good hammer-on/off detection, that notices if you play within a whole step a quick grace note, and changes the sample to either a half or whole note hammer-on/off sample. This is different to most other arrangers, where hammer-ons (and usually no hammer-offs exist) are triggered by playing harder. Trouble is, what do you do when you want to play hard with no hammer-on?!

Lastly, although the effect is subtle, if you sustain and play a chord, you get a slight fast strum, and if you hold the sustain down and repeat the chord, you get alternate down an up strums!

Basically, that’s all you need to do some utterly convincing guitar stuff, as long as you know how to voice guitar playing pretty decently. I have played most everything at one time or another (still waiting to see a Genos, though!) and I’ve never played ANYTHING that even comes close to translating my playing into believable guitar articulation..!

Take a listen to my War/George Benson piece and see what you think on this forum for jazz/electric work, and Blackbird for acoustics…

I don’t think I’ve posted anything yet where I run the jazz/electric through a rock amp and effects and rock my brains out… Maybe I’ll go look for some Pink Floyd to demonstrate it. It always brings a huge smile to my face!

Kudos to Roland for including these sounds on their final arranger. I only wish for more! Imagine a really good Strat or Les Paul and those modeled amp sims!

I think the Trumpet is also phenomenal...

That trumpet... Not great, but decent. The sax sucks though, compared to Yamaha's articulated horns.

On the whole, horns are difficult to get right without a breath controller or some pretty fancy expression pedal work. I find the normal saxes far easier to work with than the SN one. Then again, I have a fairly decent control of legato and detached fingering, which the SN stuff helps compensate for if you don't (overlapping notes is a dead giveaway in a monophonic horn, but the mono behavior of the SN and normal mono sax sounds doesn't get the legato stuff right, IMHO, and I'm a horn player!).

Currently, the only keyboard saxes that float my boat are the modeled ones from SWAM. Still waiting for them to port it well to iPad to use live... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72RrqWC3vWc

I'm looking at the Tone List, it says BK-9 has 1718 Tones including the 22 Supernatural sounds. The number 1718, is matching the specification sheet for the number of tones.

But, why does the spec. sheet saying that there are 77 drum kits when the list goes from 1720 to 1814, if you do the math...

1814 - 1719 = 95

4 out of these 95 are dedicated to the keyboard real-time parts (KBU1, KBU2, KBU3, KBU4) and 1 dedicated to a Rhythm or Song (RSU1) which is a total of 5 user drum kits

So 95 - 5 = 90, still not 77.

What's up with these extra 13 drum kits, why the spec list doesn't match the reality ?

Have you included the User Kits?

And, unsure if it’s the correct answer, but there were always a few ‘hidden’ drum kits in previous Roland products to be able to play legacy SMF’s created for (if I remember correctly) the CM computer cards or something like that. Prior to GM being ratified, there were a variety of Roland kit latouts, and Roland included some of them but didn’t document them properly. No idea why…

BTW, the User kits aren’t specific to each Keyboard Part… you can assign them to any Part.

Also, can we start new threads about new topics, please.

It’s impossible to track down information if unrelated topics are discussed under one title…

Thank you Diki. I'm just trying to make sense of the spec. sheet... but yeah, I'll start a new topic, I just didn't want to create a new one, thinking this is not that trivial...