We have had audio loops in arrangers for well over ten years. We have also had them as non-realtime elements in BIAB and general audio production for years. Lionstracs was the first to do more than drums if I remember rightly.

There’s only one NEW solution to changing notes within a chord in an audio loop, that’s Melodyne. Which isn’t real-time, and isn’t obviously part of the Event (or it would have been the first thing AJ and you would have said). There is no getting around the obvious, and I certainly don’t need to sit down at an Event (which in my area means basically never, there's no Ketron dealers anywhere near me!) to know, if you haven’t recorded a guitarist playing a diminished chord, there is no way whatsoever that you will still have a live guitarist playing that pattern in the style.

You have the chord choices that Ketron recorded the guitarist playing, however many that may be for each style. And that’s it. Period. No ‘you’ve got to try one’ BS.

It’s quite simple. If you currently have an Event sitting in front of you, solo the guitar part, and play a chord progression like C - Eb(dim) - Dm7 - G+7. Post the recording. If you want to claim this is not an issue, let’s hear it…

The proof is in the pudding.

Diki.
Now I don't have the right to do that.
But when I can (with the official announcement) I promise to do what you ask.

This is what I hate about teaser announcements. The product is finalized, the videos are out by Ketron themselves, but somehow those in actual possession of an early model aren’t allowed to do more than make ‘wait until you try one yourself’ excuses for issues that have plagued loop based arrangers for years.

To be quite honest, I have already heard some loop weirdness in Ketron’s own demos. Listen to this, and tell me nothing’s wrong as early as 12sec in… https://youtu.be/gVWwrOSgvlY

Again at 0:24 the bassline and guitar part don’t agree, at 0:43 the player has to play the wrong chords, presumably because the right one (an 11th) is unavailable (if he plays something as obviously recognizable as The Girl from Ipenema, he had better play the correct changes!). And on, and on.

And this is Ketron’s OFFICIAL launch video… and the issues with chord choices are already obvious.

While I understand your enthusiasm for the product, and I understand there are many forward looking features, it seems to me that a loop arranger (unless you spend a Herculean amount of time creating song specific loops) is something you play along WITH, not something that plays along with YOU…

I've been reading your posts on this new Ketron I get it you don't like Ketron but I for one can't wait ti sell my Genes and get it lol

I have only stated some facts, and it seems that they were fairly accurate since nobody, not even the Ketron guys, corrected me. Where informations were missing I asked for clarifications, that for most part never came, probably because being explicit about the likely limitations would have undermined the product.




Sure it can be adjusted. After all you can listen to a 33 rpm record to 45 rpm, or you can load in a DAW a 44.1 kHz sample rate wave and replay it pretending it is 96 kHz. We all know how the result will look like, and Sokratis too aknowledged this obvious fact. When I asked what happened when changing the tempo from 50 to 150 bpm I already knew the answer. And Ketron too was well aware.
How much degradation you are willing to accept is a personal matter of taste. Everybody has its own.




The PSR950 has 4 insert DSPs (and 1 of them can also be used as 3rd send), as it had the PSR 1500 in 2004. The fact that many arrangers, including the upcoming Ketron flagship, cannot do better than a 20 years old mid level machine, or a today’s entry level machine (SX 600), is a fact that I already pointed out. Thank you for stating it once again (including also other aspects such us the number of intros, endings, variations).





I spammed nobody. I only stated facts nobody argued, asked polite questions and clarifications (for the most part ignored), and posted only 3 times (with short and coincise posts). Additionally I only mentioned our product once, with 3 words at the end of the last post in 5th page, and did NOT compare it with Ketron products.
If you read again the whole thread you will notice that YOU posted many more times constantly criticizing the Ketron.


... see the mote in one's brother's eye but not the beam in one's own

https://youtu.be/IIvSn_T030A

Enjoy!

What happens when you play a sax and the backing tracks follow you?

https://youtu.be/r5pD_dmm1t0

Groovy, the difference is, I’m just a player, I’m not trying to sell my product to the members. And I don’t hate Ketron’s. I just feel that MIDI guitar modes like Korg, Yamaha (and once upon a time, Roland) have are the FAR better solution to better guitar parts than audio loops with a stripped down chord selection.

I’m not trying to put down Ketron (you are). I’m trying to influence them to change direction away from something that is a musical dead end. To help them. Not put them down. And there’s a ton of things to like about the Event. I’m just a bit fixated on the audio loops because it’s a dealbreaker for me (but not for players that aren’t that worried about the right chord).

Full specs on the EVENT haven’t made it out yet. But I’m sure when they do, there’ll be a fair bit in there that Groovyband can’t do. But I bet AJ has more class than to come to your threads and point them out. So let’s dial this back or I’m going to have to start ‘moderating’, okay?

We dealt with this ages ago on the Audya Diki - we even had a shootout here on this very forum where I recorded chord sequences exactly as requested to prove that ALL playable chords are reproduced on Ketron using the Live Guitars. Someone then posted Yamaha versions to compare (I don't think it was you). In addition, I uploaded other tracks also using advanced chords.

There are certain unusual inversions that are physically impossible to play on a guitar. In this case midi guitars on the Audya are inserted, if so and the player doesn't like it, just use a different inversion. But discussing this is rather a moot point as the keyboard has not even been released! Maybe go back and find the recordings we did and then report back?

I remember the shootout, and I’ve already referred to the ‘solutions’ that were forced on it.

Extensions (add9, 6ths, 6/9’s, min(maj7)’s etc) are dealt with by adding those extra notes to the basic maj/min recording. You now have a guitar voicing that no guitarist can play, and a MIDI note mixed in with the audio recording. A 7 or 8 string guitar. Not very realistic!

Chords that aren’t recorded that cannot be derived from the audio loops are wholesale replaced by the MIDI guitar loop - diminished, augmented, half diminished, open fifths, sus4’s etc.. As pointed out earlier, either there’s a massive difference between the audio loop and the MIDI pattern, or there’s no advantage to the audio loop in the first place.

But the thing you are forgetting, Tonewheel, is that the Audya shootout was done probably ten years ago. The state of the art of MIDI guitar modes has advanced enormously since then, but no solution to wider chord choices for loops other than simply recording them in the first place exists now any more than when the Audya launched.

What IS disappointing is, as admitted by AJ at the start of the thread, the Event is actually capable of streaming a vast selection of chords in response to your input, far better than the Audya can. Technically, it is capable of addressing my criticisms. But for obvious cost reasons, Ketron simply have chosen to not bother including a FULL selection of chords for all styles. Which leaves them (and us) in the same situation we were in with the Audya.

Adding extra chords to existing styles will be close to impossible (not easy to find a guitarist that can match the style, guitar, tone and effects of the original and play indistinguishable from the other loops). And creating brand new styles will involve either the expense of studio time and session fees of a highly skilled guitarist, or considerable time and skill creating loops from a VSTi guitar program.

That the Event COULD have a full selection of chords but Ketron chose not to record them is, to be quite honest, far more disappointing than the Audya’s inability to stream them fast enough, so the workarounds were necessary and unavoidable. It kind of begs the question… why spend all that money allowing the Event to be capable of full audio chord selection, and then skimp at the end and not bother?

To my mind, it points to the obvious high cost of doing it. Or extreme laziness. I would hope it’s the former.

Yamaha and especially Korg’s current gen guitar modes are light years ahead of where they were at the Audya’s launch, and the state of VSTi guitar plug ins is way further on than that. Time waits for no man, especially in tech, and dragging out a ten year+ Old comparison to justify a contemporary problem is like arguing Nokia vs. Blackberry!

I have listened to every demo Ketron have done with the Event, and the problems are already more than obvious. You hear a LOT of passing chords and jazzy chords, but they are all in the pre-recorded intros and endings (so not responding to your input at all) and the few times they try it while the style briefly plays, you can hear the lack of chords.

Maybe it’s easy to fool people that don’t play guitar, and wouldn’t recognize a wrong chord or incorrect voicing, people that assume that what they are hearing is the style being played and not the pre-recorded sections, or maybe people that just want to believe the hype.

It doesn’t fool me. It doesn’t fool a lot of people (or Ketron would be the market leader).

If I were Ketron, and wanted to show that the issues from the Audya had been solved, that’s the FIRST thing I’d demo. I’d show a stripped down bass drum and guitar style, responding well to live chord input from a skilled player doing all the chord types that caused the issues in the Audya. But what we have is pre-recorded intros and endings and very little else of any serious challenge.

I truly wish things had improved. I was not impressed by the Audya’s handling of chords when it came out, but to learn that TECHNICALLY the Event could have a full chord selection but Ketron just couldn’t be bothered to record the loops is even worse.

I would be happy to listen to a comparison between the Event and a PA5x on soloed guitar parts playing extended chords. But I am not sure the Ketron apologists would. Seems like they’d prefer comparison to a 10 year old arranger. That would have been the PA3x and the Tyros4. Dinosaurs!

And don’t get me started about VSTi’s (too late!).

I’m sorry, but am I the ONLY one here hearing the issues with the Event’s demos? Should I really be the boy pointing out the Emperor’s clothes, or lack thereof? 😂

This is the 2020’s. We are in the age of modeled horns and strings that can fool professionals. We are in the age of guitar mode VSTi’s that can fool guitarists. And hoary old technologies are being touted to us as the latest thing because they think we are a bunch of easily fooled amateurs.

Perhaps we are…