Anyone have any advice as to how to retard the ending of a song during a live performance with a KN5000? Its not always possible to move my hand up to the tempo dial to slow things down. I noticed on the KN6000 in the store that it has "Tap tempo" available on the footswitch - I suppose that would work, but the KN5000 does not have this function available for the footswitch. HELP!

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Andy

Whew!!! What a relief. I saw the heading "retarted endings" and thought someone had the premonition I was going to die. )

Nudder brownie point )

Hi Andy,
This may seem a bit crude to you, but it works for me. Take the Panel Memory you want to retard from and put it into the next PM position, turn your tempo down and reset the PM. Use your foot switch to make the PM move. If I want a slower retard, perhaps over 4 to 8 measures, I might slow down gradually by taking three steps to do it. Of course you have to be in the Expand mode to carry the tempo info.
Frank

Hi Andy,

Frank's suggestion is a good one, but here's what I do when I want to ritard the ending of a song during a live arranger playing performance with my KN5000:

1) I pre-record just "tempo changes" to the Control (CTL) track in either step or real time for the ending bars of a song. It is very IMPORTANT that you accurately keep track of the song length in bars so you know exactly when the tempo ritard will begin.

2) I then set the sequencer to "play mode" and set the "sycro-start button" to ON. The CTL track (which contains the tempo changes) should be the ONLY track in PLAY mode. All other tracks should be OFF.

3) Begin playing your song in any of the APC modes "one-finger", "fingered", or "pianist" modes and the sequencer CTL trk also begins playing (but with no sound as the only data contained are tempo changes) and when the ending bars of the song are reached, the song will slow down in a "smooth" ritard as you recorded it earlier. All APC features (accompaniment chord recognition etc.) & panel memory "sound changes, etc " will continue to function normally.

Though this method is not 100% live arranger playing, it is much easier than trying to reach for the Tempo Wheel (and attempting a slow ritard) or trying to synchronize pressing the foot pedal to trigger panel memory increments (gradually descreased tempos stored in ascending panel memories) while concurrrently having to focus on playing the keyboard.

This setup is not well suited for spontaneous playing but works great for specific songs you may want to have setup for this special ritard ending situation. You can also add tempo changes (acceleration/ritard) etc in other parts of the song as well.

Happy arranger keyboarding,

- Scott

These are all great suggestions and I really appreciate them, but neither of them would work well for me for the following reasons:

I can't use multiple panel memories - each with a slower tempo because a performance sometimes involves a LOT of music - as many as 15 different pieces of music in rapid succession - I could probably do it, but keeping track of which bank to use for which song just sounds like a lot of work.

Pre-recording a control track with tempo only is another good suggestion, but since this is praise music, I usually determine the number of repeats in accordance with how the particular piece is being received by the congregration (as the Spirit leads - so to speak) - if they seem to be really enjoying it I add an extra couple times through - if not, I may end it sooner and not even go through the whole thing.

I guess that the best solution for me would get back to my original suggestion of having tap tempo available on a foot pedal. I usually find myself tapping my foot to the beat anyway, so it seems like a natural solution. It also seems that just about every one of us probably has the same problem.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect that this is completely a software solution - if Technics wanted to, they could probably come out with version 11 of the keyboard's operating system with tap tempo available on the list of functions you can select for the foot pedal.

Now, I'm new to this forum and I've been a little surprised at some of what I've read here in terms of how poorly Technics listens to its customer base (I've not had any dealings with the company directly yet). This suggests that a request to them to upgrade the software in the 5000 would probably fall on deaf ears - besides if they did that, they would eliminate the only reason I personally would have to upgrade to the 6000. After reading some of the comments people have made about the 6000 it seems as though its not fully cooked yet and I'll probably want to wait a year or so before upgrading. In the meantime, I LOVE my 5000 (all except for the missing ritard foot pedal function).

Regards - and have a great holiday everyone.

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Andy