After a day with Genesys, I am finally at home and have had some times to collect my thoughts. Because of all the features on Genesys, I didn't want to sit at my computer during the day and start rambling on with each new feature I discovered.
Let me start by saying a big "thank you" to Chris Anthony. Without his help, and the well written owners manual, I would never have discovered so much information about the Genesys keyboard.
First, when Genesys arrived in a huge carton via UPS i knew this was a heavy keyboard. However, looking at it, you would expect it to be quite as heavy because it really is not a very large package. Of course the straight up speakers are why the extra weight, but they are very attractive and sound great. I did note that when playing styles and sounds, the volume was not quite as loud as when playing .wav and MP3 files. I don't know why this is, but I will do a lot more investigating over the next few days.
One of the first things I noticed when taking the keyboard out of the box, was the thoughtfully documented buttons along with a quick description of key features written right on top of the keyboard. Thanks to Chris Anthony for this thoughtful addition. It makes it easy on the salesfloor to remember key features when doing a demo with a customer.
The operating system on this keyboard is much more user friendly than previous WK products. It is extremely easy to navigate both all the functions and more importanatly, easy to navigate around loading and saving on the different drives available. I was thrilled to see this.
First thing I did was play many of the sounds. At first, I was actually disappointed because I was not finding or hearing the sounds as were demonstrated to me in Italy and by Chris at NAMM. A phone call to Chris was all it took! There is a voice family called "real sounds" which for some reason I missed. I was playing sounds in the catagories with names like Piano, Brass, Guitar, Organ, Strings, Winds, etc. but I missed this different colored button my first time through. There are 16 "real sounds" which were what were played for me in Italy. these sounds are outstanding. The real piano is taken from the sampled faziola piano which generalmusic has been using in the PRO MEGA 3 Piano and the two saxes (real alto and real tenor), the real trumpet and real trombone are sure to impress you. The real violin and real cello were very real sounding as solo instruments. There was a really good real harpsichord a great real flute with all that special flute stuff we've come to love with Yamaha's "sweet flute". All the other sounds reminded me of many of the sounds in the WK8, but when I asked Chris about these sounds, he let me know that these have mostly been newly sampled for the Genesys. Honestly, I spent most of my time today, using some of the new features and checking out some of the compatability issues some of my customers have been asking me about, so tomorrow I will have time to check out the other 1000 or so voices. Again, Generalmusic wanted to make this keyboard easier to use then any of their previous models and i really think they've done a good job here.
The feel of the keyboard is really good. They have used weighted keys (synth type) like the Ketron X1 and it felt just right with really good aftertouch feel. When changing voices, the buttons to both sides of the display at first seemed a bit small, but as I played them, they got easier and easier to get used to. Having 8 choices on each side of the screen means either having a larger screen or smaller buttons and Generalmusic opted for smaller buttons. The screen is not a color one, but everything was quite clear to see.
Next I tried several of the styles. I was really glad to find a function within the system button section which allowed me to turn off the last selected option. When the keyboard is shipped it is "on" and so whenever I chose a new style catagory, just by changing to a new catagory, the first (or last) style selected began playing. I hated this, because it never gave me a chance to pick the style I wanted to play and chose one for me. By turning off this function, I could scroll around any catagory and not until I chose a new style would that style start playing. There are 256 factory preset styles, each with four variations, intro's endings and fills. There were so many good styles to try. Big Bands, Latin with real RASS grooves, Country, which included 2 great unplugged guitar strum styles, Rock, with great distorted guitars and great drums, gospel, Mexican (programmed by Chris Anthony) which were all so authentic to Latino music traditions. I could comment all day about the styles, but there is much more to say tonight. Some styles reminded me much of former WK products and yet there were so many great new styles. Lots of Jazzy Brush work and great big bands. I especially liked a sound called Brass 3 which included a great shake on the trumpet when you played with harder Velocity. When you played normally you would hear a great Sforzondo build up over time, but when you played with more velocity, the entire brass section, including Trumpets, Trombones and Saxes would be there and when played harder here came the lead trumpet player with a great jazz shake sound.
I just didn't have enough time to really play through more than maybe 40 of the 256 styles today.
The next thing I did was to test the Vocal Genius controls. It worked great. It worked like the vocal harmonizer in the WK6 and WK8 but with the addition of a dedicated lead voice volume and a dedicated vocal harmony volume. You can balance these out or use only one or the other. The effects are easy to add to your voice and there is an on and off button to turn the mic on and off. I tried it with the single fingered and fingered modes as well as in vocoder mode and it worked perfectly with all types of fingerings. A microphone is included with the keyboard, but I would like to try some other mics out as well. It is a high impedence connection. There is both a mic and line input on the back and a seperate gain control for both.
Next came listening to the supplied songs on one of the two supplied CDs. CD 1 is the operating system and simple demo backed up because these are already on the hard drive and CD2 contains a few hundred different format songs. there are SMF songs, GEM songs, MP3 songs. The GEM songs are basically tune 1000 songs which have been tweeked for Generalmusic use. You can have 32 tracks so you can add more if you want and each song has a vocal harmony track and lyrics ready to play. When you select one of these songs everything sets up automatically for you. We took our own CD of John Lennon's Imagine, and transfered it from CD track to .wav song. It was really cool and easy how you "grab" the track and it converts it for you. You can even type in lyrics and have lyrics on your MP3s. Next, we tried out the vocal cancel function which worked pretty good. Generalmusic explains that if the vocal is right in the center of the stereo image without a lot of heavy reverb proccessing, you have a good chance to remove almost all of the vocal tracks. Some songs will do a better job at this then others. Once the vocal track has been removed, you can sing and record your own voice or instrument in place. This is nothing new in Kareoke but it is new on a keyboard. There is also wav editing available so you can go in and snip off or copy and paste things you might like to play with.
My next adventure was to find out if we could install the WK8 oriental kit into Genesys. I was told yes in Italy but I had to try it for myself. It worked great and after loading the two disks, I save it on the hard drive. I was informed by Chris that he was currently working on a project to make Persian/Iranian styles for the WK series of Generalmusic keyboards and these will also work on the Genesys. There is also a team of musicians from Lebenon currently working on a oriental kit for Genesys. So for all my middle eastern customers out there, I don't think you will be disapointed.
Now, to some this all up.........I know many will want to know my thoughts about comparing this GENESYS with the TYROS I saw a few weeks ago. These are clearly in my mind, two winners. However, they have different strengths. Tyros sounded awsome, and had some of the best sounds and styles I've ever heard, but is there a CD......no! can you load new samples in.........no! Can it play MP3 or Record direct to CDR?.........no. Can you reload the entire 64 Mb worth of memory up with completely new information......no!
Does Genesys have a beautiful color screen......no! Does Genesys have 128 notes of polyphony?.........no! Will the Genesys weigh 25 lbs?.........no! These are two top of the line keyboards and both deserve your serious consideration. Look at your needs and decide which will be best for you. And, don't forget the Ketron SD1, Korg PA80, Ketron XD9 and Vega, Yamaha 9000 pro, Korg PA60, Roland VA76, and yes, even though you've all heard of the years why I won't carry this brand, the Technics KN7000. All of these are great keyboards and you are fortunate to have so many wonderful choices.
If you have any specific questions I can answer please let me know.
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California
818-881-5566
_________________________
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene (Closed after 51 years)
West Hills, California
(Retired 2021)
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