Long time lurker and infrequent poster, but I’m really interested in these new Korg boards and have been watching this thread hoping to see news about release dates. But the discussion about polyAT has got me thinking, so I decided to post some of my thoughts.
I love polyAT.
As a Roli seaboard user, I’ve been using mostly the aftertouch and left to right pitch bending. Don’t use the forward to back modulation hardly at all, and even release velocity is hard to use when so few instruments allow you to assign it to anything. And while the pitch bending is cool, I’m actually really happy with glide and wheels/sticks for pitch control on regular midi controllers.
My Roli is starting to die on me, and I am dreading the hassle of trying to get one shipped internationally (they don’t ship to where I live) and with the recent financial troubles the company has had, I was hoping to find some alternative to getting another seaboard. Osmose looks great but out of my price range. And then I saw the NI boards and these Korg boards get leaked. And I realized, I’d be okay with less expression if I get to keep polyAT.
I find I use polyAT mostly for filter cutoff modulation on synth pads. I tried to use it for synth brass stuff, and use the aftertouch to do swells and such, but its response was always a bit too sluggish, so I end up using an expression pedal instead. But for synth pad stuff, it can get pretty boring holding out a simple chord for a long time. Some patches will have interesting movement programmed into them (think “evolving”) but it’s much more fun when pressing into a key introduces some of that change and you get to control that evolution instead of letting an LFO have all the fun.
I also like using polyAT for brining out notes in a chord. When a synth pad is used to drone out root, or a fifth, it’s really fun to “draw out” notes from a held chord by just leaning into them. I can even get away with playing pretty dense chords that would be muddy if all the voices were the same, but by just opening the filter on a note or two inside the chord I find I can get away with it.
So while I agree it’s not useful for a lot of things, it’s really fun for a lot of synth stuff, and having polyAT in these Korg boards is probably enough to make me jump ship and not get another Roli. Having an internal audio interface is perfect for my setup since my rig is laptop based. 73 or 76 keys would be SO nice, but I get that 73 is not that popular. I’ve made do with 61.