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Arpeggiators


Bachus

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Today i had a chance to play with the Roland FA06 arpeggiator.. I allways have lots of fun when playing with arpeggiators.. The Roland Arpegiator has quite some tricks under its belt.. Its fun to play around with.

 

Compared for example to the MOXF, the Arps are way more arpegio like and challenge you just to play around with them and have fun. Most Yamaha arps feel like static midipatterns..

 

So how does the Roland Arpegiator compare to the Ones found on other performance synths like the Nord Stage/Lead or the Kurzweil Forte/Pc3k and others?

 

 

 

 

Korg Kronos 88, Yamaha Tyros5 (76), Integra 7, macbook pro/mainstage
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The one thing I don't like about the FA arpeggiator is finding a simple, straight ahead one. They all seem to throw in some "groove" variant that is frustrating. I needed a simple 8th note triplet, a one octave going from low to high arp for a song one of my bands is doing. Found the triplet arps, not a single one was just straight notes. Took me 10 seconds to do it on the Nord Lead, but I don't bring that board to use for that band.

Live: Korg Kronos 2 88, Nord Electro 5d Nord Lead A1

Toys: Roland FA08, Novation Ultranova, Moog LP, Roland SP-404SX, Roland JX10,Emu MK6

www.bksband.com

www.echoesrocks.com

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One huge pet peeve of mine with the Kronos is that, unless you're in the polysix engine, the ONLY way to do an arpeggiator is with Karma, which is extremely complex and shitty. They REALLY need a simple arpeggiator across all engines.

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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One huge pet peeve of mine with the Kronos is that, unless you're in the polysix engine, the ONLY way to do an arpeggiator is with Karma, which is extremely complex and shitty. They REALLY need a simple arpeggiator across all engines.

 

Karma indeed is an in redible tool, but not for creating new stuff rom scratch, just edditing excisting stuff tough works quite well..

 

I agree with you that it could be good to add another arpeggiator, next to Karma ( wouldnt want to miss Karma). But Karma Motif really shows that Karma can work perfect with arps on top of it..

 

 

... I think i am the duck in the pond... But in my perfect machine, there would be Karma, a more stamdard arpeggiator comparable to Rolands and Arranger styles...

 

The only company that seems to realize the power of combining these tools is is Casio, i forgot about the superb arpeggiator from the px-5s, that allows you even to change CC vallues ( which is what Yamaha now calls motion controll). But in the new Mz-x workstation, they combine the arpeggiator and phraes from the px-5s with an audio looper and high end arranger styles...

 

Hoping that they will allow the same for the px-5s replacement, as the Mz-x500 is only 61 keys. But a very fun tool nevertheless..

Korg Kronos 88, Yamaha Tyros5 (76), Integra 7, macbook pro/mainstage
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... But in my perfect machine, there would be Karma, a more stamdard arpeggiator comparable to Rolands and Arranger styles...

+1 :2thu:

 

Karma makes me feel like I've entered a drug-induced dream scene. Similar to programming in a language like Lisp or APL: you know it's powerful, but you can't make your mind think that way.

Casio PX-5S, Korg Kronos 61, Omnisphere 2, Ableton Live, LaunchKey 25, 2M cables
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... But in my perfect machine, there would be Karma, a more stamdard arpeggiator comparable to Rolands and Arranger styles...

+1 :2thu:

 

Karma makes me feel like I've entered a drug-induced dream scene. Similar to programming in a language like Lisp or APL: you know it's powerful, but you can't make your mind think that way.

 

I am very interested to find out whats Korgs stance about Karma, theny never took Karma to version 3 thats available for Yamaha instruments right now.

 

Just wondering if a Kronos replacement will still have Karma functionallity. As said its a strong mudicall point of Kronos, but most people highly depend on 3rd party stuff to utilize it

 

 

Korg Kronos 88, Yamaha Tyros5 (76), Integra 7, macbook pro/mainstage
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I found the House 101 DVD course to be useful for learning how to use KARMA on my Korg M3. I guess a lot of those videos are now up on Youtube.

 

http://www.karma-lab.com/vppca/house101dvd.html

 

I agree it's more complicated to get a handle on than typical arpeggiators - a fair amount of menu diving. I actually found the M3 Editor software to be easier to use than the M3's onboard UI for learning KARMA stuff.

 

OTOH, having the KARMA behavior change based on your keyboard velocity, chord voicing, etc. is pretty neat

 

As for KARMA 3.x for Korg Kronos, it was released this past January:

http://www.karma-lab.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20865

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The only company that seems to realize the power of combining these tools is is Casio, i forgot about the superb arpeggiator from the px-5s, that allows you even to change CC vallues ( which is what Yamaha now calls motion controll). But in the new Mz-x workstation, they combine the arpeggiator and phraes from the px-5s with an audio looper and high end arranger styles...

 

The sequencer(s) on the Poly Evolver had this capability years ago and it's probably carried over to some of the newer DSI synths. They just failed to come up with a catchy name for it.

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I am very interested to find out whats Korgs stance about Karma, theny never took Karma to version 3 thats available for Yamaha instruments right now.

Have you used Yamaha Karma ? Korg is better. Yamaha doesn't actually put Karma on its hardware. Karma is software.

"It doesn't have to be difficult to be cool" - Mitch Towne

 

"A great musician can bring tears to your eyes!!!

So can a auto Mechanic." - Stokes Hunt

 

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I am very interested to find out whats Korgs stance about Karma, theny never took Karma to version 3 thats available for Yamaha instruments right now.

Have you used Yamaha Karma ? Korg is better. Yamaha doesn't actually put Karma on its hardware. Karma is software.

 

Better? More integrated, true, as in the Kronos it is build into the Core of the soundengine.

 

But Yamaha Motif has some nice options, not available on the Kronos yet.

 

I think better is the wrong word. But somehow running the software on a remote system makes it feel more like a gimmick then a major part of the soundcreation.

 

Where a Kronos witouth KArma would be a step back in time..

 

 

 

Sadly, i also depend much on the stuff others have created on the Kronos, i can use Karma to tweak the GE's to my liking. But creating your own GE's even just basic arps is a whole different story.

 

 

a fun thing, is if you read Bad Misters comments on the yamahasynth.com website then he states that the same goes for arps, however i can say honestly that i created quite some nice Arps on my old Motif XS.. fun to do so.. But seems he thinks the new Motion sequencer will also thrive on 3rd party content.

Korg Kronos 88, Yamaha Tyros5 (76), Integra 7, macbook pro/mainstage
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Better because it is integrated into hardware because if you have to pay money for software who would spend money on that karma shit. Anything I would do on Karma I can pretty much do easier on other software.

"It doesn't have to be difficult to be cool" - Mitch Towne

 

"A great musician can bring tears to your eyes!!!

So can a auto Mechanic." - Stokes Hunt

 

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You "can" do arpeggiator said in Karma, but it's a completely different experience than e analog days of having switches/knobs to select how many octaves and up, down, up/down like in the polysix engine.

 

I miss my Jupiter 6 with the Europa expansion. It got stolen and I bought another Jupiter 6 but never expanded it. I had to replace several of the chips and calibrate it, and there are some other things a little flakey with it.

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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Out of curiosity, I took a look at the time signature possibilities for the KARMA GEs on the Korg M3. Looks like a lot of them will let you enter any number you want on top of the 4 in 4-beat time sigs (7/4, 5/4, etc.). I could probably get lost for hours just messing around with this stuff.

 

M3 GE Time Signature table

 

Kronos version

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Yeah, it's easy to get hopelessly lost with Karma. I wish I had more patience with it.

 

It's too bad there aren't any Karma upgrades for the M3 itself. I really don't want to buy the extra software. I had it for my Triton, but don't use it anymore. Still using the Triton though.

When an eel hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's a Moray.
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But Yamaha Motif has some nice options, not available on the Kronos yet.

 

Did you download the Jan. 2016 Karma 3.04 update for Kronos?

 

What are your impressions of it compared to earlier versions?

 

Its mostly a Kronos update, not a Karma update, i didnt see any new functionallity added to Karma

Korg Kronos 88, Yamaha Tyros5 (76), Integra 7, macbook pro/mainstage
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Yeah, it's easy to get hopelessly lost with Karma. I wish I had more patience with it.

 

It's too bad there aren't any Karma upgrades for the M3 itself. I really don't want to buy the extra software. I had it for my Triton, but don't use it anymore. Still using the Triton though.

 

I still have to update my M3 to the Karma update that was released in 2015. I'll probably do that soon. I haven't used the M3 for a while.

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