Playing to drum tracks on Kurzweil PC4

[AnotherScott]

I know how to select a Song with a drum rhythm, start it playing at the appropriate tempo, and then play over it, picking different sounds as I need them. But that's as far as I've gotten. Any sound (Program) I select plays over the whole keyboard. How do I incorporate additional sounds into the Song over different keyboard ranges, or, to look at it from the other side, incorporate the rhythm into a Multi? My goal is to play bass on the left and my other sound on the right, while the drum beat is playing. (p.s. - I still want to be able to select different right hand sounds at whim.)

 

Secondarily... Is there a way to change the drum beat on the fly, i.e. to alter the beat for verses vs. choruses as I play?

[Sean M. H.]

I feel like there is a way to do this, but I'm not in front of my board at the moment.  You mention changing the right hand sound on the fly...do you just mean picking a different sound from within the same zone?  Like if you program Piano, EP and Wurly on different zones, switching between those?  Or do you mean switching to any other Program on the PC4?

[AnotherScott]

1 minute ago, Sean M. H. said:

You mention changing the right hand sound on the fly...do you just mean picking a different sound from within the same zone?  Like if you program Piano, EP and Wurly on different zones, switching between those?  Or do you mean switching to any other Program on the PC4?

I'm open to different approaches, but ideally, I'd like to be able to change the sound within a zone (which sounds like the first and third of your three questions there). So for example, at the start of the song, there's piano in zone 1 (playing on the right), bass in zone 2 (playing on the left), and drums in zone 3 (meaning that sliders 1, 2, and 3 control the volumes of piano, bass, and drums respectively). And then, with zone 1 selected, I'd ideally like to be able to select any other Program, to change the sound in Zone 1 while I continue to play my zone 2 bass and while the drums are continuing to play in zone 3. Unfortunately, I suspect that may be impossible unless I know the number of the program I want and use keypad mode to enter it, I don't think there's a way to invoke the more convenient ways of accessing Programs that are available in other modes (i.e. the scrolling Program list, which you can "jump" through by hitting Category buttons, and set so that a Program doesn't become active until you hit Enter; or the Favorites view which, would allow you to more easily group desired Programs together for quicker recall). But your "second question" method could be okay, if I were to set up, for example, bass, drums, and 14 other sounds in the 16 zones, where bass and drums would always play, and I could somehow easily select which of the other 14 sounds were being played by the right hand (and I'd still be able to go in and edit, to change one of those sounds to a different sound if need be, which kind of gives me some of the first approach in this second approach as well). I hope this is making sense, I'm half asleep. ;-)

[Sean M. H.]

I believe the Riffs function in Multi mode might get you close.  Basically, you can reference a given track from a song, and trigger it from within the Multi.  So, for example, if you have a 4-bar drum loop recorded on track #5 of song #23...you'd set up the following RIFF in your Multi (I'm paraphrasing the parameter names here, but you'll get the idea):

 

Song: 23

Source track: 5

Start: 1:0:0

Stop: 5:0:0

Trigger Range: C-1 to C-1

Release Range: D-1 to D-1

 

You'd set this RIFF up on the zone of your Multi which has a drum sound assigned (presumably the same sound you used within the song, but it doesn't HAVE to be).  So every time you press the C1 key, you'd trigger bars 1-4 of song #23 (track 5) to start playing/looping.  When you hit D1, it stops.

 

Now, taking it a step further, if you want a different 4-bar drum groove as an option, you could either 1)record it to a different song, or 2) record it to bars 5-8 of the same song as the above example.  If we do the latter, we'd go back into our Multi and setup a second RIFF as follows:

 

Song: 23

Source track: 5

Start: 5:0:0

Stop: 9:0:0

Trigger Range: D-1 to D-1

Release Range: E-1 to E-1

 

Notice here that the start/stop points have changed to reference the new 4-bar section of the song that we recorded.  Also, we are now triggering on D-1 (which was set up as the release key for the first RIFF)...so D-1 will stop the first RIFF and start the second RIFF.

 

One other cool thing is that I believe the assignable switches can be mapped to RIFF start/stop too...so you could actually use those to switch the parts on/off instead of using keyboard real estate.

 

The only real problem/limitation I see with this approach is that there is only one RIFF per Multi zone.  So in the example above, I think you would need to set up two zones dedicated to Drum sounds within your Multi to accomodate the two RIFFs we have set up

[AnotherScott]

Ah, RIFFs. I've never gone anywhere near them!

 

So it sounds like the way to approach this turns out not to be adding a second keyboard playable part to a song while playing its drum pattern, nor adding a song's drum pattern to a multi, but rather adding a riff to a multi (or two riffs, for the secondary part of my initial query), having first turned the song drum-pattern into a riff (or I guess more precisely, setting up the riff so that it references the song's drum pattern). Yes?

 

Since my PC4 is actually the PC4-7, and I need to go all the way to the lowest E to play the LH bass, the only keys available for triggering the RIFFs would be the top-most keys. Not ideal due to the possibility of hitting them when not intending to turn the drums on or off, but possibly workable. I like the idea of using "assignable switches" instead, but I'm not clear as to what you mean by "assignable switches." Do you mean my choice of any of the assignable buttons (the ones under the sliders)?

 

Would the Tempo knob still work to alter the tempo of the drums in real time?

 

As for the secondary part, the dual riff thing (two drum patterns in two zones for verse vs. chorus use, each with their own pair of keys or buttons to turn them on or off, if I understand you correctly) doesn't sound very workable in real life (i.e. in  terms of timing the transitions between the two beats perfectly while playing the song live), unless it's smart enough to know that when the second one is activated, it should play the first one until the next downbeat, and then switch to the second one. Unless there's some facility for that, realistically, I think the PC4 may not really support playing live over multiple switching drum patterns unless the drums are fully sequenced in advance (as opposed to on an arranger, where you hit the intro, verse, chorus, ending, and fill buttons on the fly as you need them, allowing you to improv the structure as you go instead of playing to a fixed sequence). The Roland Fantoms have this arranger-style drum pattern function, and the Yamaha MODX appears to have some way to do something similar, where you can hit buttons to call up different patterns on the fly, I think by changing Scenes which are linked to ARPs or pattern sequences. 

[Sean M. H.]

34 minutes ago, AnotherScott said:

Do you mean my choice of any of the assignable buttons (the ones under the sliders)?

Yup...I was talking about those.

 

34 minutes ago, AnotherScott said:

Would the Tempo knob still work to alter the tempo of the drums in real time?

 

I believe so.  I think you can set the RIFFs to either follow a set tempo, or follow the system/song tempo--which is controlled by that knob (or could be programmed to another knobs if you wanted)

 

34 minutes ago, AnotherScott said:

unless it's smart enough to know that when the second one is activated, it should play the first one until the next downbeat, and then switch to the second one.

 

There are the following settings for each RIFF that I believe will do just that:

 

Trigger Sync Zone 

Trigger Sync Mode

Release Sync Zone

Release Sync Mode

 

I think the Sync Zone specifies what you want to Sync to (a specific RIFF, an Arpeggiator, etc)...and the Sync Mode specifies whether to sync to any beat, only a downbeat etc

 

Can't say I've tried anything as elaborate as what you are looking for, so I can't vouch for it in practice...but I have played with the feature a bit.  It's pretty useful/flexible, if not as immediate as a "dedicated" rhythm feature 

 

[Sean M. H.]

41 minutes ago, AnotherScott said:

 

As for the secondary part, the dual riff thing (two drum patterns in two zones for verse vs. chorus use, each with their own pair of keys or buttons to turn them on or off, if I understand you correctly)

 

To clarify, it wouldn't be two separate pairs of keys--one pair for each Zone/RIFF.  I would set the "end" key for RIFF 1 and the "begin" key for RIFF 2 as the same note...so it would just be two keys altogether to control both RIFFs...but in any case, sounds like the buttons might be the better way to go, due to keyboard real estate.