Tips on moving from Yamaha S30 to Korg M50

[Ginger]

I've been using a Yamaha S30 in an amateur 80s cover band for about 15 years. Pretty simple needs: dial in the configured keyboard for a song, play, and no other instruments to interface with. The S30 is old (1999) and I can tell that it sounds pretty thin compared to newer synths. I have a Korg M50 that I got for a steal and I like the sound quality a lot better. The M50 is newer (2008) and seems to have recent MacOS SW that still should work so that's a plus. However, I have some questions that I hope someone can answer before I as a newbie invest a lot of time in a stupid programming approach.

 

Basically I want to replicate the S30's up to 4-way split of a Performance where I can assign 4 different voices to up to 4 keyboard zones. When a certain song is to be played, I dial in the code for the Performance and use the different parts of the keyboard as needed.

 

The terminology of the Korg is different. It seems the S30 Voice is an M50 Program, and that I can further tweak an M50 Program within additional settings of an M50 Timbre. It seems the M50 Combination is like an S30 Performance where I can pull in Timbres and assign them to separate or overlapping key zones. To perform a song, I just have to pull up the Combination.

 

Does that all sound about right?

 

Also, is the mental shift from the S30 up/down bend/mod wheels to the M50 joystick difficult? The first thing I noticed was that pitch bend on the M50 is by default in the L/R direction of pitch on the keyboard whereas it's up/down on the S30. Is there a way to reassign the orientation of the joystick (globally or per-Program) if I have a hard time with bending L/R? 

 

Thanks in advance to anyone who wants to advise!

[Mighty Motif Max]

6 minutes ago, Ginger said:

I've been using a Yamaha S30 in an amateur 80s cover band for about 15 years. Pretty simple needs: dial in the configured keyboard for a song, play, and no other instruments to interface with. The S30 is old (1999) and I can tell that it sounds pretty thin compared to newer synths. I have a Korg M50 that I got for a steal and I like the sound quality a lot better. The M50 is newer (2008) and seems to have recent MacOS SW that still should work so that's a plus. However, I have some questions that I hope someone can answer before I as a newbie invest a lot of time in a stupid programming approach.

 

Basically I want to replicate the S30's up to 4-way split of a Performance where I can assign 4 different voices to up to 4 keyboard zones. When a certain song is to be played, I dial in the code for the Performance and use the different parts of the keyboard as needed.

 

The terminology of the Korg is different. It seems the S30 Voice is an M50 Program, and that I can further tweak an M50 Program within additional settings of an M50 Timbre. It seems the M50 Combination is like an S30 Performance where I can pull in Timbres and assign them to separate or overlapping key zones. To perform a song, I just have to pull up the Combination.

 

Does that all sound about right?

 

Also, is the mental shift from the S30 up/down bend/mod wheels to the M50 joystick difficult? The first thing I noticed was that pitch bend on the M50 is by default in the L/R direction of pitch on the keyboard whereas it's up/down on the S30. Is there a way to reassign the orientation of the joystick (globally or per-Program) if I have a hard time with bending L/R? 

 

Thanks in advance to anyone who wants to advise!

Yes, with Korg boards the Program = Yamaha Voice and the Combi = Yamaha Performance/Mixing.

 

I’m not sure on the joystick axis reassignment piece. I had a Krome (the replacement for the M50) for a few years and honestly I adapted to the joystick for pitch bend really quickly - I actually prefer it to the pitch wheel design (I also came from Yamaha boards). The one thing to be aware of is that since the joystick is spring loaded and also controls modulation, that you can’t just leave the mod “wheel” in any position and have it stay there. It will spring back to zero; you may have the option to set a button to “hold” the mod position when pressed*, but then to adjust the modulation again from where you froze it you’ll need to move the stick back to the position where you froze it, then turn off the “freeze” button, and adjust from there. You could also assign modulation to an expression pedal if needed, as a workaround.
 

*I’m not sure if the M50 has this capability - the Krome does and I used it all the time.

[Sean M. H.]

Sounds like you've got a good handle on it already to be honest.  Yes, a Yamaha "voice" (well up until their last generation of boards that is) is equivalent to a Korg "program"...and a Yamaha "performance" is a Korg "Combi"...of course, the specifics of the implementation between the brands--how many layers you can have for instance--isn't exactly one for one, but just looking at things broadly, that's how those terms relate.

 

Having used similar boards from both those brands, I've always found Korg to be a bit more straight forward and user friendly....plus the M50 screen is much larger and better than that on the S30, so that certainly helps too!

 

Regarding the joystick, I'd be really surprised if you didn't start to get used to the joystick after using it a bit.  If you think about it, the keyboard itself is laid out such that pitch runs left to right, so it really feels quite natural to bend pitch up by physically moving something to the right (or lower pitch to the left).  Whether or not you prefer a joystick or a wheel in general (in terms of ergonomics) is a different discussion...but I think you'll get used to the orientation pretty quickly.

[Sean M. H.]

There's also a bunch of resources and videos available for the M50 (and similar boards like the M3 and Tritons)

 

 

[Ginger]

Thanks for the advice everyone! I'm making progress.