New KORG Nautilus AT

[TJ Cornish]

1 hour ago, AnotherScott said:

 

On the MODX (so I assume similar on the Montage), with the "all 9 bars" performance, you get individual slider control of all 9 bars, there are no 2-drawbar-combined sliders. (There are also sliders for other things, e.g. key click and leakage). You only have the 4 MODX (or 8 Montage) sliders, but you can  toggle them (or select the appropriate part) to control the different elements.

On the Montage M, the first 8 drawbars are the 8 sliders on the first part, and they work in reverse like a tone wheel organ - pulling them down = louder. The 1’ drawbar lives in the second part, and to control it you need to switch to the second part. This fader does not work in reverse; it’s a simple up = louder. I wish this worked like was suggested above by combining the 7th and 8th drawbars on one fader and leaving the 1’ drawbar on the 8th slider as I rarely do different things on 7 and 8 from each other, but always use the 1’ drawbar separately.

 

Yamaha has a tone wheel engine in the YC board; perhaps they will add it to the Montage in a way that makes it playable without eating all of the polyphony of the board. Maybe they could use one of the assignable knobs as the 9th drawbar. 

[J.F.N.]

On 9/20/2023 at 2:10 AM, zephonic said:

Are there any Korg reps lurking here? I would like to know if a Nautilus 73 AT is planned for later, or will aftertouch be restricted to the 61 and 88?

 

I really hope for the 73AT, it would be a perfect single-board solution for me.

 

Korg wouldn't have a clue, looking at the last years releases, pricing strategies, version variant confusions, I get the feeling that they've fired the marketing team and now it's run by some calc sheet focused sales director or something...

 

 

[AnotherScott]

10 hours ago, TJ Cornish said:

On the Montage M, the first 8 drawbars are the 8 sliders on the first part, and they work in reverse like a tone wheel organ - pulling them down = louder. The 1’ drawbar lives in the second part, and to control it you need to switch to the second part. This fader does not work in reverse; it’s a simple up = louder. I wish this worked like was suggested above by combining the 7th and 8th drawbars on one fader and leaving the 1’ drawbar on the 8th slider as I rarely do different things on 7 and 8 from each other, but always use the 1’ drawbar separately.

 

Since the Montage M supports more than 8 elements per part, maybe you could move the ninth drawbar element form the second part into the first part. I'm not sure how slider assignment works on the M (since there can now be more elements than there are sliders), but maybe it gives you the ability to assign two elements to one slider? If not maybe you could use the superknob to achieve an acceptable compromise.

[J.F.N.]

 

How on earth could Yamaha miss the 9th fader for drawbar usage? Even the Novation Impulse keyboard has 9 ...

[AnotherScott]

11 minutes ago, J.F.N. said:

 

How on earth could Yamaha miss the 9th fader for drawbar usage? Even the Novation Impulse keyboard has 9 ...

 

Well, it does have fader control for the 9th bar, but it is not available simultaneously with the other 8. I think the context is that the board has no real organ emulation engine in it to begin with and is not marketed as having any specific organ orientation (even though they have taken a couple of steps in that direction with the M, by allowing the sliders to work in reverse direction, and improving the Leslie effect).

 

The more surprising thing to me is that the Fantom-0 has no ninth slider for its organ, since that board actually had a dedicated virtual tonewheel organ in it. They don't even let you access the ninth drawbar level with one of the assignable knobs (nor temporarily repurpose one of the 8 sliders as you can do on the Montage). You have to bring it up in the touchscreen if you want to alter the level of the 9th bar.

[J.F.N.]

29 minutes ago, AnotherScott said:

 

Well, it does have fader control for the 9th bar, but it is not available simultaneously with the other 8. I think the context is that the board has no real organ emulation engine in it to begin with and is not marketed as having any specific organ orientation (even though they have taken a couple of steps in that direction with the M, by allowing the sliders to work in reverse direction, and improving the Leslie effect).

 

The more surprising thing to me is that the Fantom-0 has no ninth slider for its organ, since that board actually had a dedicated virtual tonewheel organ in it. They don't even let you access the ninth drawbar level with one of the assignable knobs (nor temporarily repurpose one of the 8 sliders as you can do on the Montage). You have to bring it up in the touchscreen if you want to alter the level of the 9th bar.

 

Both implementations mentioned sounds like "design crew having no clue about target group", that's alarming!

[TJ Cornish]

5 hours ago, J.F.N. said:

 

Both implementations mentioned sounds like "design crew having no clue about target group", that's alarming!

Not sure organ players were much of the target group of the Motif; you have more of a point on the Fantom side.

7 hours ago, AnotherScott said:

 

Since the Montage M supports more than 8 elements per part, maybe you could move the ninth drawbar element form the second part into the first part. I'm not sure how slider assignment works on the M (since there can now be more elements than there are sliders), but maybe it gives you the ability to assign two elements to one slider? If not maybe you could use the superknob to achieve an acceptable compromise.

That is likely possible, and I think there are some sampled organs from EasySounds that may even work that way out of the box.

[David Emm]

6 hours ago, J.F.N. said:

Both implementations mentioned sounds like "design crew having no clue about target group", that's alarming!

 

More than once, I've scratched my head over clumsy choices made by music tech companies. It sometimes seems as if they took who they could get for staff and missed out on the more creative designers. That or a control-freak CEO who overrules good ideas. You also can't just snap your fingers and land serious sound designers like Persing or Hotop. Synth manufacturing is hellishly complex and niche to boot, so ringing the right bells is never quite certain. 

 

I can see why someone would go ARGH! over the missing 9th slider, even in a synth where the organ is just part of a "band." You can't help but wish an instrument had Everything when so many seem to get there. Most of us have suffered the pangs of Why'd They Do (or NOT do) THAT?? Fortunately, I have it good enough to worry about that instead of dodging bullets in some place that's having major issues. 🤨    

[TJ Cornish]

3 hours ago, David Emm said:

 

More than once, I've scratched my head over clumsy choices made by music tech companies. 

 

I can see why someone would go ARGH! over the missing 9th slider, even in a synth where the organ is just part of a "band." You can't help but wish an instrument had Everything when so many seem to get there. Most of us have suffered the pangs of Why'd They Do (or NOT do) THAT?? Fortunately, I have it good enough to worry about that instead of dodging bullets in some place that's having major issues. 🤨    

I think you are correct in that there are always a few head scratchers where there seems to be no upside for a decision - e.g., on the Montage M you can only shift a part +/- 3 octaves, which frequently is not enough to do keyboard splits; on the other hand, I think there is a large issue of “can’t please everybody” - half the group wants the kitchen sink added while the other half says it’s too complicated.