Karma arps suck

[SanderXpander]

Kronos, yes. Karma, no. It's not that things are in unexpected places, it's that there are SO many parameters if you're expecting a regular arp that it gets a bit daunting.

That said, with a little bit of effort the basic things are quite achievable.

[StephenKay]

Kronos, yes. Karma, no. It's not that things are in unexpected places, it's that there are SO many parameters if you're expecting a regular arp that it gets a bit daunting.

That said, with a little bit of effort the basic things are quite achievable.

With great power comes greater complexity.

[jimknopf]

Absolutely correct.
But the problem Sander refers to is that we are more or less in midst of all that power and parameters as soon as we begin using KARMA.

I have no idea if it would be possible at all for you to introduce something like an additional kind of "simple arp mode/user interface" into KARMA, without too much effort. But IF that would be possible, it would open up elementary KARMA use for a lot of users, used to simple ARP programming, and at the same time build a first bridge towards more demanding and deeper use.

I don't think it's fair to critisize Karma for not being less than it is. But there is a well understandable user wish behind the the wrong critisism, and I think you would profit a lot from adressing it in some way.

[Sparker]

I can understand some people being frustrated with the Kronos regarding arpeggiation if their previous experience has been ARP's like the Triton's, or the simple 6 pattern ARP on the MS2000. On those machines you can call up an ARP and you know what you're going to get, plus you can write and save your own ARP on the Triton (and you know you'll get back what you played/programmed).

So encountering KARMA (for the first time) can be overwhelming and the realisation that it's going to take a fair bit of reading and practicing just to learn how to get the controls to do what you want can be daunting. (And yes of course it's worth the effort because of what it opens up - but - not everybody wants to be doing that.)

So it may well be an option to introduce a KARMA 'lite' for those who want a simple life. ( Maybe it's just a case of disabling the KARMA function (or most of it - keep duration and velocity) - so that just the basic GE's play - (there are over 2000) - plenty of choices for yer 'bog standard' ARP.

It may go against the grain for Stephen Kay to bastardize his programming (BTW. I'm in the camp that thinks learning how it works is a good thing; in case you hadn't guessed), but there could be an arguement for having the option from those whose primary interest is the Kronos's synth engines and not creative arpeggiation.

My personal preference if I want a simple ARP is to use the one in my Triton, (or whatever other ARP enabled alternative you have available) - or Cubase or the Kronos's own Seq; but then I don't play live).

[T7]

Kronos, yes. Karma, no. It's not that things are in unexpected places, it's that there are SO many parameters if you're expecting a regular arp that it gets a bit daunting.

That said, with a little bit of effort the basic things are quite achievable.

With great power comes greater complexity.

Sometimes less is more.

[cello]

I suggest the OP looks here... http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/ ... 38d94acb4e

[X-Trade]

It's still possible - it takes a certain amount of discipline to 'limit your options', but that is exactly all that is necessary. Indeed I just read an entire magazine article about producing better music in modern software by deliberately NOT doing things and limiting things - tell yourself only to work with a certain set of parameters, set targets for maximum number of tracks, only make edits to a certain level..

I think the problem with the KARMA GEs is that they do too much off the bat. Why doesn't the panning/CC effect default to being disabled? It's confusing and unpredictable and often the first thing I do when looking for an ARP is to go to the KARMA filter page and turn off everything except notes.
I think there's a systems/design concept called the principle of least astonishment that would be well applied here.
The same goes for default settings elsewhere. The default MS20 Init Prog for example has some envelope and filter movement and all other engines envelopes default to some strange shape that I would never use. Why don't they start off more 'neural'?

[cello]

Good points X-Trade...

I remember from when I worked in publishing well over 15 years ago being amazed by two things:

1. Designers would have 1,000s of fonts but only really use a core of maybe a dozen or so, only occasionally venturing outwith them

2. The same designers relished more working with say 2 colours than 4 colours (full colour); as it was more challenging (and cheaper for the publisher) to work with a limited ink palette. It forced designers to choose the colours very carefully and then think of %age shades than in full tones; in essence they became more creative when forced to limit their options

And thus I believe it is with music... (or rather sounds and their parameters). On one hand it's amazing that the O/K provides almost unlimited controls and variables.

But musically, do we need them all, all the time?

A piano has but one sound; different dynamics and articulations as well as sostenuto and sustain, but (without engaging in the John Cage approach) that's it - the rest is down to the music.

For me Karma does too much - to the point of being a 'band in a box' - no insult meant. It's so clever it can do that. But it also provides control to be 'newly' creative - if used in a more limited way if you get my drift.

And therein lies my point; sometimes using less of the variables increases the musical ingenuity.

[Kevin Nolan]

My 2-penny's worth.

I'm broadly with HexFix on this. I hugely admire Karma, and Stephen Kay; but I've said on numerous occasions in the past that Karma is too complex to use, too abstract and too uncontrollable.

To me, it feels like an unfinished product. Hence - the requirement for masses of complex documentation. Again I’ve said it before - I have an honours physics degree, 16 years experience in computing and software sitting on a probe that orbits the Earth every 3 days so I'm no slouch and no dumb-dumb; but I cannot understand Karma, its documentation, or how to use it in any meaningful musical way. God knows I've tried but I've given up - I literally do not have the time needed to crack this one.

Even look at Dan's recommendations in his post. All of that just to get an Arpeggio. No - it should be - choose an arpeggio pattern (easily and obviously), turn it on and play - and for it to sound right. I too have never managed to extract a meaningful pattern from Karma. Karma should be obvious, and easy to use - then it will be a finished product.

And with respect to EJ2, I find Karmafied programs and combi's to be essentially useless to creating original music - they are far to complex for serious music making. Think of the amount of time any serious musician spends getting even just one component of a piece right; while Karma throws a plethora of uncontrollable lines, ever changing and random at you - and where there are intriguing aspects, they are virtually impossible to isolate, control and use in new original pieces.

As just one example - on any given Karmafied program, usually one of the faders offers 128 variations on a pattern. But there is no meaningful way of returning to any given variation - even a minute movement of the fader changes it.

Instead, there should be a GUI layer on top of all the complexity to select GE patterns and their variations, see them clearly on some sort of pattern grid, capture them, edit them, assign them to bars and tracks as with RMX Stylus, and so on.


I accept that Karma is a stunning piece of software. When you consider that it controls MIDI, and how flaky MIDI can be, I balk at the robustness of Karma and of Stephen Kay's vast intelligence. But that does not take away from the fact that Karma is too complex to use in any _original_ musical composition; too difficult to use, and hence is rarely if ever used by the vast majority of Karma instrument owners. Karma as it stands is a gargantuan, untapped reservoir of awesome potential, currently mostly untapped and untappable. It definitely needs Stephen to accept that most of us are not as smart as you are, and cannot - and will not - use it the way you imagine. Karma needs to take a huge leaf form the Stylus RMX book, and to provide significant GUI development to make it significantly easier to use, to integrate into Realtime performance scenarios of true control and integration into DAW sessions. If completed in this way and perhaps harnessing touch screen technology, Karma could wipe the floor with Stylus RMX and IMO sell like hot cakes.

As said, this is not to be disrespectful to the stunning technology Karma is - it is revolutionary, still - and the GE content is simply massive and to die for - but when you have hundreds of pages of utterly impenetrable documentation needed to explain a technology it is a clear sign that it is not finished.

Kevin.

[xmlguy]

With great power comes greater complexity.

Hiding complexity is a greater power. Since basic, traditional arps are a small subset of the capability of Karma, then it seems possible to create a macro-perspective user interface with the traditional arp design within the Karma architecture. I'm sure you are uniquely capable of managing the complexity of creating such macro interfaces, so I'll keep to the simplicity of the apparent user requirement: Engage Arp. Capt. Kirk would not accept Dr. McKay's answer of: I'm a Karma doctor, Jim, not an arpeggiator, dammit. Jim would get Bones to work with Scotty to get it done by reconfiguring the warp drive to unscramble and discombobulate the Klingon ARpeggiation Matrix Array generator, using the existing medical tricoder to control it, all to safely pass through the asteroid field unharmed. Everyone cheers then go on to the next episode of exploring new frontiers. Jim couldn't reconfigure a warp drive or perform surgery successfully to save his life, but give him a Scotty, Dr. McKay, and a tricorder, and he can get them all through the mission (except for the new ensign on the away team who never returns alive). Often we like the same old formulas delivered in new and interesting ways.

Arthur C. Clarks third law states "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". We just want more mogic, Dr. Kay, and you seem to be the best magician around.

[Chriskk]

StephenKay wrote:

With great power comes greater complexity.

Steve Jobs wouldn't agree with it.

The equation that captures the greatest power in this universe couldn't be simpler:

E = mc^2.

[StephenKay]

I maintain that it does do a simple arp. Select GE 0000, turn it on, play it. It goes up, and down. OK, it pans. Maybe that was a mistake. Simple enough to remove, once you know where to filter it out. KARMA > MIDI Filter > Transmit > CC-A. But OK, ignore the panning, what else is wrong with it?

You go to the KARMA GE page, all of the controls do what they say. Raise the Velocity Accents slider to the top, no velocity fluctuations, all notes the same level. Lower it to introduce accents. Play with the Duration Control slider. They get shorter and longer (some people call this "gate"). Play with the Note Range slider. The range of the arpeggio goes from nothing to 4 or 5 octaves. Want one octave? It's at about 100 (the KARMA Value). Two octaves? It's at about 200 (the KARMA Value).

Turn on the Note Scale Type switch. You get the notes you played, or a scalic variation. Turn on the Invert Phrase button, it goes down/up instead of up/down. Turn on the Note Pattern <>Random button and it does Random instead of up/down. Play with the Rhythm Pattern slider to get different rhythm patterns, including straight 32nds, straight 16ths, straight 8ths, triples, and other variations. Move the Swing % slider to impart a swing feel to the arp. I won't even mention the other controls that allow you to do stuff no other arpeggiator does, because we're talking about simple. What's not simple about that?

[StephenKay]

And with respect to EJ2, I find Karmafied programs and combi's to be essentially useless to creating original music

You're entitled to your opinion, but thankfully, more people than not don't agree or I wouldn't have any business, and I do have a bunch. I don't know what else to tell you. "Totally useless" for you, yet - I get frequent emails from users telling me how it has changed their life (so to speak ) and they are composing things they never thought possible. However, I *would* venture to agree that KARMA is not going to be everyone's cup of tea.

they are far to complex for serious music making. Think of the amount of time any serious musician spends getting even just one component of a piece right; while Karma throws a plethora of uncontrollable lines, ever changing and random at you - and where there are intriguing aspects, they are virtually impossible to isolate, control and use in new original pieces.

Kevin, I have great respect for you, so I don't want to get into a pissing match here, but this seems to suggest you expect KARMA to perform like something you already understand, not something that may require a different paradigm view. Now, if your attitude is "I don't want a different paradigm, just give me the same crap that I'm used to from all the other manufacturers" - well, OK, but this is not it and it's not going to be.

As just one example - on any given Karmafied program, usually one of the faders offers 128 variations on a pattern. But there is no meaningful way of returning to any given variation - even a minute movement of the fader changes it.

Uhmm - make a note of the value of the one you liked? Then return to it? Doesn't anybody jot down parameter notations on a piece of scrap paper while editing if a particular value sounds great but they want to check something else out? I do it all the time...

Re: a "simplistic arp overview" of a KARMA GE:
I have given thought to this various times, and it's a concept that I've got some ideas for, so maybe it will happen someday.

[mathieumaes]

I must agree with Kevin on this issue.

I'm a live performer in a band, and I'm forced spending a LOT of time changing stuff to get Karma out of my way...

I'll give some examples:
- I used a secondary MIDI controller which I usually set to MIDI channel 2. Karma has this feature to control timbres on different midi channels (I think it's called Thru-Z). If I want to use an existing combi, I need to change many parameters (midi channels) to get karma out of the picture.
- I created a combi which has a split and layered a few brass programs. A few weeks ago this combi started "acting up" because of sticking notes. I had to change to a different patch and go back to reset it. Karma was off, latch was on. I disabled "latch" and the problem went away.

And this one time that I needed an ARP, it took me hours to get it the way I want... I needed a simple ARP that repeats the played notes using 8th notes. It took me hours to get through the basics of Karma, eventually finding a karma setting that "kind of" does the trick and taking out some stuff that I don't want/need.

[QuiRobinez]

I must agree with Kevin on this issue.

I'm a live performer in a band, and I'm forced spending a LOT of time changing stuff to get Karma out of my way...

I'll give some examples:
- I used a secondary MIDI controller which I usually set to MIDI channel 2. Karma has this feature to control timbres on different midi channels (I think it's called Thru-Z). If I want to use an existing combi, I need to change many parameters (midi channels) to get karma out of the picture.
- I created a combi which has a split and layered a few brass programs. A few weeks ago this combi started "acting up" because of sticking notes. I had to change to a different patch and go back to reset it. Karma was off, latch was on. I disabled "latch" and the problem went away.

And this one time that I needed an ARP, it took me hours to get it the way I want... I needed a simple ARP that repeats the played notes using 8th notes. It took me hours to get through the basics of Karma, eventually finding a karma setting that "kind of" does the trick and taking out some stuff that I don't want/need.

When using factory combi's that you didn't create yourself, then the KARMA implementation is decided by the programmer. The Thru In feature is a quite handy feature in certain scenarios.

The best thing you could do is to get acquinted with the basics of KARMA programming. Actually, the basics aren't that hard to understand if you got a little knowledge of how hardware synths work and communicate.

I speak more and more people that haven't got a clue how hardware synths can be programmed or how they have to change parameters through the Control Changes system. Some of those guys never heard of it because they are used to the extremely friendly VSTI user interfaces that hides all complexity in the user interface. These kind of users will have a hard time to understand the Kronos. Because basicly they will need to learn the 9 engines with zero knowledge which is quite hard to do.

The basic KARMA features aren't that difficult. The most problems people find, lies in the fact that they try to modify an existing program or combi. Due to the fact that the original programmer decided how the KARMA implementation should be, the new selected GE patterns doesn't give the results someone expects. You can solve this with one command: Initialize KARMA module, before you modify the program or combi. That way the complete default settings are restored and things work as expected.

Now i read that the system is too complex and that there should be a gui wrapper around the complex structure of the parameters. But that's already in the Kronos, when you select a KARMA GE the RTC Model parameters are mapped to the Control screen, which basicly is a wrapper around the most important parameters for that KARMA GE. Just press the RT KNOBS / KARMA button (4th button on the 2nd vertical row) and press the play tab - control surface on the touchscreen. Then there is the complete gui wrapper around the complex parameter structure.

The things you've mentioned are all covered in my two beginners KARMA tutorials. Ok, maybe some of you think (like hexfix93) thinks those tutorials sucks, but actually there is a lot of info in those tutorials and it takes about 20 minutes to understand the basics of KARMA programming.

Did you watch those tutorials and if so, which parts are unclear (so i could learn from them and maybe create a new tutorial which is more explaining to users). I've rewatched the tutorials and my opinion is that it is extremely easy to understand, so which point could i improve?

here are the two tutorials, the first one is for the basic wrapper functionality, the second one shows how to program the KARMA engine on a basic level (including changing the rythm from 16th notes to 8th notes by a switch)

Just watch them (in full screen and 720P, so you can read the screens) and let me know what i could improve...

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/UvAZqstk5E8" frameborder="0"></iframe>

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/PSXNL8-ZHFU" frameborder="0"></iframe>