I need a little programming help. I have a keyboard split combi, with one part using a xylophone patch. I need to be able to do rolls on the xylophone. This sounds like a job for Karma, but I'm new to Karma and fairly new to the Kronos, for that matter.
Poking around a bit, it seems like GE Mallet Roller 1 is pretty close to what I need. Just a couple problems:
1) that seems to only roll two notes, and I need three.
2) how to control when it rolls. I need to do this note-by-note. I suppose I could do this by switching Karma on/off, but that's not very convenient. I'm wondering if I could either:
A) assign something like JS+Y to switch the roll on/off, or perhaps
B) setup a velocity switch to do this. This would be best, since my left hand is busy playing a different program. For example, I could add a second Xylophone patch to the combi that used Karma, and velocity switch between the two patches? I'm not sure how to do this - have all patches respond to the keyboard, but have Karma only affect one of the patches. Or can I have velocity turn on/off Karma?
C) other ideas?
I'm sure the Kronos can do what I want, I'm just too much of a novice to know how to set it up. Any help would be much appreciated.
Need to to setup xylophone rolls
Moderators: Sharp, X-Trade, Pepperpotty, karmathanever
A little progress..l
I tried setting this up with a second xylophone timbre on ch3, then setting Karma (module A) to take global ch as input, and output to ch 3. This has two problems:
1) the "roll", which works great if Karma output is to gch, now has a horrible stutter when output to ch3. I don't understand why. But the real limitation is...
2). The velocity switching in the midi filters/velocity zones don't seem to apply to Karma. Apparently, Karma still receives all velocities (which I expected), but ch3 still responds to all velocities (which is not what I was hoping for). I guess I could try editing the xylophone program for ch3 to only respond to certain velocity zones... But would need to solve the stuttering problem
So this approach is a bust so far.
I went back to Karma output to gch. So everything works as I want except I have to switch Karma on/off to control when rolls happen. I'm still needing a way to control this with velocity switching.
I poked around with dynamic midi controls, but haven't found a solution yet.
I tried setting this up with a second xylophone timbre on ch3, then setting Karma (module A) to take global ch as input, and output to ch 3. This has two problems:
1) the "roll", which works great if Karma output is to gch, now has a horrible stutter when output to ch3. I don't understand why. But the real limitation is...
2). The velocity switching in the midi filters/velocity zones don't seem to apply to Karma. Apparently, Karma still receives all velocities (which I expected), but ch3 still responds to all velocities (which is not what I was hoping for). I guess I could try editing the xylophone program for ch3 to only respond to certain velocity zones... But would need to solve the stuttering problem
So this approach is a bust so far.
I went back to Karma output to gch. So everything works as I want except I have to switch Karma on/off to control when rolls happen. I'm still needing a way to control this with velocity switching.
I poked around with dynamic midi controls, but haven't found a solution yet.
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StephenKay
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Yes, this can be done with KARMA, it's a bit tricky, but I figured it out for you.
- Start with an INIT combi.
- Set the first two timbres to I-B 126 Xylophone Dynamic XFade (or B120 Vibraphone 1 if someone wants to try it with Vibes - it sounds nice!)
- By default, the MIDI Channel of timbre 1 should be Ch1; this will be the non-rolling part of the velocity switch. By default, the MIDI Channel of timbre 2 should be Ch2; this will be the rolling part done by the KARMA GE when we cross the velocity threshold.
- Go to 7-1 KARMA > GE Setup. Set Module A's GE to 0187 Mallet Roller 1.
- Set the Output Channel of Module A to Ch2 at the bottom.
- Turn KARMA On, and turn LATCH on as well (with latch on, this GE does a nice velocity fade-out of the roll that sounds more natural than just shutting off).
If you play it at this point, you will hear the mallet roller playing all the time, with the first timbre layered on top of it. Now we set up the velocity switching.
- Go to 3-6 MIDI Filter/Zones > Velocity Zones, and set the Top Velocity for timbre 1 to 100. This means that it we play over 100, timbre 1 (the straight notes) will not sound.
- Go to 7-7 KARMA > Dynamic MIDI, and set row 1 to:
Input: A
Source: Velocity
Bottom: 1 <-- IMPORTANT! (not zero)
Top: 100 (same as the value used for the velocity switch on timbre 1).
Action: Momentary
Destination: Module Stop
Module: checkbox for Module A on
Polarity: +
What this says is: when the velocity is between 1 and 100, stop the GE. So you play softly, and you don't get the roll (it stops the GE before it even gets started) - you get the straight notes from timbre 1. You play over 100, and it triggers the GE and you get the roll from timbre 2, but not the notes from timbre 1.
Note that the bottom must be set to 1, because with velocity, a velocity of zero is the note-off. If you leave the bottom set to 0, then releasing the keys shuts off the nice velocity fade-out that we get from using the Latch button.
Try it! Should be working at this point.
You would then adjust the switch point of "100" to be to your personal liking - just remember to adjust it to the same value in both places.
Now, to get more than two notes was a bit trickier. The thing with the Mallet Roller 1 GE is that it is basically set up to force it to do two-note rolls. However, there are some parameters you can change to get it to do three note or more rolls, although they would not necessarily be intuitive to locate - I had to use the KARMA Kronos software to view the GE and figure out what could be changed from the available GE RTP to cause it to NOT cycle on only two notes.
- Go to 7-5 KARMA > GE RTP/Scenes, and in the Module A tab, locate RTP #24 Index-Pools Random Factor . The index pattern in this GE is what causes to to cycle between two notes. Set this to +99.
- Now try a three note chord - you will find it plays a wide arpeggio with many notes over a few octave range. But we can control this.
- Go to 0-6 KARMA GE, and use the Module Control button to select the Module A Control Layer (or touch the little A to the left of the A row in the center note display section) to view the Real-Time Parameters that are assigned to Module A.
- With the Control Surface set to "RT/KARMA", hit that 3 note chord hard, and then use Slider 5 "Note Range" to decrease the range of the arpeggio. When you get down to about 24, you'll find that it is cycling 3 notes. You can adjust this to get 2 notes, 3 notes, 4 notes etc.
- Start with an INIT combi.
- Set the first two timbres to I-B 126 Xylophone Dynamic XFade (or B120 Vibraphone 1 if someone wants to try it with Vibes - it sounds nice!)
- By default, the MIDI Channel of timbre 1 should be Ch1; this will be the non-rolling part of the velocity switch. By default, the MIDI Channel of timbre 2 should be Ch2; this will be the rolling part done by the KARMA GE when we cross the velocity threshold.
- Go to 7-1 KARMA > GE Setup. Set Module A's GE to 0187 Mallet Roller 1.
- Set the Output Channel of Module A to Ch2 at the bottom.
- Turn KARMA On, and turn LATCH on as well (with latch on, this GE does a nice velocity fade-out of the roll that sounds more natural than just shutting off).
If you play it at this point, you will hear the mallet roller playing all the time, with the first timbre layered on top of it. Now we set up the velocity switching.
- Go to 3-6 MIDI Filter/Zones > Velocity Zones, and set the Top Velocity for timbre 1 to 100. This means that it we play over 100, timbre 1 (the straight notes) will not sound.
- Go to 7-7 KARMA > Dynamic MIDI, and set row 1 to:
Input: A
Source: Velocity
Bottom: 1 <-- IMPORTANT! (not zero)
Top: 100 (same as the value used for the velocity switch on timbre 1).
Action: Momentary
Destination: Module Stop
Module: checkbox for Module A on
Polarity: +
What this says is: when the velocity is between 1 and 100, stop the GE. So you play softly, and you don't get the roll (it stops the GE before it even gets started) - you get the straight notes from timbre 1. You play over 100, and it triggers the GE and you get the roll from timbre 2, but not the notes from timbre 1.
Note that the bottom must be set to 1, because with velocity, a velocity of zero is the note-off. If you leave the bottom set to 0, then releasing the keys shuts off the nice velocity fade-out that we get from using the Latch button.
Try it! Should be working at this point.
You would then adjust the switch point of "100" to be to your personal liking - just remember to adjust it to the same value in both places.
Now, to get more than two notes was a bit trickier. The thing with the Mallet Roller 1 GE is that it is basically set up to force it to do two-note rolls. However, there are some parameters you can change to get it to do three note or more rolls, although they would not necessarily be intuitive to locate - I had to use the KARMA Kronos software to view the GE and figure out what could be changed from the available GE RTP to cause it to NOT cycle on only two notes.
- Go to 7-5 KARMA > GE RTP/Scenes, and in the Module A tab, locate RTP #24 Index-Pools Random Factor . The index pattern in this GE is what causes to to cycle between two notes. Set this to +99.
- Now try a three note chord - you will find it plays a wide arpeggio with many notes over a few octave range. But we can control this.
- Go to 0-6 KARMA GE, and use the Module Control button to select the Module A Control Layer (or touch the little A to the left of the A row in the center note display section) to view the Real-Time Parameters that are assigned to Module A.
- With the Control Surface set to "RT/KARMA", hit that 3 note chord hard, and then use Slider 5 "Note Range" to decrease the range of the arpeggio. When you get down to about 24, you'll find that it is cycling 3 notes. You can adjust this to get 2 notes, 3 notes, 4 notes etc.
Last edited by StephenKay on Thu Aug 30, 2012 7:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.
I have had this on my list (actually marimba) to tackle for awhile and never got there. Thanks for an awesome post Stephen! Can't wait to get into the studio later and give it a try. Great question topic. I know I am not utilizing KARMA nearly as much as I could be. And this is the kind of situation I think it can allow us some real creative avenues on the Kronos.
is the same thing could work for timpani sounds?? i found that timpani roll on kronos preset program is not very good..
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Love my yamaha psr s910 as well
Korg Kronos 88, Yamaha PSR s910, Korg C720, Yamaha DTX 520, Focusrite Scarlett 18i6, a pair of Yamaha HS80 in (soon not to be) an unproperly treated room..
Love my yamaha psr s910 as well
Korg Kronos 88, Yamaha PSR s910, Korg C720, Yamaha DTX 520, Focusrite Scarlett 18i6, a pair of Yamaha HS80 in (soon not to be) an unproperly treated room..
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StephenKay
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blinkofanI
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Isn't this place great or what? It's like you would go on a forum and ask for an explanation of E:MC2 and Einstein would come up and explain it to you! ( not that i wish Mr. Kay to be in the same state as Einstein right now, but you get the idea)
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