Piano Roll adventures from the '80's

[GregC]

I got some help from folks at another forum. Thought you might have some fun with this

Synclavier and Fairlight were developing software sequencers in the late 70s/early 80s.
Page R from the Fairlight actually had a light pen you could notate directly on the screen.



[video:youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POfS81h-8_4[/video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POfS81h-8_4&t=78s

[ando727]

That's pretty cool. I'd love to be able to enter notes on my Kronos with a pen (or a mouse) on a grid/piano roll. It's incredibly useful for entering parts that are impossible to actually play. That's what prompted my new thread asking for Korg to include a piano roll on the next update. They even knew the importance of this back in the mid-80s!

[GregC]

That's pretty cool. I'd love to be able to enter notes on my Kronos with a pen (or a mouse) on a grid/piano roll. It's incredibly useful for entering parts that are impossible to actually play. That's what prompted my new thread asking for Korg to include a piano roll on the next update. They even knew the importance of this back in the mid-80s!

I like looking at history. Most tech was expensive in the past. And platforms
had( or should have been) to be thoroughly thought out.

The piano roll is 1 of several wish list features for the Kronos and even the Oasys. From what I see some feature requests date back 11 or 12 years.

I use the SEQ heavily and have adapted to it. There seems to be a block of some kind, I am guessing this involves a major code re-write to have new SEQ features.

It reminds me of the discussion/requests for a Kronos rack. It was not planned
for early on. So I think there is a ' block ' on this. This is block is likely more financial/Sales/ROI/profit driven.

Over the years, even decades, I am convinced Korg is aware of suggestions. The success of many products is impressive. That is no accident. But they are a manufacturer thus its a well controlled dollars and cents business. Changes/upgrades to products are incremental vs transformative. I understand
this perspective is irritating to some.

I think its cool that we have an excellent community here. Lots of folks are focused on new products and I think the quality music making assessment is very important.

[pete.m]

That's a nice blast from the past, Greg. Having said that, I much prefer the current Kronos seq set-up to a piano roll. But I wanted to say that your comment about tech having been so expensive in the past reminded me of my first Roland sampler (W30, maybe?). I wanted to expand the memory, and it would have cost me £360 ($500) for 0.5 megabytes! So it feels kind of weird to me when I read other forum users saying that they are running low on space!

Pete.

[Kontrol49]

This was a subject close to the hearts of us who originally owned the Oasys for updates to the sequencer but they never came.

I think one thing that is annoying is that Korg gave the M3 workstation a piano roll type editor....Yet in their current flagship Kronos it seems to have been left hanging without one???

I would glady go back to using the internal Sequencer on Korg workstations if they made it more user friendly,it misses basic editing functions that were present on sequencers 20 years ago.

There is far too much flicking between screens to undertake different options I find the workflow clumsy and uninspiring,I have always been a hardware sequencer person but until they at least make a Workstation sequencer with a minimum of at least 32 basic midi tracks and multiple Hardware outputs to access larger External Midi setups there is always going to be a compromise if your using external Midi gear with the Kronos.

16 Midi channels maybe fine if your simply sequencing the Kronos but there's always a sacrifice between internal and external sounds with external gear to run along side it,unless you want to keep converting Kronos sounds to Audio which I don't want to do at an early stage of Sequencing to make room for more tracks of Midi,I like to keep individual drum sounds on there own track until I'm completely happy with the arrangement,and sometimes I can use 6-7 Midi tracks for Drum sounds alone,That's half the Midi track count gone with just a drum track,I also like to keep individual tracks CC data on separate tracks for ease of editing

in this day and age is 16 Midi Tracks really acceptable on a high end Workstation,The Roland Fantom G series sequencer whilst had it's pitfalls was a great nod to the sort of direction workstation sequencers should be heading,with a basic 128 Midi Tracks alongside its Audio Tracks.

And the Audio editing options are also too like trying to paint the house through the letterbox ideology,I just don't get why they didn't build the Audio interface of the D16XD/D32XD into the Kronos,which had a touchscreen too,Its been like this since the Oasys days.

They even omitted a great feature from the Triton Series,the Cue List,which was great for building your songs in sections,and then chaining them together once you'd created a full structure,Rather than using it simply as a Jukebox feature for a live set it gave you a kind of Pattern fashion secondary way of working with the sequencer which you could then chain together to create full tracks.

I stopped using the sequencer when I got the Oasys,It was just a step backwards from what the Triton Offered with the missing cue list,the Audio recording was a great addition but still half baked in terms of ease of use,even from the same company that made great Standalone Audio multi tracks in the D series

Whilst they will never make anything that will compete with a software DAW,they could at least with a large touchscreen make it less clumsy and more on par with the MPC philosophy.

The Kronos doesn't even have the Basic option to keep recording whilst auditioning sounds or the ability to switch to new tracks whilst still in recording,You have to stop the sequencer and select the next track,The Sequencer is useful as a scratch pad or for getting a quick idea down but for any serious sequencing it falls short,the workflow isn't the best

I don't think we will ever see a sequencer inside the Kronos that takes it to the next level,the basic Sequencer options haven't really changed a great deal since the Trinity days,

I find it rather arrogant of Korg to still make Workstations of this high end spec with multiple engines but feel that it is less important to make a sequencer of the same calibre,I understand that most people work with a Computer for sequencing nowadays but they have failed to address the sequencer that was for a longtime there best feature that made them the clear leaders for Workstations that gave an all in one solution for those of us who preferred the Hardware way of doings things,

Why not simply omit the Sequencer side of things or have it as an optional software extra for those who would want it,and simply make a singular performance instrument,I would like the option of removing the sequencer pages in order to make room for more User storage banks,a but like the Korg M1 which gave you the option to compromise between having either more Sequencer Events and less sounds or more sounds and less sequencer events, so you could configure the internal storage memory to suit your own needs,ok we don't need to do this now with SSD options but it would still be useful to kind of custom tailor the internal options of the instrument.

[GregC]

This was a subject close to the hearts of us who originally owned the Oasys for updates to the sequencer but they never came.

I think one thing that is annoying is that Korg gave the M3 workstation a piano roll type editor....Yet in their current flagship Kronos it seems to have been left hanging without one???

I would glady go back to using the internal Sequencer on Korg workstations if they made it more user friendly,it misses basic editing functions that were present on sequencers 20 years ago.

There is far too much flicking between screens to undertake different options I find the workflow clumsy and uninspiring,I have always been a hardware sequencer person but until they at least make a Workstation sequencer with a minimum of at least 32 basic midi tracks and multiple Hardware outputs to access larger External Midi setups there is always going to be a compromise if your using external Midi gear with the Kronos.

16 Midi channels maybe fine if your simply sequencing the Kronos but there's always a sacrifice between internal and external sounds with external gear to run along side it,unless you want to keep converting Kronos sounds to Audio which I don't want to do at an early stage of Sequencing to make room for more tracks of Midi,I like to keep individual drum sounds on there own track until I'm completely happy with the arrangement,and sometimes I can use 6-7 Midi tracks for Drum sounds alone,That's half the Midi track count gone with just a drum track,I also like to keep individual tracks CC data on separate tracks for ease of editing

1)in this day and age is 16 Midi Tracks really acceptable on a high end Workstation,The Roland Fantom G series sequencer whilst had it's pitfalls was a great nod to the sort of direction workstation sequencers should be heading,with a basic 128 Midi Tracks alongside its Audio Tracks.

And the Audio editing options are also too like trying to paint the house through the letterbox ideology,I just don't get why they didn't build the Audio interface of the D16XD/D32XD into the Kronos,which had a touchscreen too,Its been like this since the Oasys days.

They even omitted a great feature from the Triton Series,the Cue List,which was great for building your songs in sections,and then chaining them together once you'd created a full structure,Rather than using it simply as a Jukebox feature for a live set it gave you a kind of Pattern fashion secondary way of working with the sequencer which you could then chain together to create full tracks.

I stopped using the sequencer when I got the Oasys,It was just a step backwards from what the Triton Offered with the missing cue list,the Audio recording was a great addition but still half baked in terms of ease of use,even from the same company that made great Standalone Audio multi tracks in the D series

Whilst they will never make anything that will compete with a software DAW,they could at least with a large touchscreen make it less clumsy and more on par with the MPC philosophy.

The Kronos doesn't even have the Basic option to keep recording whilst auditioning sounds or the ability to switch to new tracks whilst still in recording,You have to stop the sequencer and select the next track,The Sequencer is useful as a scratch pad or for getting a quick idea down but for any serious sequencing it falls short,the workflow isn't the best

I don't think we will ever see a sequencer inside the Kronos that takes it to the next level,the basic Sequencer options haven't really changed a great deal since the Trinity days,

I find it rather arrogant of Korg to still make Workstations of this high end spec with multiple engines but feel that it is less important to make a sequencer of the same calibre
2),I understand that most people work with a Computer for sequencing nowadays but they have failed to address the sequencer that was for a longtime there best feature that made them the clear leaders for Workstations that gave an all in one solution for those of us who preferred the Hardware way of doings things,

3)Why not simply omit the Sequencer side of things or have it as an optional software extra for those who would want it,and simply make a singular performance instrument,I would like the option of removing the sequencer pages in order to make room for more User storage banks,a but like the Korg M1 which gave you the option to compromise between having either more Sequencer Events and less sounds or more sounds and less sequencer events, so you could configure the internal storage memory to suit your own needs,ok we don't need to do this now with SSD options but it would still be useful to kind of custom tailor the internal options of the instrument.

I think all your points sound fair. I have numbered a few to take it further.

1) What Roland did with the Fantom G sounds far superior with its sequencer. How come Roland did not follow up on this 2009 w/s model with a next generation ?

2) I like this the most. For efficient or ' acceptable ' sequencing, the ship has sailed long ago as many ( most ?) musicians ( everyone has a PC or mac) gravitated to the features of their favorite software. Do you believe the state
of the Kronos SEQ has crippled sales of the Kronos ?

3) so this is the all or nothing SEQ approach. I think you are proposing a ' software modular ' approach for a future generation Korg w/s. You mention that
a SEQ would have a trade off of subtracting additional banks. At that point, any future w/s model with all options should have the extra banks.

How much should Korg charge for the SEQ software extra ? Who would develop it ? How many would buy it ?

[Ksynth]

You could buy the IOS app for a Fairlight for $5 and the full version for about $25 maybe $30.

[GregC]

That's a nice blast from the past, Greg. Having said that, I much prefer the current Kronos seq set-up to a piano roll. But I wanted to say that your comment about tech having been so expensive in the past reminded me of my first Roland sampler (W30, maybe?). I wanted to expand the memory, and it would have cost me £360 ($500) for 0.5 megabytes! So it feels kind of weird to me when I read other forum users saying that they are running low on space!

Pete.

I hear you. a 30 gig hard drive still sounds huge.

we had to manage our data usage carefully back in the 80's/90's. In addition to memory and storage being expensive.

here's a fun article to read on the history of storage:
http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/18/ama ... sk-drives/

I am guessing the cost of storage and memory had an accelerated decline during the mid to late 90's. Moore's Law, etc

[GregC]

You could buy the IOS app for a Fairlight for $5 and the full version for about $25 maybe $30.

thats crazy

why would I do that when I can buy this on fleaBay ?


http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-80s-DK- ... SwA3dYKNnu

[Kontrol49]

1) What Roland did with the Fantom G sounds far superior with its sequencer. How come Roland did not follow up on this 2009 w/s model with a next generation ?

Good Question,That is something I would be interested to know as well,the FA series sequencer seemed to go the opposite direction it was a good sequencer and great interface with the larger screen on the G but that still had problems with how its functions integrated with the tracks,I just don't know why it wasn't updated,Roland were more than aware of the users frustrations,again it seemed to be a compromise,the sequencer was awesome but the internal sounds were rather lame,Kronos seems to be the opposite(In my opinion at least),I love the Fantom G sequencer in that it had a workflow similar to that of software without being tied to a mouse,although you could plug one in if you wanted to use it like that,it was very intuitive and good workflow with great drag and drop/Paste options without having to keep moving between pages like the Kronos suffers from to do basic functions,

2) I like this the most. For efficient or ' acceptable ' sequencing, the ship has sailed long ago as many ( most ?) musicians ( everyone has a PC or mac) gravitated to the features of their favorite software. Do you believe the state
of the Kronos SEQ has crippled sales of the Kronos ?

Certainly not,the sequencer isn't the reason why people buy the Kronos,I'm sure like myself the reason for you buying the Kronos also was about everything else it offered,a top notch instrument with great sounding engines just wish it had a top notch sequencer to match.

3) so this is the all or nothing SEQ approach. I think you are proposing a ' software modular ' approach for a future generation Korg w/s. You mention that
a SEQ would have a trade off of subtracting additional banks. At that point, any future w/s model with all options should have the extra banks

I suppose you could class it as modular type approach you add this or that dependant on your needs or use,that would be interesting,rather than a one size fits all approach,You could start off with the basic model and able to try the add ons for free for a limited period but maybe pay for them if you decide they would work for you this would perhaps make the instrument more bespoke to your needs so you could use sectors of the instrument for other things you would need I like that idea,plus you could finance your instrument to your needs with a basic model costing the same but the adds on were voluntary if you wanted them,I suppose this is already in place..sort of with the additional sound libraries.

It was kind of offered with the Oasys with the additional EXis you paid for the base instrument and then the optional engines were extra cost.I think what the Kronos offers is great value for money in its basic form,Just I would like to be able to remove the sequencer function in order to replace it with something else I would use in ints place be it either extra memory locations or some other function

How much should Korg charge for the SEQ software extra ? Who would develop it ? How many would buy it ?

I suppose we could take a similar approach from what I mentioned about the optional extras from the Oasys days,I never originally purchased the EXis for the Oasys,I didn't need them at the time,thankfully Korg then offered them as a goodwill gesture so had them eventually likewise with the Kronos I probably rarely use a couple of the onboard engines to great extent,it would be nice if Korg could develop more engines you could pick to replace the ones you don't,as for cost,I can't really say that depends on what Korg sets as a fair price due to R+D i think the original Oasys Exis were about $249 us dollars at the time

As for the sequencer software,its a good question,I suppose the only way that would satisfy my needs if Korg opened up the synth to run third party software,I like the Openlabs approach where you could buy the initial hardware but install your sequencer of choice,I think this approach if it ever sees light of Day with Korg is still a long way off,again one size doesn't fit all so who does the sequencer software could again be tricky if its going to be a closed option from Korg,it would be better to be a platform that would run the users choice by software so you could run the Kronos or future workstation like a PC in a hardware shell like Openlabs.

My dream instrument would be a Kronos XL with loads of extra Exis in some expanded engine library with a kind of best of Korg from the decades with either a Fantom G or Akai MPC4000 type sequencer with Korg D32xd Audio Recording inside
I guess we can have all this in some form by mixing and matching a few hardware instruments with your software DAW of choice and a load of VST plug ins,but It would be nice to have this in an all in one hardware device

[GregC]

1

2) I like this the most. For efficient or ' acceptable ' sequencing, the ship has sailed long ago as many ( most ?) musicians ( everyone has a PC or mac) gravitated to the features of their favorite software. Do you believe the state
of the Kronos SEQ has crippled sales of the Kronos ?

Certainly not,the sequencer isn't the reason why people buy the Kronos,I'm sure like myself the reason for you buying the Kronos also was about everything else it offered,a top notch instrument with great sounding engines just wish it had a top notch sequencer to match.

Lots of solid observations to toss around. I think you/we have determined the 'why' . IOW, why did Korg not spend $$$$ to rewrite the Seq for the Oasys and the Kronos ?

Maybe its always been obvious. The outdated seq has not deterred Kronos sales.
I think it was a calculation to not spend the $. The Korg folks likely observed there were other recording options and Kronos owners would find their way to them. So from a harsh ROI side, there was no/little value in re-writing the SEQ
for the Kronos.

And you are 100% correct. Us W/s customers have to have that great sound quality first and it has to be fresh/new etc, etc. Which is why I did not buy a Fantom. I already had a 3080Xv, a fantom rack. So no interest by me.