source file: mills2.txt Date: Thu, 4 Jan 1996 23:43:23 -0800 Subject: K2000 vs. ASR-10 From: HFORTUIN@delphi.com Gary Morrisons recent message [slightly edited], with my response: [Sorry about the lack of contractions and the use of [] instead of parentheses, but these quirks are necessitated by my quirky primitive home modem.] GM: Probably the main consideration when it comes to choosing between the K2000 and the ASR-10 especially for unusual tunings, based upon a collegues experience, is power vs. ease of use. The K2000 is very powerful, but it is not very easy to do exotic things on. The ASR-10...is FAR easier to use than the K2000. ------------------------------ HF: First of all, I am not employed, and have not been employed, by any synth manufacturer. And I do know that if Steve Curtin has any influence at Ensoniq, that their instruments will continue to be alternate-tuning friendly. And I have seldom decided in favor of ease of use if the thing I needed to do could only be done by a counterintuitive product. [I did a difficult orchestral score using Finale 1.0--penning the score and parts almost certainly would have taken less time!] I have never used an ASR-10, but I have used Ensoniq EPS samplers, various Yamaha FM synths, the Roland D50, etc. [mostly late 80s technology]. The manuals for those Yamaha & Roland machines were awful, and Ensoniqs manuals were certainly far superior. However, especially in comparison to other synths of 1991 vintage, the K2000 has an unusually large LCD display and a generally intuitive architecture, once you spend a little time with it. Its manual is superb, including several tutorials, and the video that came with it was really helpful for your first evenings with the instrument. However, the manual does devote VERY LITTLE space to setting up alternate tunings [just a little on page 15-1]--something I hope Kurzweil has, or will, correct. [Any Kurzweil employees listening out there?] Since its <> sounds are good samples and multisamples, with some very impressive synthesis algorithms for processing [especially those analogish filters], it is not nearly as difficult to coax naturalistic sounds out of this device as with the various pre-physical modelling synths. If you present your music to the public, this is an important consideration. Personally, I found the majority of the K2000 features placed where you would expect. If you are familiar with a competing manufacturers products, you will need to take a little time getting familiar with Kurzweils particular terminology, but it is not any more obtuse, and probably less so, than that of their competitors. [If the manufacturers can agree on General MIDI, why are they unable to standardize their terminology???] If you use my software, or if you acquire the 5-53 ET piano program disk that is out there, you can certainly set up adjacent-pitch to adjacent-key tunings with no problem. ------------------------------- GM: When it comes to using traditional keyboards for nontraditional tunings, that is a big question. As I think I have mentioned before, most people just map a tuning to the keyboard linearly [adjacent keys on the keyboard going to adjacent pitches in the tuning], mismatching octave boundaries of the keyboard to the octave boundaries of the tuning. I am in awe of people who can function that way, because I just cannot imagine being able to ignore the 7 ivory/5 ebony structure that keyboard imposes. ------------------------------- HF: I agree that adjacent-pitch to adjacent-key mappings are counterintuitive if you plan to perform directly from your standard keyboard. That is why I came up with the Clavette microtonal keyboard controller while at the Institute of Sonology--my preferred way to play the K2000 with alternate tunings. However, if you do not have such a luxury at your disposal, with a little head-scratching you can work out pitch-MIDI key relations in your sequencer, or pitch-12keyboard relations for live performance. If you have already taken the time to research and understand tuning theory to any degree, you certainly do have the intelligence to work out these pitch-MIDI key relationships. ---------------------------- GM: I prefer, personally, to map the keyboard so that [somehow] octave boundaries in the tuning match octave boundaries on the keyboard, preferably in some meaningful way. [This sort of thing is very easy to do on the ASR-10, but somewhat more difficult on the K2000, according to my informant.] For example, in 10TET, I map the keyboard so that adjacent Es and Fs play the same pitch, and similarly with adjacent Bs and Cs. --------------------------- HF: While my software currently does not allow for this, I will consider it for a future release. In the meantime, it certainly CAN still be done on the K2000 with a little adjustment to my programs output. Just remember that all semitone [ST] and cent offsets in the K2000 Keymap editor are expressed as offsets from the expected standard 12ET pitch. So to get the Kurzweil C4 [MIDI key 60] key to play C4 1/4-tone sharp, and to get key C#4 to play the same pitch, type in: key range: C4 to C4 ST: 0 cents: 50 key range C#4 to C#4 ST: 0 cents: -50 Of course, to make sure the resulting tone sounds decent, you need to check that your sample root is somewhere in the neighborhood of the resulting pitch. Or, if you like purely synthetic timbres, use waveforms in place of sample roots, or perhaps deliberately use the <> sample roots if you like. if you are a little patient, and can program your VCR [or could easily learn to do so], you should NOT be scared away by the K2000 in terms of ease of use. But, I am assuming you have some basic familiarity with tuning theory as well as rudiments of sound synthesis. If programming synths really terrifies you, and if you just want to use canned sounds and tunings, decide which <> suit you best, and buy the synth with the ones you want. The K2000 provides a number of historic pythagorean, well, and just tunings, plus Carlos alpha and beta. I know that the Yamaha TX802 includes 1/4-tones, 1/8-tones, and also some other historic tunings. I think the Korg Wavestation, a synth with a cool vector synthesis system, also has some built-in and 1 or 2 user-definable tunings. And if you mainly want some world music tunings, theres a new Macintosh software product out there [described in a recent Electronic Musician or Keyboard magazine] which generates some of these quickly and easily for some sound cards and synths. Hopefully this will help those of you in the market for a new or recent used sy synth. Musically yours, Harold Fortuin Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 5 Jan 1996 14:41 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id FAA03253; Fri, 5 Jan 1996 05:40:58 -0800 Date: Fri, 5 Jan 1996 05:40:58 -0800 Message-Id: <960105133620_71670.2576_HHB25-5@CompuServe.COM> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu