You know what be a really good feature. If you had more than one fill per variation. I know you can fill to next or previous. But just one fill inside the current style can be pretty limiting IMHO. Just thinking out loud.

And also there are many kinds of fills that can be useful per variation

1) a stop filling: the drums comes to conclusion stop strongly and quickly...and as long as you continue pressing the filling it keeps the stop.

2) syncopated or groove filling: the filling is syncopated or of different groove and as long as you continue pressing the filling keeps at that groove.

3) filled power filling: the drums fills the piece completely and the longer you press the longer it is.

4) regular fillin that comes with the keyboard.

I really like your suggestions sk880user. Especially number 3. Another thing I'd like to be able to do is change to a different meter within the style like going from 4/4 to 3/4 and back, etc. Many songs I hear change meters a lot. I guess on of the first I can remember was the Beatles "All you need is love". It went from 4/4 to 3/4 to 4/4 during the main verses. There's probably a way to "trick" the arranger into doing this. I guess you could write it into the style somehow. hmmmm

[This message has been edited by Vic01 (edited 08-02-2001).]

Re-garding FILLS, I would like to see PADS on the VA7's as per the KN's. You could then program your own FILLS on 6 PADS to suit yourself......Just a thought.
When I play a friends KN6000 I very often mute all the Arrangement parts leaving BASS & DRUMS and bring in the PAD Riffs where required.

Graham UK

Hi Graham. Pads where you could program your own fills would a great idea. On my WK8 they give you a wide range of options that you can assign to the 4 pads but unfortunately custom fills isn't one of them. Did I hear someone say OS update??

Vic01.... The KN6000 you can record a fill straight into the pads, or copy data from the sequencer, meaning you could copy a fill from a Midi File. I believe with the PSR9000 you can do similar.
I would use PADS if I had them.....but people have them and never use them.

A dealer told me he has on a few occasions part exchanged a board only to find the settings from when he delivered the board had never been changed. A friend of mine has a KN2000. He sets it to Easy Swing and never moves away from this setting.... As they say in North Yorkshire, there is nooowt strange as folk.

Graham UK

I'm sure that future arranger keyboards will incorporate extra fills per style to help avoid redundancy. It sounds like some manufacturers have already provided a means to do custom fills within a style. Recording a fill straight into a pad is one solution. I know most arrangers including my WK8 are covered with so many buttons to push that adding extra buttons for fills might not seem marketable. I for one would gladly accept the extra buttons to get something like intro, fill to previous, fill >< 1, fill >< 2, fill >< 3, fill >< 4, fill to next, break, ending. You could even employ multiple intros, breaks and endings. I think what they do now, at least on my WK8, is to try and program the intros and endings to match the variation. That's not a bad scheme, I guess the main thing I would like to see is the ability to have more fills within a variation. This would probably require a completely new set of styles, as these fills would have to incorporated into the styles.

Hello VIC,

Sorry for the long delay, but I would like to share a way to use more FILLS per Variation. It is a trick back from the WS and WX days, and still works

Normally you would have for 4 variations, 4 fills. Now, in one fill; you can choose to program a MAJ, MIN and 7TH. Now, by programming the MAJ as var1, and the MIN in MAJ, and also the 7TH as MAJ you would have 4 variations, each with 3 FILLs....
12 Fills

Now, I know it is a workaround, but it works! Good Luck

greetings from Holland,

Joost Merema http://bounce.to/gemwk4

Hi Joost. Thanks for the reply. Are you talking about taking the contents of the min fill and copying them into the maj and so on? By pressing the fill >< would you then get a random choice of one of those fills? If so, that would be great. I'll give it a try hopefully later tonight.

[This message has been edited by Vic01 (edited 08-09-2001).]

I understand Joost's suggestion and it's a good one. In the architechture of the WK style engine, you can actually program three completely separate fills for each variation - major, minor and seventh. The intention is that you will hear a different fill depending on what type of chord was being played when you hit the fill button. Even if your song only uses major chords, you only need to quickly hit a minor of seventh chord before you hit fill and that will trigger a different fill. The fills themselves don;t have to be minor or seventh in tonality. You can program whatever you like in there. Using this system will give you a total of twelve fills available; three for each variation.

Also, if you tend not to use the Intro function, you can also use this as an extra fill. When pressed it will trigger the pattern you programmed, (again, three patterns per variation are available), and return to the normal riff when finished.

Chris

Chris,

Can you give us sneek at the new keyboard coming from GEM this coming winter NAMM?

Sorry. All is under wraps until mid-september.

Chris

Thanks for your response Chris. I was out of town this weekend and just read this post. I believe I understand now what Joost was saying. When you play a minor chord and then press fill won't that change the tonality to minor? Unless when you say quickly you mean "very quickly". Do you play a minor or 7th, hit fill and then play a major? Sorry for being so dense on this one. I'll will try this when I get home from work. Any further clarification would be appreciated.

[This message has been edited by Vic01 (edited 08-13-2001).]

You only need to hit the approprite chord type slighty before or even once the fill has started, (or anytime during the fill for that matter). The actual content of the fill is not necessarily minor, 7th or anything else; it's whatever you choose to program in there.

The original intention, since the names of these fill riff are MINOR, 7th or whatever, was for you to program a fill which features appropriate notes for minor or 7th tonality. However, since we're using this feature for a different purpose you can program whatever you like into these riffs and that's what you'll hear when you hit the fill.

Basically each fill riff is an empty eight track sequence. you can program whatever you want in there.

If the minor and 7th fill riffs are empty, (as is the case with most factory styles), then, if you hit the fill button while playing a minor or 7th chord, the machine will simply take the one fill riff which does exist, (usually the major), and temporarily modify it's content to make it sound minor, (by flattening thirds), or 7th, (by adding flattened 7ths). However, if the minor or 7th fill riff does contain something then you will hear this exactly as programmed.

Hope this helps
Chris

P.S. For many factory styles, you may actually find that the MAJOR FILL riff is empty and the one and only fill for each variation resides in either the MINOR or 7th FILL riff location. Some of our programmers found that this facilited better conversion depending on the content of the fill.

Thanks for the detailed explanation Chris. This clarifies the whole fill issue for me. I did notice that many of the factory fills only contain riffs in the "major" section so when I fingered a minor or seventh, the fill sounded identical. Many of my user styles have riffs in the minor and seventh chord sections and I have now successfully use these to provide additional fills within the variation. Its a great feature to be able to program in new fills into my user styles or even copy over a factory style to a user bank and create new fill riffs in those. The WK8 has so many features under its hood that give me the ability to create a song just the way I'm hearing it in my head. It will be interesting to see what the new Gem arrangers offer. The sequencer in my WK8 rocks and I'm a veteran of computer sequencers since the cakewalk for dos days. Keep up the great work because you're helping so many people get the music out of their heads so others can enjoy it also.

Thanks for the encouraging words. I wish I could tell you more about what's coming down the pike. Not too log to wait now. I think you're going to be impressed!

Chris

Chris,

I am sure it is going to be great. We are thankful that you can join us here in the forum.