Kurzweil K2000 - programming insight required please!

[AndyJones]

I don't yet own one, am only considering buying one.

I have a specific question - I need to recreate the pulsing organ sound played throughout The Who's won't get fooled again track.

does the k2000's architecture allow for modulation of an internal audio buss by a pulse wave (of user-definable pulse width)?

i have read that the VAST architecture employs looping envelopes but these would be per voice which is not the answer for creating desired effect.

i simply want to 'gate' the chords played and have control over gate pulse width and rate.

in an ideal world i'd also like to run that through some kind of overdrive, a slowly sine-modulated filter followed by reverb... but i'm guessing this aint happening inside the K2000!

advice appreciated - thanks!

[The Elf]

All of this and more is possible inside the K2000. The synthesis engine is very, very powerful indeed and with some careful editing you'll get what you want - just expect to spend some time getting to grips with VAST, because the modulation possibilities are mind-boggling.

The overdrive/distortion flavours you can get inside VAST are not brilliant (I never got a Hammond distortion that did it for me), so you may want to patch through an external processor via the send/return of the K2000's outputs before it reaches the internal effects processor.

[AndyJones]

thanks for your reply.

would you mind elaborating slightly please - when you say that all of this is possible using the k2000 do you mean each of the effects i mentioned is achievable with as much precision as i described (it's the gating effect with variable gate time i'm mainly after)?

i haven't used a kurzweil before and am therefore new to VAST. if it can do what i want i may buy one.

thanks

[muzines]

Actually, most synths should be able to do this. You can either modulate the output volume with an LFO pulse wave, or if the synth has an FX section, modulate the volumes/mix settings of the FX, which are global to all voices.

Heck, you could even just modulate the oscillator volumes for the matter with a global (rather than per-voice) LFO. Any decent modern-ish synth should have the ability to do this.

Anything from an M1/Wavestation on can do this no problem. On the Wavestation for example, you can even set up a patch which has the overall synth patch layers going through say a delay, then into a compressor, and have the compressor keyed by the bottom note on the keyboard, so when you play the main keyboard you hear nothing, until you rythmically play that bottom key, at which point the compressor lets through the audio in time with your playing. (Or something more cyclic, like an LFO if you don't want to play the trigger patterns manually.)

And those synths have less sophisticated synth engines that the VAST K2000 engine (although I'm not personally too familiar with it.)

So yes, I'm pretty sure it will be easy peasy on a K2000... Lots of ways to achieve it, and the K2000 will certainly let you do it in at least one of them...

[The Elf]

Yep, wot 'e said!

The K2000 has global LFOs; set one to square and assign it to amp - bingo, you have your gate; set another one to sine and assign it to filter cutoff, you have your filter mod. Should be pretty simple.

There's only that distortion that I would suspect you'll struggle with. You can apply some distortion-ish 'wrap' effects to individual voices, but there's no overall distortion algorithm, hence my suggestion to use the K2000's send/return facility to patch in an external processor prior to the output effects.

[Zukan]

Additionally, the K2000 makes a great cup of coffee and has been known to service the odd car or two.

Almost all jokes apart, the VAST architecture is very detailed and deep and can produce stunning results but it does have a steep learning curve but the time spent conquering the engine/matrix is time well spent.

[AndyJones]

The K2000 has global LFOs; set one to square and assign it to amp - bingo, you have your gate

Guys thank you for taking the time to reply.

In my experience however there are *not* a great many synths whose LFO's offer pulse waves (as required - a square wave will simply not produce the desired effect here - try it if you aren't convinced!). The pulse width required is approx 75% positive : 25% negative, I did it on a Nord Modular a few years ago (as an effects unit via the inputs).

So, does the K2000 have variable pulse LFOs? If not maybe it's possible to assign an audio oscillator as a mod source to the (global) output, though to work it must go as low as approx 4Hz... unlikely...??

[muzines]

I know what you mean, and I can't comment on the best way to rig it up on a K2000 (which is what you are asking) as I'm not intimately familiar with it - I'll have to leave it to someone else.

However, with a flexible modulation system and modulatable FX, I'm sure you can find at least one (or more) ways to achieve this.

[The Elf]

As far as I'm aware there's no pulse option on the LFO, but you can also use a clock to trigger an ASR. That may do it for you. Or maybe you could shift the phase of a sine LFO and pass it through one of the toggle +1/-1 converters to generate a pseudo-pulse.

VAST is simply so open-ended there will be several ways to achieve what you want, I'm sure. But you will have to spend some time with it to get very closely acquainted.

[ken long]

I'm quite surprised David Etheridge isn't in this thread...

ken

[Dr Whom]

I've actualy still got the tutorial/programming vhs video i think somewhere which came with the k2000. what would be the copyright issue if i ripped it from vhs and put it online? woudl it be ok d'ya think?

[AndyJones]

For those who may be interested, i downloaded the K2000 manual and after much reading figured out it could do what I wanted. Bought a K2svx Saturday, did some programming and... job done an hour or so later

[muzines]

Is this the part where we say "Cool!" or the part where we say "told ya so!"..?

Out of interest - which method did you use in the end?

[AndyJones]

Mr Elf's suggestion sounded promising so I checked out the manual. With a bit of head scratching it now works very well.

This is quite an interesting synth - will be making some notes and putting them on my wall so I can get a feel for the different algorthms etc - beginning to realise why the manual is so big! Actually find the synth not too hard to get around though, starting to get my head around it.

Thanks to all.