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DaveBeta
(@davebeta)
Posts: 16
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Recently, I've been looking at the Forte as a possible upgrade for my PC3Ks - I have all three but use the 7 as the main live keyboard. This is great, but I would like the keybed to be weighted as I mainly use the 8 and a Kronos in the studio. The Forte looks great, and now, with the v2 update giving access to sample memory and full pc3k/Kore64 backwards compatibility, it's looking like a useful - and insanely powerful - bit of kit. So I went and spent some time with one in a store to check it out.

The problem that I have is how to use all of this power. I really like the idea of the KB3 now not using any of the main polyphony - great one guys. But playing organ (and some synth parts) on a weighted keyboard isn't great. What I would like to do is hook up a second keyboard over midi (*) and play parts of the multi via that instead. I can do this on the PC3 by setting the zone's NoteMap to 'off' so that it just responds to it's incoming midi channel.

But I can't see how I can do the equivalent on a Forte Multi - am I missing something here? Or does the Forte multi purely respond to the local keyboard? It looks like the multi's channel handling for a zone is purely for the sending of midi data - I can't see how to stop it responding to the local keyboard. Is it even possible?

My only other thought would be to set the KB3 channel to something like 16 and never use that on any of the multis I would create as unit seems to still respond to the full 16 channels even when a multi is being played. This would mean that I would have to send program changes from the remote keyboard which restricts the number of keyboards to those that have extensive functionality (and are more expensive).

Mind you ... most of the cheaper ones have awful keybeds.. so it's more a case of not having everything changing my incrementing the multi really.

Anyone have any thoughts? Am I comparing apples/oranges by wanting a Multi to be equivalent to a Setup?

I've tried a pre-sales enquiry but not had a response, so any light that can be shed on this would be helpful.. :)

Thanks

(*) Note : one of the grooviest things about the Kronos is the ability to plug a USB midi keyboard straight into one it's ports as that both accepts the midi and powers it. Cool. I'm guessing that the Forte's 'Storage' port supplies power (as the PC3 does), but can it also accept midi? If not, is it even feasible to implement in a future OS update? One usb cable would be a very cool solution...

 
Posted : 06/09/2016 12:19 pm
lizard king
(@lizard-king)
Posts: 59
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I'm not sure I have the direct answer but I was told by Kurzweil support before I bought the Forte that the "Multi" was a direct port of the "Setup" with all functionality. They moved stuff around & call things different names which is annoying but I'm starting to catch up.

It seems in my PC3 setups when I wanted an external keyboard to play a program I set the zone to accept MIDI only - local notes didn't trigger a sound in that zone. Is that not what you're talking about?

By the way, the Forte rocks. :D

 
Posted : 08/09/2016 8:00 am
DaveBeta
(@davebeta)
Posts: 16
Eminent Member
Topic starter
 

I think that I've found the answer to this by hunting through the manual. Annoyingly, the section on Multi edit assumes you just want to send out midi from the zones, but the Destination has a value of 'None' which is described as :

Unused Zones are set to None to avoid transmitting MIDI on these zones. The Zone
will still be able to receive incoming MIDI.

Aha! So by setting the zone to 'none', it should still be able to set up a zone with a midi channel and send data to it. Cool. I'll try that in a store and see how it goes.. :)

 
Posted : 11/09/2016 4:16 am
fran
 fran
(@fran)
Posts: 1098
Noble Member
 

Hi,

Have also a look at the Input Channel parameter in the Forte, like the PC3K one. It might help you in complex MIDI configurations involving multis receiving MIDI from external gear.

Regards,
Fran

 
Posted : 01/11/2016 10:21 am
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