Roasted and toasted - Sand, software and sound

If you’re missing the old PSR Tutorial Forum, C’mon over to Yamaha Musicians Forum. You’ll recognize many of the familiar faces. 🙂 Saul’s site has the same colleagiality as the old forum and chances are good you’ll get answers to your questions.

I’ll continue to post my long opinion pieces here. Sorry if there hasn’t been much lately. I took time away from the PNW and visited with family in Arizona. Hot with afternoon thunderstorms. Cue “No Rain” by Blind Melon. “Oh, good is raining, again.”

New stuff

Now that Labor Day (USA) is past, it’s the Fall launch season — back-to-school and pre-holiday in full swing.

Not too many kids will tote these to school, but Korg have announced the FISA SUPREMA “Aero Digital Instrument”. Hey, it’s a full-sized digital accordion! Forty-one keys with velocity sensitivity and aftertouch, and 120 velocity sensitive bass buttons. [Gives the phrase “Free Bass” a new meaning.] 320 voices including tonewheel organ. 100 drum instruments. Man, that’s one heck of an all-rounder. Weighs in at 23.3 pounds (10.6kg).

Fais pas ca! At $8000 USD, I don’t know if I’ll be getting on my Buckwheat. (The occasional accordion tune does come up at church.) Korg also offer a button model at $8,300.

New MIDI controllers have been sprouting like August weeds. Arturia sprung the KeyLab Mk3 Universal MIDI controller. It has the usual French Arturia styling with a semi-weighted keyboard and aftertouch. Yes, real wood paneling. $499 USD for the 49 key model and the 61 key is $599. The Mk3 comes with the usual Arturia bundle of sounds and effects. The 49 is 17.4 pounds (6.1kg) which sounds a tad heavy for me.

Novation have launched (pun intended) the Mk4 Launchkey range, five models going from mini to full-size 49- and 61-key models. Pricing remains modest: $250 USD for the 49 and $300 for the 61. The Mk4 models have a small OLED display, rotary encoders and semi-weighted piano-shape keys. Only the pads have aftertouch, but at these prices, we beggars cannot be choosers. The new Mk4 Launchkeys do two zones (split and layer). Faders are on the left where they belong. The pads have an innovative “Chord Map” mode giving you a 5 by 8 matrix (Adventure x Explore parameters) of built-in chord sets to wander around in.

Weight (9 pounds / 4.08kg) and price put the 49-key model on my radar. Ableton Live provides cheap late afternoon entertainment (better than Candy Crush), so Live integration is attractive. Plus, our son copped my Launchpad and I could use a replacement. 🙂 My biggest knocks on the mk4? It doesn’t do expression pedals and it cannot send a full MIDI Bank Select plus Program Change message sequence. I hope to try one out.

Here’s a shout out to a local company — Mackie (Bothell, WA). Mackie announced two additions to its Thump line of powered PA speakers: Thump210 and Thump210XT. Both models have a 10 inch woofer and 1″ compression driver driven by 1400W Class D amplification. The input section has a two channel mixer and app integration for remote mixing. The XT model adds Bluetooth connectivity for audio streaming and speaker linking. Prices are reasonable: $349 USD and $399 (XT). The new Thumps weigh about 25.4 pounds (11.5kg).

Not a new product per se, but the Yamaha YC stage organ got a new update (OS v.14). Jazzing YC owners will appreciate the new VCM organ type, H4. Quoting Yamaha, the “H4 has more mids and lows with a darker, wider percussion that’s great for playing left-hand bass.” The update adds new Live Sets (e.g., Soft Jazzy, Loudest, Ballad Organ, Gospel Layer, WR+Organ) and the ability to store Master EQ settings in a Live Set.

New stuff not here yet

PSR folks are eagerly awaiting the Yamaha PSR-SX720 and PSR-SX920. Information trickles out, but nothing official. One on-line retailer may have jumped the starter’s gun putting both models up for pre-order. (No apparent price increase.) The retailer claims a September 9 launch date. Another on-line retailer believes the old models are discontinued. Something is definitely afoot.

I cannot verify the authenticity of this picture

[Update] If the Yamaha trickle-down theory holds, the SX720 should be a lot like the now deprecated SX900 minus vocal harmony and the usual 900-level stuff. The retailer leak mentions a new SX920 sound system called “”Expansive Soundfield Speakers (ESS)”. If the picture above is genuine, there will be cosmetic changes (e.g., a few grey buttons in place of black, more attractive speaker covering), and the PSR-SX720 will get Chord Looper (controlled by the new buttons next to the Live Control knobs a la the SX900).

See, all reasons to come over to Yamaha Musicians Forum. Let’s talk. 🙂