Keyscape Worship Patches

[Nella Mcnairy]

Ive had a long-time on and off relationship with Kurzweil - I've owned a K2600, PC2 and PC2R, and a PC3X. For most of the last 15 years I have been playing Korg - first the Oasys, and now Kronos. I am very familiar with the Korg workflow and love the flexibility, but I don't like the piano sound. Right now I'm using a bunch of external junk and running an audio interface and Keyscape. It sounds great, but it's a pain to lug that junk. I've listened to some Forte demos and think the pianos are very nice - Kurzweil has always been pretty good at those.

How much of this is similar on the Forte? I recall from my PC3X that there is a similar "copy from program to combi" function, but as the PC3X had only like 8 fx blocks, it rarely was enough for even a 4-layer combi.

I'm frustrated that Korg hasn't released anything material since 2013 or so. I realize the Forte platform is 5 years old, too, so some of this is probably GAS, but I'm also looking for a board for my church to use and I'm struggling to recommend a Kronos due to how long it's been around (new paint jobs don't count as product development). I'm a fairly technical user, but VAST has defeated me in the past, while I've had no trouble getting what I want out of the Kronos including analog synth patch creation from scratch, so that makes me a little afraid that I'm in for a third round of less-than-complete satisfaction from team Kurz, and makes me concerned that the other players at my church will not get any farther into the thing than a simple piano/pad setup.

Forte doesn't have a setlist mode, but it does have favorites which are simple to assign and you can pedal advance through them. Everything needs to be done on the instrument as the SoundTower Librarian is less than reliable (I'm being generous).

Unless you're building some really big multi's I think the Forte has plenty of horsepower in the effects dept. Editing effects in the Forte can be a bit of a mystery sometimes. Forte has the most complicated effects pages of anything I've ever worked with.

I had a Forte 7 for about 3 years and I was really fluent in making multis from other presets and effects in a very short amount of time. The sonic quality of the instrument for pianos, acoustic instruments, electric pianos and clavs were all top notch. The sounds that Dave Weiser built, along with Purgatory Creek and some patience to get the Forte 7 to do what I wanted made it a really good instrument.

The one area I had difficulty with was VAST. I enjoyed the performance features, but I didn't take the time to really get where I wanted in the sound programming side of VAST. It is powerful and it does actually make sense, but just takes a while to get through it.

TJ, I own a Kronos X and a Forte 7. I gig with that setup. I can tell you that those two boards are dynamite together and really compliment each other. I do use the Kronos setlist extensively and love it. I also use the Forte"s favorites. Multis are easy to make on the Forte and it"s FX boxes and chains are top notch quality. You do have to watch how many inset FX you end up stacking in a multi. There is a great tutorial video showing how to do that by Valentin Zopp. He moderates a FB group for Forte users that is excellent. VAST is still just as complicated as it was with PC series (I also own a PC361 that I use at church, but more about that in a minute).

Do I create from scratch on the Kronos, yes. On the Forte, not very much. I tweak existing programs on the Forte and make lots of great Multis, use chord triggers, and arps.I have modified the Leslie sim so much that I use the KB3 on the Forte for my organs almost all the time (instead of the Kronos)

I also play keyboards in my church"s praise band. Very contemporary music you hear on CCM radio stations today. I struggle trying to deliver those contemporay keyboards with our (very old) Roland 700nx and my old PC361. I do much more than piano and pads, but really, for today"s music you need a software based setup. Mac or Pc running Mainstage or Ableton and using Sunday Keys, for instance. A second best option to me WOULD be a Kronos 2 88 key. You can still do a heck of a lot with a Kronos for worship music that a stage piano can"t do. And the setlist option would be extremely useful.

And often times,, just like in my church, there may be multiple volunteers playing keys with a large variation in experience and programming capability. For this reason especially, I would not recommend a Forte for worship/ church use. But I would recommend it for a more professional keyboardist playing gigs or recording.

Thank you all for the information. Some of this is what I was afraid to hear - it's still a PC3 on steroids. I may try to find a used one, otherwise it probably would be wise for me to wait for the Fivete.

Aellison62 - I'm interested to hear what you think requires a software setup. I tried very hard to like Mainstage a few years ago, but was unsuccessful. Between obscene RAM usage when changing patches in a show (patches load new copies of the plug-ins unless you add them globally which creates other problems), lousy multiple MIDI channel capabilities, and DIY legos that are hard to reuse, poor patch management, and crashing, I found it a mess. I know Mainstage and Ableton are popular (along with using a Nord as a $4000 MIDI controller), but I apparently haven't discovered the magic.

The Kronos isn't perfect either - the rigid bank structure is a bit of a pain, but the all-in-one appliance model of the Kronos or any other pro keyboard makes in my experience a more reliable and predictable system. My church work sounds very similar to yours. There are a couple songs where I have had a little trouble recreating a sound on the Kronos, but that's the extreme minority; if anything I think a lot of worship music synth sounds are pretty basic and well within the capability of he Kronos. I would love to know what I'm missing.

Right now I use Omnisphere as the host for Keyscape as it works like a simple multitimbral sound module - exactly what I want with the Kronos doing all of the splits/layers, etc. I used to use Mainstage, but the setup to be able to receive on different MIDI channels and get everything routed where it needed to go was onerous and unreliable even on a pretty highly-spec'd machine. I haven't looked seriously at Mainstage in about 3 years, so maybe it's better now.

I hope I don't come across as defensive - that's not my intention in the least; I just clearly don't understand the appeal of the software world even after I have given it what I think is a pretty fair go. I would sincerely love your perspective.

Mainstage can be a bit of an enigma. The last couple years I've made good use of Alias patches for commonly used things like pianos and organs. Really saves on system usage. I don't bus up any effects either. For all my commonly used stuff I keep one folder of all those patches and then paste them as aliases to different places in my setlist. That folder usually holds 2 pianos, rhodes, wurli, a mapped out organ w/drawbars, a synth lead, and maybe some other stuff common to the specific band that I'm playing in.

I had a 13 inch MBP that was hi-spec that couldn't handle mainstage at all. I suspect it was the "integrated graphics" that Apple used on the smaller screened MBPs. I upgraded to a similar spec'ed 15 inch with dedicated graphics and it has handled everything I can throw at it and runs bullet-proof.

My only real problem with Mainstage is I strongly prefer pianos/EPs from either my Nord or Kurz over Keyscape. Keyscape is great, and I'm sure to most listeners, there is absolutely no difference, but I can't seem to connect to it like the "real" keyboards. That being said, I've done more than one show on Mainstage alone, it's just too simple and quick for setup/teardown/small stage etc.

I've played in a band where the other keyboard player did 100% of the show on just mainstage sounds and a couple pianos from IK. I always thought he sounded great even though he complained about the piano feel! Great player. He would just fly in with a MBP and use my Nord with local off.

I ran Mainstage on a 2016 15" top-spec 16GB RAM Macbook Pro with all samples stored on the system SSD (in 2016 when I was attempting Mainstage work), so it would have been hard to have had a more powerful Mac for Mainstage.

I played around with aliases. There was some limitation I'm forgetting now - maybe controller values didn't change when switching patches so after a patch change I had to run all my sliders up and down to catch the values and get where I needed to go. I don't remember, but aliases weren't a magic bullet.

I actually really like a Wurly patch on the Kronos. The only thing I use Keyscape for is the piano. The Kronos pianos all are either gutless in the low mids and/or have weird honks in the midrange. The Keyscape piano is super well behaved and sits way better in the mix. It just sounds so much richer.

I wasn't in love with the PC3 KB3 mode/Leslie sim. I think the Kronos is better than the PC3 was - at least to the level of tweaking I did on the PC3 at the time, but obviously haven't heard the Forte to know what they've done to it. I have a Hammond XK-5 so for gigs where it's worth dragging two boards I'm sorted, but I do occasionally do some organ on the Kronos.

One thing my Oasys had which the Forte also has but the Kronos doesn't are the LED ladders on the faders to show you what value they are at. You can see this on the Kronos screen in Combi mode, but you can't see it in Set List mode unless you hit the control page, which you then have to switch back from to select the next song. My kingdom for motorized faders!!

I wasn't in love with the PC3 KB3 mode/Leslie sim. I think the Kronos is better than the PC3 was - at least to the level of tweaking I did on the PC3 at the time, but obviously haven't heard the Forte to know what they've done to it.

Regarding comments in this thread related to the PC3/Forte Leslie, I believe the effects program I'm using works well in the live setting (no disrespect to anyone's opinion). Watch this video for a comparison of it to a real Leslie.

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