Hyundai has appointed Ray Kurzweil as Chief Strategy Officer of Kurzweil Music Systems. Hyundai, one of the world’s largest corporations, plans to work with Ray Kurzweil to “build Kurzweil Music Systems into one of the largest music instruments brands in the world,” Kurzweil stated.

At the last NAMM, Ray Kurzweil was given a Life Achievement Award by Young Chang North America, with fellow recipients Stevie Wonder and Billy Joel. Congratulations to all.

Kurzweil Music Systems has the technology and the know-how to be revolutionary, just as V.A.S.T (Variable Architecture Synthesis Technology) was. They were the first synthesizer manufacturer to have a web presence, and to provide such power in their synthesizers. Music-making friends are still amazed when I explain how I can build a synthesizer within my Kurzweil.

I have been a long-time contributor to online Kurzweil mailing lists (that’s about 13 years counting from my initial contact to now), advocating and explaining the use of the Kurzweil K2 series synthesizers. They are extremely powerful, but with power also comes complexity for some users.

I wrote three very well received tutorials about Advanced Programming on the Kurzweil K2 series. Fellow users were extremely happy that I not only knew the synthesis architecture so well, but also that I was sharing the knowledge with them, showing them advanced ways to put their synths to great use:

0. Advanced Programming on the Kurzweil K2 series synthesizers – An overview.
1. Interactive Phrase Sequencing
2. Vector Synthesis & WaveSequencing Emulation
3. Faking effects

I won a contest for programming the synthesizer and I also wrote software to remote control the Kurzweil synths’, both at the panel level and at the internal synthesis architecture level, and transfer sounds to and from them in SysEx format.

One of these software, KurView (which you can also see in the header for this blog), enables me to get high-quality images of the contents of the LCD screen, which I have integrated into these new blog versions of my old tutorials.

Kurzweil Music Systems has a very advanced new DSP chip called Mara which should be the heart of forthcoming products.

There are some obstacles and some past occurrences that should be avoided for future success not just technologically but for the community as a whole. As a composer, repeat Kurzweil user (I have owned a K2000 and I now have a Kurzweil K2500XS with KDFX), long-time recognized contributor on the mailing lists, sound synthesis expert and software developer for the machines, I have a few ideas that I would like to tell Ray about.

Kurzweil synths are used by Mike Garson (David Bowie), Alicia Keys, New Order, Jean-Michel Jarre, Dream Theater (Jordan Rudess), Pink Floyd (Jon Carin) and many others.

In the meantime, that’s the best thing that could happen to Kurzweil Music Systems.

Welcome back, Ray.

I am a huge fan of the Kurzweil K2 series synthesizers and their seminal V.A.S.T. architecture which is still one of the most powerful synth engines today.

But with power comes complexity. Hence, as a long-time contributor to the Kurzweil mailing lists for about ten years, I usually teach people how to harness the raw synthesis power of these synths.

On the mailing list once, a reader asked if it was possible to re-create sounds that The Prodigy used on their album “Voodoo People”. Although somebody else was saying that The Prodigy probably used ‘racks of gear’ and that it was impossible to do the same on the Kurzweil K2000, I proceeded to describe step by step a few avenues to explore. The reader replied that during the week-end, he had achieved even better sounds thanks to my advice.

Subsequently, I wrote several advanced tutorials for the Kurzweil synthesizers based on more than 15 years of experience with sound synthesis.

These advanced tutorials for the Kurzweil K2 series synthesizers have been edited from their previous versions and reproduced here. I have added screenshots to make them easier to follow. The screenshots are provided by YashLabs’ KurView, a brilliant software remote controller for the Kurzweil K2 series synthesizer.

The texts were originally called “Advanced K2000 Programming” because they went much further than the original Kurzweil manual as well as the existing tutorials by other users at the time.

Readers were enthusiatic about the information these tutorials contain. You can read their comments at the end of this post.

There were three original tutorials targetting mostly the K2000 but the information is valid for other synths like the K2500, K2600 and K2661:
1. Interactive Phrase Sequencing
2. Vector Synthesis & WaveSequencing Emulation
3. Faking effects

I was the winner of an early VAST programmer’s challenge for a program called “Evolvers” based on my ideas about Wave sequencing emulation and received three great samples CDROM from Sweetwater.

And when I wrote the tutorial about Wave Sequencing emulation, a new VAST programmer’s Challenge was under way with that very same subject! See the comment by Jeffrey Carpenter below.

Enjoy the tutorials.

The Comments are on the next page.

This tutorial shows how to use some synthesis tricks to enable fake effects for programs within the Kurzweil K2000 synthesizers and above with the V.A.S.T. architectures.

The Kurzweil K2000 has a global multi-effects processor. Independent WET/DRY mixes can be achieved with the panner algorithms. Having different effects for each channel is normally impossible on the K2000, K2500 and K2600/K2661 (instead you’d use the KDFX studio with its 4 strips).

If your requirements are not too extreme, you can fake program flange, delays and reverbs using envelopes, LFO’s and other hacks on the K2000.

1. Flange-type FX:

Use several oscillators, exactly same PITCH settings. Works best with DSP OSCs (Choose an algorithm where you can select SAW/SQUARE/SINE as a DSP function).

2. Chorus/phasing/flanging FX:

a. Use several similar oscillators with slight detuning between themselves:

OSC1 PITCH FINE: +11
OSC2 PITCH FINE: -13

The best way to hear this effect is to make a simple layer, say a sawtooth on the keymap page, and ALG1. Then duplicate this layer. Now go to the PITCH page of one of the layers. Maintain a key pressed, and then select the Fine field and vary it with the alpha wheel. You’ll hear an instantaneous dephasing.

You can set the PITCH FINE values to +x and -y where x=y. However, the settings above (+11,-13) produce “beats” in the pitch variations (at all multiples of 11*13). Without beats, the pitch variation is regular and predictable. The beating effect is therefore a way to make the phasing less predictable, giving more motion to the sound, especially when the values are prime numbers.

More appropriate PITCH FINE settings (a higher difference in pitches) can yield a CHORUS FX.

b. Use a NOTCH filter with a varying CUTOFF FREQ.

That is, set SRC1 or SRC2 to LFO1 or LFO2 on the FREQ page. Using LFO2 is a good idea since you can make it global, by going to the common page and setting Global to ON. The phasing effect will then continually change, even when no key is depressed. Essentially, when you press a key, you’re having a “window” on the phasing effect. I’ll write more about what I call “timbre windowing” techniques in my text on wave-sequencing emulation on the Kurzweil K2 series synthesizers.

This is a tutorial about using your Kurzweil K2 series synthesizer and emulating some of the features found on the Korg WaveStation, especially Wave Sequencing.

1. Vector Synthesis.

There is no difficulty in emulating vector synthesis at all. The joystick found on WS keyboards is just a controller with two axes: x and y. Simulating the joystick therefore entails using two real-time controllers on the Kurzweil synthesizers. One is used as a source on one or more parameters. The other is set to control other parameters of the same program. The simultaneous use of both controllers is similar to selecting a point in a Cartesian coordinate system, which the joystick enables you to do.

2. WaveSequencing.

What I’ll be trying to emulate here is the ability of the WS to play a sequence of samples across the keyboard with a certain characteristic: although the pitch of the samples may vary with the key pressed, the time intervals between samples do not change.

Sequencing samples themselves by a Copy/Paste method would not be sufficient here, since pressing a high key would cause the chained sample to play back quicker, in effect increasing the ‘tempo’ of the sequence. So, unless a keyboard has some type of real-time method of shifting pitch without affecting sample duration, chaining samples at this level is not a viable option.

On the WS, the user can program a certain rhythmic pattern using several samples chained together. He can then change the pitch of the sequence by pressing different keys without changing the tempo of the pattern.

We’ll see that the Kurzweil K2 series synthesizers are capable of producing similar or much better results than the Korg WaveStation.

This tutorial shows how you program your Kurzweil K2000 (or K2500, K2600, K2661) synthesizer and:

This is pretty much the same thing you can do within Ableton’s Live software, but on your Kurzweil synthesizer.

When I upgraded a Kurzweil K2000 synthesizer from v2.xx to v3.18, I wanted to record whole sequences interactively into the sequencer, following on the interesting suggestions made by Keith Cowgill on his site.

You can use the ARRANGE page to trigger different sequences through keys. However, I could not find a way to record my live pseudo-arpeggiations without retriggering the songs defined in the steps.

Fortunately, there is a way to do this properly, but it’s not very clear from the manual (or rather it must be read more than once and thoroughly).

So here’s a quick introduction to some really powerful aspects of the K2000’s internal v3.xx sequencer.

First, if you haven’t read the introductory sequencing tutorial in the manual, please do, with your K2k besides you to get acquainted with basic operations.

Now that you know how to create a sequence and save it, we’ll look more closely into the ARRANGE feature.

Each song has an associated ARRANGE page. On that page you can associate steps to other existing songs, so that these ‘other’ songs will be played in sequence from step 1 to step x where x< =99.

Follow the instructions below to try these powerful features:

1. Go to the SONG page. Choose a sharp attack sound with variable parameters. The Mogue Bass is a good example.

2. Go to the MISC page and set the Quantize field to 100%, and the Grid to 1/16, for example. Set Record to Loop, Playback to Loop.

3. Go back to MAIN. Make sure you are on Merge mode and record your short sequence.

4. [optional] Record over (overdub or merge) the sequence but now concentrate on varying parameters, move the ModWheel and Data Slider, for example.

5. Save your Song.