Notes on the Kawai K5000s by Arthur Green

Arthur sent me some notes on the Kawai K5000s. I actually have one and thought it was a good perspective on the K5000s, so I asked Arthur if I could put it up. Note the Kawai K5000s is a hybrid synth featuring both additive synthesis (where you add or remove harmonics to create sounds), and standard PCM based sample synthesis. Arthur mentions the Korg Wavestation which uses vector synthesis first introduced with the Sequential Circuits Prophet VS by Dave Smith. Dave actually went on to work on the Yamaha TG33 and SY22 vector synths and then the Korg Wavestations. Vector synthesis allows you to morph between the samples in memory for any given patch (usually consisting of four samples) with a vector joystick. With the Wavestation you can have wavesequences that allow you to morph between the source samples over time for evolving textures. The comparison Arthur refers to with the K5000 is in reference to sound and textures. You an assign envelopes to the individual harmonics that make up a given sound on the K5000s for some incredible evolving textures. That said...

"A lot of people like to compare the K5000 to other synthesizers, noteably Korg's Wavestation. Apples and oranges, if you ask me. While both excel at those sounds that seem to move and slither onwards forever, they really aren't much alike in either function or personality. And I'll be the first to tell you that the K5000 suffers from some crippling design deficiencies, not the least of which are poor envelope contouring, loss of fidelity on the lower registers and excessive aliasing on the upper registers (something you may not notice immediately unless you play your K5000 from a six or seven octave keyboard), partial frequencies are fixed in a harmonic series, issues with cheap construction (particularly with the R and W models), weird patch memory management, no microtuning support, limited polyphony (and appropriately, a crude voice-stealing algorithm), a nearly useless Multi mode (these last two issues are why I bought three of them!), and an occasionally quirky MIDI implementation.

But, I'm still amazed at how expressive these synthesizers are, especially when paired with a decent controller keyboard. (I've always played my Rs from a Kurzweil Midiboard.) The fact that nearly every important parameter can be tied to velocity, keyscale, or a controller destination is remarkable. And while the sound may not stand up to the quality offered by more refined hardware and today's software synthesizers, it definitely has its own distinctive edge, which I've generally found very appealing; maybe mostly because they might sound like the kind of person I probably am. (They are my voice, musically speaking, are they not?)

Far from the sedate new-agey sounds (which are often fairly predictable and difficult to control) or techno jibes (which are usually pale imitations of other synthesizers) that most demo MP3s on the net like to showcase, this synthesizer is very good at shrill leads (with nice portamento "squips"), harsh pads (thanks in no small part due to the *amazing* amounts of self-oscillation and distortion capable with the resonance filter), and prickly harmonic arpeggiator/ sequencing effects with some of the nicest onboard delays you could ask for. It's certainly a synth you can ruin your ears over. (I know, as I've done a fair bit of damage myself!) No, it's certainly not a jack of all trades, but it's no one-trick pony either. The caveat is that you have to certainly program your own sounds, or mess about with the factory presets so that they (quickly) become your own presets. But, you'll be well-rewarded!

So, knowing what they're good at, I think these are fine musical instruments. And I suspect I'll be using these for another eight years.

For your amusement, here is a video of one of my live improvisations performed this past June at a local Open Mic. You're hearing two of my three K5000Rs, reverb disabled with no outboard processing:



With the kindest of regards,
\\ Arthur"

You can can find more tracks featuring the K5000s "with the exception of 'Certainty', which has an EII rendering bass and drums" on Arthur's MySpace site.

Update: If you have a K5000s or K5000r you can try some of Arthur's patches here.

"I made them about seven years ago, so they're not exactly a model of good (or even okay) programming. But, they are some of the few sounds I still use today. I'll usually tweak attack/release times, mute sources, adjust pitch envelopes (awesome feature!), or ramp up the one or two USER knobs set for the patch, but overall, they are used as you hear them. (Although velocity response is probably optimized for my Midiboard and not the K5000S!)

SnowFall, especially around C1 (with User knob #1 set to max) and ReignY are my personal favorites.

StarWick is for an arpeggiator. To simulate what I was doing on the Midiboard, set tempo to about 95 with notes at 16, user knob 1 to max, run the arp at about 100% gate with a down pattern on mode 2 (one octave span from latched notes). Play one note at the bottom of the keyboard together with two towards the top to get a cyclical motion (the second note "tap" should align to the next note put on top of it). I typically use the three Rs stacked and tuned an octave apart from one another to get a deep, throaty rhythm."