Editing Kb3 Programs - Kurzweil K2700 Musician's Manual

Program Edit Mode

Editing KB3 Programs

Editing KB3 Programs
The display shows the KB3 icon when a KB3 Program is selected. Enter the KB3 program
editor by pressing the EDIT soft button while a KB3 program is selected in program mode.
You can play KB3 programs only on a single channel at a time.
KB3 Program Structure
There's nothing quite like the sound of the classic tone wheel organ, especially when played
through a rotary speaker system. We've done extensive testing and analysis with several tone
wheel organs, and created our own models to emulate the unique tone wheel sound. We even
took into account the way that older organs start to sound different (and arguably better) as
their capacitors begin to leak—and we included a parameter that lets you vary the amount of
grunge (leakage) in your sound.
KB3 programs use oscillators to emulate the tone wheel sound. Each oscillator operates
independently, and has its own pitch and amplitude control. You can control how many
oscillators are used for a KB3 program. There are two oscillators per voice, for a total of 256.
You can use up to 91 of them in a KB3 program (the 92nd is reserved to produce key click).
Because the oscillators start running as soon as you select a KB3 program, there are always
voices available—unlike VAST programs, which start "stealing" notes when you reach the
polyphony limit.
The oscillators—we'll call them tone wheels from here on—are divided into an upper and
lower group. The upper tone wheels use the samples in the K2700's keymaps to generate
sound, while the lower tone wheels use sine waves. You can change the keymap of a KB3
program's upper tone wheels to produce a large array of sounds. By changing the keymap
from sine to a saw wave it is possible to emulate the sound of classic combo organs.
Octave folding, where an octave (or part of an octave) is repeated at the top or bottom of the
keyboard, is handled automatically by KB3 programs, emulating the folding done on actual
tone wheel organs.
KB3 programs are also routed through vibrato, rotary speaker, preamp and distortion effects,
see below for details.
KB3 Effects And Real-time Controls
You have real-time control over many components of KB3 programs directly from the front
panel. The sliders emulate the drawbars that are so essential to the tone wheel sound, while
the buttons below them can control the KB3 effects: rotary, vibrato, chorus, and percussion.
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