Pc88 In The Real World; At A Gig; In The Recording Studio - Kurzweil PC88 Musician's Manual

Chapter 10

PC88 in the Real World

The PC88 offers you tremendous variety and ßexibility in many settings. To get you thinking,
here are four situations that a PC88 might Þnd itself in, and how you might conÞgure it in each.

At a Gig

YouÕre using the PC88 all by itself. Maybe youÕve got a singer and a bass player, or maybe they
didnÕt show up.
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In the Recording Studio

The PC88 is the controller for a MIDI rig with several instrument modules. YouÕve got to be able
to get to the right sounds quickly, without fumbling for them, and youÕve got to sound great.
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Musician's Guide
Arrange your setups for the night in the order youÕll need them, and use one Switch Pedal
in every Setup for ÒSetup IncrementÓ. When you need more than one Setup in a tune, set
the Assignable Buttons to ÒGoto SetupÓ with the appropriate Setup numbers so you can
move quickly. (DonÕt forget to set the Buttons in those Setups so you can get back!)
If you have the VGM board, create some 64-Voice Setups (using Banks 0 and 3, with
alternate note maps) for Piano or Guitar solos. Use lots of reverb, and make sure the two
processors are the same.
Create some Setups in which one or more Zones are muted when the Setup is called, and
then un-mute them to broaden the sound as you play.
Design some Setups in which you crossfade between two Zones using one of the Pedals
(assign it to MIDI Controller #7, and set the Scaling on one Zone to -100%). If one of the
two Zones uses a sound from the Internal Voices bank, and the other uses a VGM sound,
set up the two effects processors very differently, so not only the sound but the whole
space around it changes.
Have a drummer available at any time. Set the On Ctrl for SwitchPdl 2 to Seq Start, and
the Off Ctrl to Seq Stop. Set the SwType to Toggle. Make sure in the Global menu that
Clock is set to Internal and Clock Transmit is set to Seq. Connect a reliable drum machine
to the PC88Õs MIDI Out jack, and set it to receive external sync. When youÕre ready for the
drums, press the pedal. When you want to go ahead without them, press it again. Another
chorus with the drums, press it again, and the drum machine resets and starts at the top.
Set the destination on as many channels as you need to cover all the outboard synths to
ÒMIDIÓ, and set the rest to ÒLocalÓ. Create Setups that have one Zone addressing a Local
channel, and the others addressing each of the outboard synths.
If the modules use non-standard numbering for their patches, set the Program Number
Display on each Zone accordingly: a Yamaha synth will like 1-128, while a Roland may
want 11-88. If one of the modules is a K1000 or K2000, use those modes for Bank Select. If
one of the modules follows the General MIDI spec, set the Program Name Display to
General MIDI, and you wonÕt have to guess where the sounds on it are.
Use the physical controllers in all of the Zones to bring individual synths in and out of the
mix: the four sliders, for example, can each be assigned to MIDI Volume in a different
Zone. Or assign one slider to control Volume in the four Zones, but scale it differently so
the mix changes as you crescendo and decrescendo. Use the crossfading power (opposite
scalings) of the controllers to blend sounds and move between different ones smoothly.
When youÕre driving a screaming electric guitar patch on an external patch, set the
pitchbend range on the Zone driving the guitar synth to 12 semitones. The message will go
out over MIDI as a Registered Parameter and set the guitar synthÕs range. Then set Wheel 1
PC88 in the Real World
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