Kurzweil K2500 - PERFORMANCE GUIDE REV F PART NUMBER 910251 CHAP 6 Manual page 26

Program Mode and the Program Editor
Program Editor—COMMON Page
Legato Play
When Legato Play is on, a note will play its attack only when all other notes have been released.
This is useful for realistic instrumental sounds.
Portamento
This parameter is either on or off. The default value of Off means that portamento is disabled
for the current program.
Portamento is a glide between pitches. On actual acoustic instruments like violin and bass, it's
achieved by sliding a finger along a vibrating string. On most keyboards that offer portamento,
it's achieved by holding down a key that triggers the starting note, then striking and releasing
other keys. The pitch glides toward the most recently triggered note, and remains at that pitch
as long as the note remains on. The K2500 gives you two ways to get portamento. See the
Attack Portamento parameter below.
When you're applying large amounts of portamento to multi-sampled sounds (Acoustic Guitar,
for example), the K2500 will play more than one sample root as the pitch glides from the
starting pitch to the ending pitch. This may cause a small click at each sample root transition.
You can reduce the number of clicks you'll hear by entering the Program Editor and adjusting
the KeyTrk parameter on both the KEYMAP and PITCH pages. The quickest way is to set the
KeyTrk value on the KEYMAP page to 0, and to 100 on the PITCH page. This will stretch the
sample root that plays at C 4 across the entire keyboard. Now any amount of portamento will
play only one sample root, and the clicks will disappear.
There's a tradeoff here, since many sounds will change in timbre as these single sample roots
are pitch-shifted during the portamento. This will be most noticeable for acoustic instrument
sounds, and may not be noticeable at all for single-cycle waveforms like sawtooth waves.
Furthermore, some samples will not glide all the way up to the highest notes—there's a limit to
the amount of upward pitch-shifting that can be applied to samples. If this doesn't work for
you, you can compromise between the number of clicks and the amount of timbre change by
further adjusting the KeyTrk parameters on the KEYMAP and PITCH pages.
As long as the combined values of the KeyTrk parameters on both pages add up to 100, you'll
have normal semitone intervals between keys. If you set both parameters to values of 50, for
example, the sound will still play normally, and you'll have several sample roots (about half the
number of the original sound) stretched evenly across the keyboard, instead of just one. This
will give you fewer clicks than in the original sound, but not as much change in timbre as
setting the KEYMAP KeyTrk value all the way to 0. Set the KEYMAP KeyTrk parameter higher
to reduce the change in timbre, or set the PITCH KeyTrk value higher to reduce the number of
clicks. Just make sure the combined values add up to 100, to preserve the normal intervals
between notes.
Portamento Rate
The setting for Portamento rate determines how fast the current note glides from starting pitch
to ending pitch. The value of this parameter tells you how many seconds the note takes to glide
one semitone toward the ending pitch. At a setting of 12 keys/second, for example, the pitch
would glide an octave every second. The list of values is non-linear; that is, the increments get
larger as you scroll to higher values.
Attack Portamento
This parameter toggles between two types of portamento. When set to On, the K2500
remembers the starting pitch so you don't have to hold a note on to achieve portamento. The
pitch always glides to each new note from the previously triggered note. When set to Off, the
pitch will glide to the most recently triggered note only when the previous note is still on (in
other words, you must use legato fingering).
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