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Hello everyone and welcome to issue number 49 of Ketron News and Tips (KNAT).
This issue is targeted for November, 2005.
If you have a question to ask or a tip to submit, please let me know at jay@ketronus.com. Also I love your comments so don't hesitate to let me have them.

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In this Issue:

News: Midjay 3.0 is great for guitar players
News: Style Factory is here and hot!
News: What does it sound like
News: I found stands for the Ketron Modules
Quotes: Just for fun

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Finally the Midjay is for guitar players!!

I have been a fan of the Midjay for some time now, but the problem is that while I use all MIDI files for my playing, a lot of players use pedals to perform "live".
Up until the new release -- 3.0 -- these fine performers had no way to use the Midjay conveniently. Now -- at last, you can drive the chord changes just the way you did on the MS40, the X4 and the XD3. The Midjay now recognizes the following chords on your Vol/Tonality pedal or on the FS6/13: major, minor, minor7th, augmented, augmented7th, diminished and 6th.
I personally favor the FS13 pedal as you can then get lots of chordal power from the Midjay.
This is 8 different chord types, the same as the SD1+, and is very useful. I would say that you can do almost any Country, or Rock (old or new) songs as well as most Pop songs and many Jazz tunes. So for the complete musician the little Midjay is the new future of performers.
Many accordionists are still partial to the XD series and it is also a great unit.
I am really exited about the newer technology in the Midjay and believe that within 10 years we will see something like the Midjay that has everything from audio/video streaming to every style you could ever hope for. I will be unsurprised if Ketron comes out with something like the Midjay with GigaStudio(or equivalent) as part of the sound source.
One great advantage of the Midjay is that I have loaded over 6300 styles onto the hard drive and that uses less than 100mB of hard drive space. That is only about one half of 1 percent of the Hard Drive. Only a few years ago we were buying floppies that had 8-20 styles on them. It is almost staggering what has happened in the past 10 years.

One thing the Midjay is not -- at least not yet -- is a full workstation. No it is a "play"station. What you can't do well yet is really edit your styles and MIDI files. This doesn't bother me personally as I have great software on my computer for doing just that. Still there are people that want to do everything on one unit and for them the SD1+ is the super choice. The Midjay is sure a lot lighter though!

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Style Factory is here and it is HOT!!

Style Factory, the new fantastic software from EMC, the makers of Style Works 2000, has arrived.
I had the opportunity to play with a beta version at the NAMM show in January and was very excited at the possibilities. Now that I have it installed on my machine, I realize that it is far more powerful than I had first imagined.
It will allow you to assemble musical phrases by a simple drag and drop method to create styles that are completely your own. You will also be able to import phrases from other styles and thus build your own phrase library that will be unlike anyone else's. Also under development is a module that will allow importing from software such as Band-In-A-Box.
The price is quite reasonable, much less than Style Works.
You can make styles for Ketron keyboards and modules from the SD1+ and Midjay all the way back to the MS40/50. Very cool!
I expect to have a ball making new styles.

Go to my other web site to order:

The price is quite reasonable, much less than Style Works 2000.

Current price is $125.00 for the Single version and $185.00 for the Universal version.

You can also check out the great prices on Band-In-A-Box and Power Tracks Pro Audio.

http://www.keyboardstyles.com

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Here is the thing that MANY customers have asked for before buying

For years I have struggled to describe the differences between different Ketron products. It is never enough to say, "Well the bass seems a little fuller than on the previous model." And I am constantly asked by prospective buyers, "How does the Midjay sound compared to the XD3?" Or a similar question like, "Which one sounds better?"
The only sure way to find out is to line up all the instruments and put them into one sound system with identical settings and hear them side by side. Since there is not always a dealer near you and the internet has changed the way business is done, that solution is not usually practical anymore.

Well I have tried to answer the question by demonstration and do it honestly. I found 9 very high quality MIDI files, the source of which was the XD3 and Midjay and some from the original Blue Fish Music programmed by Doru Caplescu, a brilliant MIDI sequencer.
Then I took all 9 full files and recorded them into 4 different Ketron products. The products were the Midjay, SD1, XD3 and X4.
Those recordings are now to be found on my site at: http://www.ketronus.com/downloads.html
I placed these on the page above the Midjay Demo and below the SD1 Demo.
These are large downloads because they are full length good quality MP3 files.
Now you can listen for yourself to see which instrument sounds the best to you.

A word about how it was done:
I created these files by playing the MIDI songs from the same floppy disk in each instrument. In other words, no tweaking for a particular instrument was done.
All instruments were set to 0 for internal eq purposes.
All reverb settings were at Global 8.
The instruments were all recorded into a Layla 3G and on to my computer in Adobe Audition. (Adobe Audition is the upgrade to Cool Edit Pro which was sold to Adobe.)
There was absolutely no tweaking of sound on any instrument.
All volume levels were "normalized" at 98% to give the listener the most totally accurate representation possible. It is possible to make any instrument to sound a little better by making it a little louder than the others. This was not done.

With all this care and effort you would imagine that you will now be able to hear the exact differences between instruments. Not so!
First it is not possible to have included all the instruments and variations on the units.
Second there is no individual instrument comparison as single voices.
This is just the best I could do at this time with the limitations of the internet.
I hope you enjoy the downloads and I hope you have broadband internet cause otherwise it may take a while. I do have high speed and it takes me about 24 seconds to download "Feelings" which is the largest file.
A tip for people with slower internet is to save the file to a folder on your desktop and open it from there. That will make it much easier to listen to. I use Windows Media Player as a playing source on my computer.

I hope you will all enjoy and find useful this latest effort!

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Stands for the Modules
I have found a source of heavy duty stands that are perfect for the MS40, X4 and XD3 modules. The stands have a very heavy 4 leg base with a center pole. The rack tilts into 3 different positions. The top has rubber to keep from scratching the instruments. The stand is too large for the Midjay, but is perfect for all others. I will be retailing it for $69.95 plus shipping. The shipping weight will be approximately 18 LBS. The stand weighs 13 and folds into a fairly compact unit. This stand is identical to the ones that used to be available at over $100.00 retail. You can see and buy it on the accessories page: http://www.ketronus.com/accessories.html

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Upgrades available:
There are upgrades available for most Ketron products at:
http://www.ketron.it/software/index.asp

Some upgrades are available at:
http://www.ketronus.com/downloads.html
Here you can find the Win98 USB driver, the DJ loop compiler, the XPC drivers for Win98 and both versions of the Ketron FT utility. You can also find the upgrades for the currently supported instruments.

Most of these are also available at Ketron U.S.

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Visit me at www.ketronus.com. Or email me at jay@ketronus.com

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Quotes: Just for fun

"The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues." - Elizabeth Taylor

“Frequently stupid things are done in the name of progress” – Gary Auten

"What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease." - George Dennison Prentice

"Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat." - Mark Twain

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