It has been a long time since anything has captured
the attention and anticipation of the Ketron public
like the announcements concerning the Midjay. I would
like to thank the people who have contacted me regarding
information I needed for this unit.
This module is so revolutionary that it will be an
even longer time until it has been fully decided whether
it is a truly great module or simply great for some
people. Like many of Ketron Labs' innovations, this
is a whole new animal. It would be a terrible mistake
to assume that it is a beefed up X4 or XD3. It uses
completely new principles.
Furthermore, the difficulty comes in trying to describe
what it is. Maybe this is best done by comparing it
to other Ketron units. The SD1 is a total workstation.
By comparison, the Midjay is a total playstation,
but for music rather than games. If you buy the Midjay
expecting to do lots of editing, sound tweaking, sequencing,
sampling etc. you will be rather disappointed. It
does not come loaded with thousands of styles or millions
of sounds or slots to sample with etc. What it does
come with is the ability to do lots of useful things
that no other unit on the market at this time will
do. In that regard, I know of only a handful of Ketron
owners that used more than a small percent of their
workstations abilities. Most owners of the Midjay
are likely to use more of the Midjay's features than
that of any previous model.
First lets look at the plus side. The fact is that
there are almost no negatives.
This little guy (12.5 inches is the biggest dimension)
has more power packed into every cubic inch than anything
that has come along in the music field -- ever. It
has incredibly high quality sounds. It has a 20 gig
hard drive so room for more sounds. It has room for
thousands of styles and the hard drive is organized
like a windows computer so it is simple and easy to
create tons of folders and files and keep them all
organized.
It will play Ketron styles, Wave files, MIDI files,
MP3 files and more. The outputs sound very clean and
quiet and it is easy to forget you are listening to
a little box.
THE STYLES
Here is something quite different from the normal
Ketron styles. The styles for the MS series started
having really nice Intros and Endings and that became
more elaborate with the X series that had 3 different
Intros and Endings for each style.
The Midjay styles each have 3 Intros, 3 Endings, 3
Fills, 1 Break and 4 variations. This is dependant
on what Type of style you have loaded. You do not
have the same choices that you had on some of the
older models. For example if you are using Arrangement
A your intro and ending and fill choices are different
than if you are using Arrangement B or C or D. If
you are using a style with the regular 3 intro/endings
Arrangement D will give you the same as Arrangement
A.
Also a lot of those styles have no chord changes during
the Intro or Ending on Arrangement A. I have heard
complaints from lots of working musicians who felt
that for players who push pedals the Intros and even
more so the Endings were far too elaborate. They were
finding it difficult to keep up with all the variations.
In night club situations the ability to do things
on the fly was being robbed by these endings.
When Ketron added and additional ending, "Fill
to End", one the SD series the reaction was extremely
positive. So the Endings on the Midjay are similar
to that when using Arrangement A.
The Intros are also much simpler, again on Arrangement
A. They are still musical, but a lot closer to Jam
Session type intros and again much easier to do on
the fly especially if you are not extremely familiar
with a style.
I loaded styles from many different sources into the
Midjay and some played and some didn't. I noticed
that the Midjay plays X series styles just fine. It
also plays SD and XD series styles without a mummer.
However, trying to play an MS style just wouldn't
work. If the same style has been converted to X, SD
or XD it plays just fine. It seems that if you use
a style made for a different series, the Intro will
be Intro 1, the Ending will be Ending 1, Fill will
be Fill 1 and the variations will be exact.
The styles that come loaded on the machine are quite
useful and most musicians will be happy with them,
but the real advantage is the ability to do hundreds
of styles that are specific to your type of music.
Another advantage is that the styles are not swamped
with reverb as so many of the older styles were, so
they have a more "live band" feel.
Another great advantage is the longer file names so
you don't have to wind up with names like 16BEAT01
and 16BEAT02 and wonder what they are good for. Instead
you can name a style for an artist or song or anything
that makes it easy for you to find.
Style editing is much like the editing on any other
Ketron machine since the X.
I believe that once you know your way around the buttons
editing will be fast and easy.
VOICES
The voices are remarkable. They are standard Ketron
GM voices which are the best in the industry for realism.
You can layer the voices to reflect the sounds you
want. I don't yet know if there are possible additional
slots, but just for fun I did layer the Grand with
Legato Strings to see if I could. The 64 Preset Voices
are already mostly layered.
MIDI FILES
There are a bunch of MIDI files that come on the Hard
Drive ready for playing and they sound great. It is
hard to believe that these are sequences instead of
live musicians.
I loaded a few hundred of my own sequences and started
going through them to see what tweaking would be needed
knowing that some volume balancing would be required.
This is where I got my first disappointment. Some
of the sound assignments were missing. Most notably
Steel Drums. I found Steel Drums, but it was necessary
to remap the MIDI due to the fact they have been moved
to a different spot. Needless to say I was surprised.
I guess I am one of the few people that use it. Tremolo
guitar is a sound that I also use and I found that,
but it had been renamed so a little searching was
required.
One tricky thing was navigating a folder that has
several hundred MIDI files in it. You can use the
wheel to scroll down one at a time, but by the time
you get to You've Lost That Loving Feelin' you have
been scrolling for a while since the songs are in
alphabetical order. I found that you can just enter
a number like 250 and you will go to that spot and
can scroll from there or if you are still in the 'Rs'
you can then enter 350 and get to your spot pretty
quickly.
Another quick way to find something is using the Alphabet
Search function. It is best to be in the Folder where
you need to be before you start searching.
The sounds are so great that your MIDI files are going
to sound extremely good.
WAVE FILES
If the outputs are good on a play device a wave file
sounds like a wave file sounds. If a wave file sounds
bad it is probably a bad wave file. The advantage
is that you can sync wave files with your MIDIs.
MP3 FILES
Everything said about wave files applies to MP3 files
as well. The advantage is that they sound really good
for a much smaller file so there is room for lots
and lots of MP3s on the hard drive.
SOUND EFFECTS
There are hundreds of sound effect on the hard drive
and since they are wave files they can be associated
with MIDI files. You will have just a world of fun
going through these sounds. I was a little shocked
at how good the cannon was. I was afraid for a second
that my woofers were stressed, but thank goodness
for good speakers.
PLAY LIST
This is an incredibly powerful feature. You can have
up to 10 files in each play list. For a working musician
this would be using a MIDI file or a Wave file or
an MP3 file and the good news is that you can mix
them if you wish.
Musicians can create 'sets' of songs for club performance.
The lists will either play start to finish going from
one song to the next without pause or you can scroll
down and play your choice or do the same by pushing
one of the 10 number buttons that corresponds to the
song on the list which means you can play your set
backwards or in any order you choose.
It makes sense to create as many different play lists
as you have occasion to use.
TRANSPOSE
The transpose function works flawlessly on MIDI files
as always, but more impressive it works on Wave files
as well. It does not work on MP3 files.
USB
Another disappointment was that even though a USB
port was provided, there was no USB cable. Oh well!
I have some so it was not a hardship. File transfer
is relatively painless. Hook the USB up to your computer
and the computer recognizes the hard drive in the
Midjay as an additional hard drive so you can drag
files and create directories just like you do on your
computer. Not all windows functions are enabled to
save memory, but file transfer is very quick and easy.
CROSSFADE
Since the Midjay works on a different principle and
does not depend on a huge RAM memory it is possible
to have 2 files playing at once. One useful way to
use this is by using the Crossfade function. This
will cause two different files of the same type to
fade from one to the other.
RECORD TO THE HARD DRIVE
Just an unbelievable function is that you can record
directly to the hard drive using a Standard Midi File
and singing or playing along with it and the Midjay
not only records your voice or instrument faithfully,
but creates a wave file using the sounds in the Midjay
which are really pristine. You can use the Mic input
on the back or go into the line inputs using a mixer
or other device. I tried it an it requires a few steps
but it is not much more difficult than the "Song
Record" function on other Ketron devices. Then
I looked in the Wave folder and there it was. (Mistakes
and all) I found it hard to believe that it was that
good so I downloaded the file to my computer and played
it in Windows Media Player and there it was, completely
unchanged. Now figure this out with me. A stereo wave
file at CD quality requires about 10 mByte per minute
of recording time. That means you could record a full
CD quality album in about 600 mByte. And that would
give you room for outtakes. Properly used, this may
be the hottest function on the unit. The express manual
says that you can use that wave file you just recorded
to record a new wave file and record additional parts.
I may not get much sleep.
NEGATIVES
The complaint year in and year out is the Manuals
that Ketron puts with there machines. It is to be
hoped that this model will be different, but I would
be very surprised. The manual that comes with these
first shipped modules is called an XPress Manual.
It should be called Quick Start because it does nothing
except to get you going. For in depth use we all are
going to get to wait. I have sent emails regarding
some in-depth information. I look forward to writing
a lot of tips and tricks for this powerful unit.
IN THE END
After playing for hours with this new device I decided
that I would be using it and would get many years
of use out of it. I figure that if you can use something
for 10 years you are in good shape as far as a financial
investment goes and this little guy (did I mention
that it weighs 7 pounds) will sound great for a long
time. There are still lots of editing functions that
you can use including the effects, EQ and much more.
But the bottom line here is that this is a performers
machine. If you want the best for recording and things
like that, the SD1+ is still top of the line for all
instruments. However, if you also have an SD1+ (or
MS50 for that matter) you can record a wave file or
MP3 and save it to your hard drive in the Midjay and
take it with you. If you have recorded a CD you can
stick that on the hard drive as an MP3 and use the
play list as your break music.
The possibilities are staggering!
