Hi Folks

I have just acquired a K5000W, with which I am quite delighted. Very
good condition apart from a sticking top 'A', which I fixed in about 5
minutes NOT including all the time it took to take out all those screws
that hold on the bottom plate ;-) (Maybe the 5000 is the number of
screws that hold it together?)

Everything works well, even the floppy drive - most older kit that I
have dealt with that has a floppy drive tends to need a replacement.

The only thing that lets it down is, of course, the manual. It sucketh
mightily. I managed to get the sequencer worked out fairly quickly by
fiddling and occasional reference to the manual. The additive synthesis
side, however, I have yet to understand.

I was creating music about 15 years ago with an Atari ST running
Notator, a Roland MKS70, an Akai S01 and an Alesis SR16 - all of which I
still have - and a couple of pre-Sound Canvas Roland modules which got
left behind in my intercontinental move, along with a decent Mackie
mixer, a Casio DAT, a Quadraverb, a pair of Sure mics and a
compressor/noise gate.

Also used to have several guitars of various types basses fretted and
fretless and a cello which I played very badly.

After many years without touching an instrument and with improvements in
chronic health issues, I have found myself interested in music once again.

Having decided that I needed a new synth, I acquired a Korg MS2000R a
couple of weeks ago, which I love to bits. Whilst the sounds of my
MKS70 are great, I never really managed to programme any sounds because
I just can't get to grips with the push-button interface. The Korg
gives me knobs (and a vocoder and arpeggiator) for the first time.
Whilst I was looking for what ended up to be the Korg, I also spotted
the K5000W but didn't get it because it lacked both knobs and
arpeggiator. But as I still wanted a better master keyboard (and
something with a built-in sequencer), I suggested to my wife that the
Kawai might make a really nice birthday present - which it did!

So, everything is no wired into my rig which also comprises a Soundcraft
Compact 10 mixer, a Behringer UCA-202 external sound card and a ThinkPad
Z61m running Gentoo Linux (2.6.24.7-rt17 kernel for audio stuff, for
those who are interested; 2.6.23 for work and everything else.)

Software-wise, I have tried to use Rosegarden, but can't get it to run
without crashing. As it's KDE-based and I try not to use KDE, I have
given up on that and am now looking at Qtractor. Unfortunately, I can't
use Qtractor at the moment either as there is a minor problem for which
I have a bug open.

In view of the amount of time that I have taken/wasted taking the
software route, I have decided that I will use the laptop for audio
recording only and will leave sequencing to the K5000 - which looks much
simpler (to me) than any of the software approaches. Despite the fact
that I write software for my day gig, when it comes to music, I am far
more comfortable with a hardware approach.

Hardware-wise, I should probably mention that I am designing a cheap,
minimalist, Open Source, MIDI control surface based on an 8-bit Atmel
AVR microcontroller.

Music-wise, my tastes are very varied. Influences for what I do myself
are probably (in order), Kraftwerk, Jean-Michelle Jarre, Tangerine
Dream, Nena, Pink Floyd, Terry Riley.

Think that's about it!

Cheers

M

--
Matthew Smith
Smiffytech - Technology Consulting & Web Application Development
Business: http://www.smiffytech.com/
Personal: http://www.smiffysplace.com/
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/smiffy