Hi, Matthew,

welcome here! Your story is impressive and your personal web pages
very interesting.

I have also K5000W, MKS70 and MS2000 (plus little bit more, since
today also JD990), guitars, bassguitars, have been using Atari ST for
making my music between 1988-2004 (before this C64, after this Mac),
like similar music as you like, did intercontinental moving (from
middle Europe to Japan in 2003), had more years similar problems
which looked like CFS but fortunately wasn't...

So hopefully you will find here a bit of wisdom from members if you
need some advice. One is hear: maybe you can get Wizoo book (as a
PDF) about K5000W programming, it's good. I'm not sure now where it
is, maybe in this group files? If you can't find it, me or other
member can send it to you.

And if you will come one day to Japan (not so far), you are welcome
in our house.

I wish you lot of power!

Daniel Forro

www.soundclick.com/forrotronics
daikichi.p-kit.com
netnewmusic.ning.com/profile/DanielForro
www.forrotronics.cz

On 3 Dec 2008, at 10:35 PM, K5000@yahoogroups.com wrote:

> There is 1 message in this issue.
>
> Topics in this digest:
>
> 1. New Member Introduction
> From: Matthew Smith
>
>
> Message
> ______________________________________________________________________
> __
> 1. New Member Introduction
> Posted by: "Matthew Smith" matt@... heoroweard
> Date: Tue Dec 2, 2008 3:00 pm ((PST))
>
> 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