Hv U used X300/500 4 adding beats/bass/keys to existing recordings?

[Rudolph R-N R]

So, long story short, since my X500 was stolen I've been on the lookout for a new board.  The Korg PA700 looks mighty fine, esp like their chords/lyrics/sheet music that can be displayed both on the board and to a monitor, and I love it that it has a knob to control the balance between your playing and the accompaniment- a must have!  And a Songbook database, very visual.  And the defined nuance control with the buttons and sounds made for delivering more nuance, as well as the guitar strumming capability- all great stuff.

 

But then I started thinking, but what about those great pads on the X500.  Sorry to say I didn't do much with mine when I had it, and now that I'm considering a board for producing live jams that i've participated in, those pads and their great velocity sensitivity and ability to do so many things seems like a somewhat  better fit, esp. since I don't know how well the lyrics/chords/sheet music on the PA700 is implemented, it very probable that it'd make more sense to do that with an external ipad, which of course would be more appropriately large and probably much more useful.

 

So- questions for those of you that have used the X500 for beats, creating samples, for being at the center of your production:

? How have you used the pads and drums for recording your own beats and or creating beats for already recorded material?

? How have you used the sampler? An obvious cases would be to sample a song in stereo and use the keyboard to supplement with beats and more sounds

? Have you played back a song from an MP3 / Wav file on a usb stick and been able to hear it, add beats and keys to it while recording it somehow-

 

In other words, please lend me your experience so I have an inkling that I do indeed prefer the X500 over the PA700 for producing (adding beats, bass line and keys) to pre-existing recordings.  I literally have 500-600 high-quality recordings of songs, most 5-10 minutes long, that I'd love to do something with without breaking out my laptop, which is a whole other level of complexity and tech hassle that I'd rather not deal with, KISS.  Unfortunately I get impatient and frustrated with computers, would rather relate to a user friendly keyboard.

 

Thanks

Randy

[Brad Saucier]

It sounds like the USB audio player on the MZ-X500 would come in handy for you.  A lot of us use that to play backing tracks directly on the keyboard to play along with.   I prefer that over using auto accompaniment. 

 

Quote: "Have you played back a song from an MP3 / Wav file on a usb stick and been able to hear it, add beats and keys to it while recording it somehow-"

 

It's not possible to play audio and record audio at the same time, so you would have to bring in another piece of equipment for that.  

[Rudolph R-N R]

Brad, thanks!

 

Would it be possible to use the sequencer and somehow sync it to the USB audio so that I could make successive passes, lay down a bass line, then some beats, etc.

 

Also, could I capture all this from the audio outs?  I'm fine with that if I have no other options. 

 

How about sampling the song, most are under 5 minutes.  Would I be able to then use the sequencer and output all of it to USB?

[Brad Saucier]

You can use the MIDI recorder to lay down up to 16 instrument tracks over one another, then record that playback to USB as audio.   But no, it's not possible to sync audio and midi with the keyboard.

[Rudolph R-N R]

How about making a long, stereo sample of a 5 minute song and create MIDI tracks to play along-?  There's got to be some way to use the keyboard to augment preexisting tracks.

[Brad Saucier]

Sampling 5 minutes worth of song is extremely long.  Samples are usually only a few seconds at most.

[Rudolph R-N R]

Yes, so I've heard, but a stereo sample of 5 minutes is about 55MB, well within the 256MB limit, so it should be possible.  The questions are

1. Are the analog inputs the only way to input samples?  By USB would be better.

2. Once it's in there, can I create a sequence that syncs up?  I imagine I'd have to start at the beginning every time I played it.

3. Or are there gotchas involved in making such a long sample-?

[Brad Saucier]

It's not built to handle that size sample in one shot.  It simply won't work.

[Rudolph R-N R]

So then I'm back to my original question.  What is special about this board that allows me to 'produce'  my many recorded jams, adding drums, bass, organ, etc., right from the keyboard.  Or are all of you out there saying you've never attempted it or this keyboard simply doesn't have the tools for adding keys to an already recorded jam, hopefully with the sequencer, but if not, at least I can play along with it and record the 'new' jam.

[Brad Saucier]

The best tool for the job is a DAW, a computer running recording software.  You can drop your existing audio tracks in there and record new audio tracks alongside them, all perfectly synced and easily editable.