MIDI Target Manufacturer(s): Kawai
I recently got hold of one of these in pristine condition, after years of searching, as I needed to complete the set, a K1m, K3m, K4m and K5m. Its the weirdest synth Ive ever used. I love it and hate it. Which means its a healthy relationship at least. It uses a very "unusual" method of synthesis, which is why I really wanted it. Its digital, but there is no rom here. It uses dsp based sine waves and gives you an order of up to 128 harmonics, or 2 sets of 64 in parallel, each with a level control and each can be assigned to any one of four envelope modulators. They were a little noisy, and lacked a lot of high end and some bottom, (1987 was the year of release and DACs were somewhat, unique) but they can come up with some really impressive sounds when you get serious with them. It makes some of the best brass sounds Ive ever heard.
This was my attempt to overcome the screen, they are crap to program like most 80/90 digital synths but this helps a lot. You still need to see the screen though when working with the harmonic levels.
The panel just remotes most of the control. If you own one, and don't know how to program it, believe me, this panel won't help. You need to understand how they work, this panel just lets you get to things easier.
Please don't bother reading this unless you want to modify the layout.
Note On Colors
Some controls are green, some are blue. The SYSex threw me some challenge and the only way around it without making a plethora of pages of the same controls for the 3 different selections was to use two Channel Controls. These let you inject variables from a channel knob into SYSEX similar to the V value (they use L). The SYSEX needed two variables to change in different locations in the SYSEX string, and this isn't possible normally as the V value can only replace a sequence of bytes rather than two seperate positions. I had to use two Channels Controls with 3 hard coded values in each to represent the various states the Oscillator selection can be in, the Blue controls are setup on one channel changer, the green on the other. They are hidden and changed when selecting the oscillators S1, S2 or BOTH. In short I used them in a way that wasn't there intended purpose, its basically a hack that works well.
