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KETRON VEGA.
David Etheridge looks at Ketron's unusual keyboard that features oriental sounds and styles in addition to the usual
Ketron goodies.
I had great fun last year looking at the Ketron range, from the ultimate lounge piano style DG100 to their flagship SD1 Plus, so
I might have been forgiven in thinking that there were no surprises left for me in the Ketron range. The I saw details of
the Vega, and that intrigued me. Essentially identical to the XD9 keyboard, but with the addition of oriental sounds and
styles, was it worth more than a quizzical glance? The answer, as we shall see, is a resounding yes.
You could look upon the XD9/Vega models as stripped down versions of the SD1. The sensible thinking behind this being that not
everyone needs all the bells and whistles of a fully featured workstation, so you might not need sampling capabilities or
multiple audio outs, or even a fully fledged sequencer if you edit your songs on a computer at home.
So what we're left with is a 61 note, velocity sensitive keyboard with the usual individual Ketron sounds, a MIDI file player and
song recorder, and the all new Drum Remix feature that allows you to replace MIDIfile drum parts with Live Drums from your chosen
style. Add the winning interactive arranger and style engine, a healthy 22w RMS speaker system and we've got a serious keyboard.
Now add Oriental sounds and percussion and Arabic scales and tunings, and you're REALLY cooking with gas!
Familiar options, should you desire them, include the Micro vocaliser, (a slightly stripped down version of the SD1's
wonderful harmoniser), a 6 Gig IDE Hard disk, and TV interface option for those karaoke gigs.
Press and play.
The Vega is typical Ketron in style, with a 'brushed aluminium style' finish and heavy on the control count. Though initially
daunting, everything's grouped quite sensibly, and the manual is very helpful, with screenshots of how the display should look
when trying things out.
Each section covers a different feature of the instrument. From the left: volume control of the four sections (drums, bass,
chords, right); Disk select (hard/floppy), Page, Cursor and Value buttons. Underneath are the numbered style buttons, with a bank
select button. These can also call up the oriental styles.
Around the LCD display are ten 'soft' buttons for data selection, manipulation and general editing.
On the right hand side are the voice select buttons. Voices are arranged in groups of ten which are shown on the
main display. As well as 292 GM voices, there are 290 Presets and 110 User voices, all of which can be edited for ADSR, Cutoff,
Resonance and FX. As usual, modifying sounds is very easy and there are the usual storing, file creation and housekeeping
routines to make your instrument unique to you.
Underneath the sound select buttons are a host of buttons for
live playing and one touch sound and pattern selection, while at the bottom are the real time controls for file playing, different
levels of arrangement, fills, intros and endings. After a while it becomes second nature to use these features making the Vega
very easy for live performance.
Sounds exotic.
Ketron always offer sounds that are fairly left field compared to their Japanese counterparts, which you might well expect from the
Italians. All the usual sounds are there: a great GM set with variations that cover just about all styles. One or two
sounds are rather disappointing: the sitar sound's a variation on the banjo, and Oberbass is not a synth at all but some honky
saxes. However, the odd turkey is more than compensated for by other winners: the wonderful Voilas, an ingenious Pedal Steel
where the mod wheel bends the lowest note of a chord while the others remain unaffected, some rich acoustic guitars and Carlos
(he of Santana fame) lead guitar, all of which are excellent throughout. Once again, we have the astonishing range of
accordions (Ketron fit 'accordion mode' to their products as standard; ideal for all those 'Godfather' style tracks!), and
their unique vocal sounds with sampled black vocal groups galore. As usual, I took the Vega for a test drive with some MIDIfiles
and it always impressed with the results.
Mysteries of the Orient.
It's addition of Arabic scales and Oriental sounds and styles that set the Vega apart from just about anything on the market
today. You can edit microtonal scales of your own as well as the onboard preset scales, choose whether the Arabic scales are
played by the upper or lower keyboard parts, or the arranger. Any combination is possible. New sounds include the Oud, Saz, Kawala,
Mijwiz, and Zurna, while styles include Said, Wedha, Maksoum, Baladi, Katkfti and Adani, each with many variations on the basic
groove. With over 450 oriental percussion sounds, you'll have great fun mixing and matching styles. The most bizarre sound here
is what sounds like a girl rap group chanting away in, well, I suppose, Arabic! (What's the Arabic for 'get on down and boogie,
y'all'?). For world music fans, this section alone opens up any number of new possibilities.
Style guru.
The Arranger section is the heart of the instrument, making live playing easy, with lots of musical styles to mix and match.
Broadly speaking, you have control over a combination of bass, drums and harmony tracks. Each style can have four different
variations of different complexity, with intros, fills and breaks that let you switch between different levels of arrangement. This
level of control makes for easy one and two finger control of the
entire keyboard live, and that's before you add your own live parts. You can record your own MIDIfile, which will be a
combination of the arranger's preset parts and your live parts, including style, voice and drum fill changes. Basically, the Vega
will do the hack work for you here!
Other goodies.
The Micro Vocaliser offers FX, pitch shifting and harmonisation of vocal parts from the mic input. Harmonies can be derived from
a harmony track in the arranger or played chords on the keyboard. Vocal effects include Reverb, Delay, Vibrato, Modulation, Pitch
Bend, Limiter, and Singer (male and female options on the vocaliser), all with full editing features. The drum section is
fully customisable with live loops as well as preprogrammed sounds for great flexibility. And coming back to sounds, there's
a full drawbar emulation of Hammond sounds with Leslie cabinet, all controllable in real time.
Conclusion.
Ketron always give you a tremendous amount of features to play with, even in a keyboard like the Vega. Although you don't have
the sampling and sequencing features of the SD1 here, what you do have is a very deep instrument that can be full of surprises, and
I've only touched the surface here. Although navigating around
the features can be a headache at times (it REALLY is deep), time and patience will pay off handsomely. And the Arabic sounds and
scales must be a winner for anyone looking to expand their MIDI voyage onto the still largely uncharted waters of world music.
Overall, the Vega's a great sounding and very flexible friend.
High Notes.
Strikes a good balance between nice to have features and what you really need in a keyboard.
Actually much deeper than you might think -lots for your money.
The typical Ketron off the wall approach for something different.
Arabic sounds, styles and scales: a first?
Upgradeable OS via the net. Direct PC/Mac interface.
Versatile performance instrument with an excellent speaker system.
Wide range of add ons available.
Superb styles, intuitive and easy to use.
Comprehensive manual.
Low notes.
Lots of buttons to get to know at the start.
Finding your way around can be rather convoluted at times.
Some sounds not as good as others.
Large display shows lots of info not always relevant at the time.
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