Saturday, August 4, 2012

Kawai K5000S Wicked Soundscapes



This synth was literally rescued from a garbage heap.  I have refurbished it w/ a new LCD, reconstructed the shattered endcaps, and performed exhaustive deep-cleaning of the programming interface boards.  The sounds presented in this video mark my first work programming Additive.  All sounds are coming directly from the K5000S, no other processing added.

The Kawai K5000S is quite the under-rated Additive synthesizer.  It is unbelievable to me a piano company like Kawai have turned out such a stellar vehicle as this one.  Programming Additive requires a great deal of persistence, but the reward of huge sonics are smashing as digital sounds go.

The on-board effects engine is first rate.  The ensemble chorus is a faithful vintage emulation which I haven't really noticed available on any modern hardware synth @ 0:36

The K5000S has a precise formant filter for dialing in choirs @ 0:10, 1:28 and 3:06.

Sounds @ 2:13 and 2:31 feature prominently on my forthcoming track "Polar Shift".

Vintage electronic organs of the day used additive techniques to generate their sounds through electro-mechanical tone wheels.  Similarly in programming the K5000S, organ sounds are always pulling at you like gravity.  Most of them are static and some are quite interesting such as @ 2:56.

The last three sounds starting @ 4:22 were patches downloaded from the internet Chroom + Stucco (which use the on-board PWMs), and Microvox (additives). 

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