Dinosaur here. I was a Kawai clinician during the K era. Rich Godinez and I plus two guys whose names I forget wrote the original K1 patches over several days in the basement of Kawai. The easiest way to program the K5 was to hit the random button until you got something useful. Seriously. There hasn't been a synth since with the crystalline quality of the K5. Not FM or digital waveform based. The K5 was a gas, as was the K1. Few people understood, or even bothered to understand the K5, which was a shame. I remember Aikin trying to explain it at a NAMM show and the whole time the look in his eyes was "my brain is chaos right now". The tech stuff is fun but from a live clinic POV, people, those who show up anyway, really just want to know if they can have fun with the product. In my rig I had a Vox Wah and a rat pedal on the K1 keyboard that I used to play over sequences from a Q80 driving a 5, a couple of K1 racks and an R100. I did a clinic in Austin, Texas. On my call back to see how they did afterward I asked if they sold any K1s. "No," the guy said. "But we sold out of Crybaby's and Rat pedals." Nice walk through. Thanks for the memory lane moment. One other thing. Sine waves can be added to produce almost any sound. However, sine waves do not naturally occur in the real world. Scary, huh. We invent waves to recreate waves.
Great story. A lot of important stepping stones of the synth history are kind of quirky (to say the least) but still fun when you use them for what they can do well!
Hello, perhaps you could help me. I was given a K5m. All is working ! Except the patches. Only one sound. I have changed the battery (CR2032), no ERROR message when I run it. I have a K5 Rom card. I've tried to load patches inside the K5M. I have an ID ERROR but this card working on an other K5m module. I have some RAM cards. Impossible to Format them : ID ERROR ! But they works into others K5m ! I've tried by Sysex and Midi method with sendsx and midiox... Nothing happens ! But all the menus are ok, the screen is ok (but non backlight), the sound ok and MIDI receives and sends messages into midiox and sendsx... Non dump possible. I have an ERROR. Do you saw this issue before ? Thanks for your help. Have a nice day ! Kisses from Reunion Island !
@@Nu-trix I've not tried... It's a good Idea. I will test dump from K5m to another K5m, also ! Perhaps is a delay and memory buffer ? Tomorrow It'll try because in my island, it's nearly night ! (21'32")
I own a Kawai K5m and am very happy. No other synth in my (rather large) arsenal does those "cold rainy night" kinda patches... Very emotional sounds! There is a lot of interesting modern approaches to additive synthesis, though. Nord Modular G2 can do really nice things, as can some Ipad apps (sic!) and the VSTs from Virsyn and Image-Line Harmor! Also the newest Synclavier Regen can do additive, but limited to 24 partials that can't be tuned. The limitation of fixed harmonic series tunings is one of the major drawbacks on the K5, too. Only the ultra rare Kurzweil K150 could do inharmonicities, afaik. Played a RMI Harmonic recently, the grandfather of all harmonic synths. Also some rare early Allen Organ company organs used additive synthesis, afaik. And the Wersi Stage Performer S1 an EX20!
Great tube you did ! Good job, I have a K4 and there is Windows edition freeware that someone created at that time to do modifications or creations to ease the work! I still have plenty of fun with it :)
I have the K5000, which came out around a decade after the K5. The operating system is very similar, the sound is somewhat different though. Some of you patches definately could be K5000 patches though, they are family after all!
That’s a really interesting tutorial. It’s unfortunate that no companies since then have found a way to make additive synthesis more intuitive for the average musician. The synthesis method is really powerful but all the complexity lies in the sound design which makes it too complicated for most people. But I’m kinda surprised that the spectral analysis tools that we see in Isotope RX that can isolate the voice and any instruments from a stereo audio track don’t seems to be used in reverse to do additive synthesis.
This is a pretty late response to your post (apologies) - I've owned a K5m since maybe 1991 or so, possibly earlier. Still love it. There used to be a software application available for Macintosh (back then I ran it on my Mac SE) that would take an 8 bit PCM waveform loop of maybe 128 or 512 samples or something like that - and generate spectra specifically for the K5 that could be sent, if I remember correctly, by MIDI. I don't remember who made this application or where it came from. I still like the sound of the K5, though mine's been in storage for years. Mine became somewhat noisy, and the display backlight burned out. It needs a bit of an overhaul, probably a new battery at this point. It's an interesting synth. Currently, UVI makes a set of virtual instruments for their UVI workstation platform that claims to emulate the sound of the K5, and years back Camel Audio had a virtual additive synth that can sound similar to the K5000 but I've heard it is quite different with respect to programming. I would love to see a suitable virtual recreation of the K5 / K5m, with a better UI, ability to input samples for analysis, good modeling of output circuitry and perhaps some convenient macro manipulation controls that could make it more interesting for playback - maybe an arpeggiator, patch randomization, etc.
@@Nu-trix Yes - I own some of the UVI instruments and they do seem like mostly well multisampled versions of the original synth, perhaps cleaned up, nicely looped, and so on. There may be a lot of scripting involved in their patches and some filtering, other effects, etc. but they seem like mostly samples.
I had this synth in keyboard version. the sounds are not realistic and cold. I liquidated it. it's good for the bell sounds but the rest is not good. the 5000 is more realistic.
Dinosaur here. I was a Kawai clinician during the K era. Rich Godinez and I plus two guys whose names I forget wrote the original K1 patches over several days in the basement of Kawai. The easiest way to program the K5 was to hit the random button until you got something useful. Seriously. There hasn't been a synth since with the crystalline quality of the K5. Not FM or digital waveform based. The K5 was a gas, as was the K1. Few people understood, or even bothered to understand the K5, which was a shame. I remember Aikin trying to explain it at a NAMM show and the whole time the look in his eyes was "my brain is chaos right now". The tech stuff is fun but from a live clinic POV, people, those who show up anyway, really just want to know if they can have fun with the product. In my rig I had a Vox Wah and a rat pedal on the K1 keyboard that I used to play over sequences from a Q80 driving a 5, a couple of K1 racks and an R100. I did a clinic in Austin, Texas. On my call back to see how they did afterward I asked if they sold any K1s. "No," the guy said. "But we sold out of Crybaby's and Rat pedals." Nice walk through. Thanks for the memory lane moment.
One other thing. Sine waves can be added to produce almost any sound. However, sine waves do not naturally occur in the real world. Scary, huh. We invent waves to recreate waves.
Great story. A lot of important stepping stones of the synth history are kind of quirky (to say the least) but still fun when you use them for what they can do well!
Hello, perhaps you could help me. I was given a K5m. All is working ! Except the patches. Only one sound. I have changed the battery (CR2032), no ERROR message when I run it.
I have a K5 Rom card. I've tried to load patches inside the K5M. I have an ID ERROR but this card working on an other K5m module.
I have some RAM cards. Impossible to Format them : ID ERROR ! But they works into others K5m !
I've tried by Sysex and Midi method with sendsx and midiox... Nothing happens !
But all the menus are ok, the screen is ok (but non backlight), the sound ok and MIDI receives and sends messages into midiox and sendsx... Non dump possible. I have an ERROR.
Do you saw this issue before ?
Thanks for your help. Have a nice day !
Kisses from Reunion Island !
Can you save a preset after making changes to it?
@@Nu-trix I've not tried... It's a good Idea. I will test dump from K5m to another K5m, also ! Perhaps is a delay and memory buffer ? Tomorrow It'll try because in my island, it's nearly night ! (21'32")
We have to check if there is a memory protection that prevents any memory modification. It was a common feature in the 80’s and 90’s.
I own a Kawai K5m and am very happy. No other synth in my (rather large) arsenal does those "cold rainy night" kinda patches... Very emotional sounds! There is a lot of interesting modern approaches to additive synthesis, though. Nord Modular G2 can do really nice things, as can some Ipad apps (sic!) and the VSTs from Virsyn and Image-Line Harmor! Also the newest Synclavier Regen can do additive, but limited to 24 partials that can't be tuned. The limitation of fixed harmonic series tunings is one of the major drawbacks on the K5, too. Only the ultra rare Kurzweil K150 could do inharmonicities, afaik. Played a RMI Harmonic recently, the grandfather of all harmonic synths. Also some rare early Allen Organ company organs used additive synthesis, afaik. And the Wersi Stage Performer S1 an EX20!
Great tube you did ! Good job, I have a K4 and there is Windows edition freeware that someone created at that time to do modifications or creations to ease the work! I still have plenty of fun with it :)
A Synthesist's Guide to Acoustic Instruments is an excellent book. I have it too.
I have the K5000, which came out around a decade after the K5. The operating system is very similar, the sound is somewhat different though. Some of you patches definately could be K5000 patches though, they are family after all!
Cool video ... K5m is really good to sculpt sounds ... schematics and patents show it was very well design !
That’s a really interesting tutorial. It’s unfortunate that no companies since then have found a way to make additive synthesis more intuitive for the average musician. The synthesis method is really powerful but all the complexity lies in the sound design which makes it too complicated for most people. But I’m kinda surprised that the spectral analysis tools that we see in Isotope RX that can isolate the voice and any instruments from a stereo audio track don’t seems to be used in reverse to do additive synthesis.
This is a pretty late response to your post (apologies) - I've owned a K5m since maybe 1991 or so, possibly earlier. Still love it. There used to be a software application available for Macintosh (back then I ran it on my Mac SE) that would take an 8 bit PCM waveform loop of maybe 128 or 512 samples or something like that - and generate spectra specifically for the K5 that could be sent, if I remember correctly, by MIDI. I don't remember who made this application or where it came from. I still like the sound of the K5, though mine's been in storage for years. Mine became somewhat noisy, and the display backlight burned out. It needs a bit of an overhaul, probably a new battery at this point. It's an interesting synth. Currently, UVI makes a set of virtual instruments for their UVI workstation platform that claims to emulate the sound of the K5, and years back Camel Audio had a virtual additive synth that can sound similar to the K5000 but I've heard it is quite different with respect to programming. I would love to see a suitable virtual recreation of the K5 / K5m, with a better UI, ability to input samples for analysis, good modeling of output circuitry and perhaps some convenient macro manipulation controls that could make it more interesting for playback - maybe an arpeggiator, patch randomization, etc.
The UVI K5 sound bank is simply a good sample based sound bank with good samples of well created K5 patches.
@@Nu-trix Yes - I own some of the UVI instruments and they do seem like mostly well multisampled versions of the original synth, perhaps cleaned up, nicely looped, and so on. There may be a lot of scripting involved in their patches and some filtering, other effects, etc. but they seem like mostly samples.
Super!
Nice !!
I had this synth in keyboard version. the sounds are not realistic and cold. I liquidated it. it's good for the bell sounds but the rest is not good. the 5000 is more realistic.
A Synthesist's Guide to Acoustic Instruments is an excellent book. I have it too.