Pitch bend question

[bleustrat777]

Hey guys, i dont play keyboards, but i was wondering what that thing is on rudess' keyboard on live scenes from new york. he uses it in Fatal tragedy. it is like a stip that runs above the keys, he taps it alot or runs his fingers across an gets some serious bends.
thanks for the help,
joshua

[Enigma™]

It's called a ribbon controller... The Kurzweil 25/2600's have them and there's an external unit called the Expression mate. It works on regular midi devices too.
Amazing thing... I love having it on my K2500 :) Couldn't really live without it. ;)

[Bastardo Demono]

basically its the thing he slides down to make the pitch go down like 3 octaves right (he does that during his learning to live solo), right? what is its purpose (what does it allow you to do you cant do with a normal pitch wheel)? it sounds cool

[merijn]

Well, there's alot more you can do with a ribbon. With the pitchwheel you can only go down a few notes, the ribbon 2 or 3 octaves. But you can program the ribbon to do several things! Crossfades for instance, of you can assign an incoming melodie to it. Here's some advise. Watch the k2600X video toturial! It's downloadable from http://www.kurzweilmusicsystems.com

Jordan shows many things you can do with it! And, NODBT 9. THat video shows some cool things about the ribbon! :)

[Taurus]

I believe Kurzweil offers those ribboncontrollers separately. You can attach them (as a strip) on your keyboard and it will use it as midi bending of your keyboard. Only downside is that not much synths have such a space avaiable to put that strip of tape.. :D

Anybody knows more about this product?

[Everlasting_Rain]

Not much more....but I like your avatar :D

[Enigma™]

...there's an external unit called the Expression mate. It works on regular midi devices too...

Yeah, that's right I just quoted myself ;)

So anyway, It's called the Kurzweil Expression Mate.
It has a built in arpeggiator, the strip and multiple output functions, etc..
Check out the Kurzweil website :)

[merijn]

Wow, I really would like to know more about a ribbon wich can be attached yourself! That would be awesome! :shock:

[Scrap]

I have a Kurzweil ExpressionMate. It's a nice tool to have around, but like all other Kurzweil products, it's insane to program unless you have the manual right in front of you. Sadly, due to poor sales, this product is discontinued and no longer being sold by Kurzweil. If you want one you'll have to look around the used gear market - I got mine from Sol. :)

Here's a shot of it sitting on top of the Kurzweil SP88X. The bulky control box is to the right and out of view.

http://www.reprehensible.net/~scrap/gear/expmate1.jpg

[Bastardo Demono]

Well, there's alot more you can do with a ribbon. With the pitchwheel you can only go down a few notes, the ribbon 2 or 3 octaves. But you can program the ribbon to do several things! Crossfades for instance, of you can assign an incoming melodie to it. Here's some advise. Watch the k2600X video toturial! It's downloadable from http://www.kurzweilmusicsystems.com

Jordan shows many things you can do with it! And, NODBT 9. THat video shows some cool things about the ribbon! :)

sounds really cool. where is that video on that site- I couldnt find it. some cool demo mp3s though.

[Spacehog]

I couldn't find it on the website either... it's available for download from the ftp site though, at
ftp://ftp.youngchang.com/pub/Kurzweil/Pro_Products/K2600/Video_Tutorial

Martin