From jjmcs49@yahoo.com Thu Dec 09 19:15:16 2004
Subject:Re: question about XK-3


This is what I found on my XK-3:
With Touch turned on, and Velocity turned off, it is possible to
play a trill and get the percussion to stop triggering even though
the keys are being fully released. It seemed the deeper the key was
pressed the easier it was to get it started, but once it started it
was easy to keep it going. If I pressed the keys a little shallower,
the percussion started/kept triggering. With velocity turned on, it
makes this more obvious. I had all drawbars in so when percussion
stopped I got silence. I could feel and see my fingers alternately
coming off the keys. This may be normal, but my understanding is
that if all keys are up at all, the next note pressed should trigger
percussion. In normal playing, this hasn't been noticeable or a
problem. I had to work at it to make it happen.

I don't think my fingers were coming up off the keys before they
were completely up. I'm not that fast that my fingers rise up faster
than the keys can. Actually, I could get it to not trigger even when
playing pretty slowly if I pushed the key down far enough, let it up
and repressed it within a specific period of time. With practice it
could be like playing a drum roll with a harder hit every so many
beats.

I have never noticed percussion not playing properly while I was
playing music no matter how fast I was playing. This is kind of like
that old joke about the guy who tells his doctor it only hurts when
he does x, so the doctor says don't do that.

For those who would like to have notes sound a little deeper in the
key travel, turning velocity on will do this. The drawback is that
percussion becomes dependant on how hard you hit the keys. A
possible way around this is to turn local control off, set the MIDI
Input setting to IN1/IN2, Turn all Ext. Zone channels off (or notes
double trigger) and run a jumper MIDI cable from the MIDI out
through a box that will convert the velocity to 127 and then to MIDI
In1. Setting the External Zone velocity setting to 4 in the XK-3
reduces the difference between slow and fast key velocity but it is
still noticeable. I don't have a box to convert the velocity data so
I couldn't test it completely. I like the way the XK-3 works as it
is, so I didn't experiment further.