How to use...

Here's a quick rundown of the piano and pad sounds....

The basic structure of most of the piano/pad Combis is:

• Channel 1:  Main Piano
• Channels 2 and 3:  Pads
• There are generally 2 pad sounds blended, first the original pad on channel 2, and a pad sound called "Breath" on channel 3.  The "Breath" sound wasn't really intended to be used on its own (although it can be), but it adds an ethereal quality to other pad sounds.  You can vary the character of the pad by changing the level of channel 3. 
• Channel 4:  Octave Piano (actually it's 2 octaves up, which I think gives a nicer sound, you can change it down to 1 octave in the Timbre-> Pitch menu of the Combi).
• Channel 5:  CP-80 Stack (needs Purgatory Creek RTT library)
• Channels 7+8:  Drone Pads
• The drone pads use the same "Breath" pad as above on channel 8.  You can change the character of the drone by varying the level of channel 8.

The main controls are:

• Vector Joystick Up/Down:  This controls the blend of piano and pad, so up is all pads only and down is piano only.
• Vector Joystick Left/Right:  This controls the filter of the pad, right increases the filter frequency and left decreases.
• Faders are in "Timbre/Track" mode so you can vary the level of each channel with the faders.
• Play/Mute switch for channel 4 switches the octave piano in/out.
• Play/Mute switch for channel 5 switches the CP-80 piano in/out.
• Knob 7 adds some reverse delay to the main piano.
• Knob 8 increases the amount of reverb on the main piano.
• Switch SW1 drops everything by an octave.  Useful on the Kronos 61 and 73.
• Switch SW2 adds some subtle motion to the pad.

If you connect a Korg nanoPad, then the following controls are also available:

• Pads 1-8 map to the 8 Kronos chord pads, so they do different things depending on the Program or Combi.  1-4 are toggled for drones etc, 5-8 are momentary for chords etc.
• Pads 9-16 are set up to give a drone chord in the keys of C, D, E, F, G, G#, A and B, which are the most common keys I find I use.
• The X-Y pad of the nanoPad is set to control the volume of the drone in the Y (up/down) direction, and the drone filter in the X (left/right) direction.  The neutral / starting control position of the pad is top left.

All the sounds are EQ-ed for a live environment - if a different EQ is needed, then for each combi, TFX1 in the Combi MFX tab is usually a 7-band graphic EQ which can be adjusted.  You can also use the setlist EQ.

There are also a number of song-specific patches.  More about these coming soon...