Kurzweil PC3, Musician'S Manual

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6-4
Program Mode
KB3 Program Structure
KB3 Program Structure
There’s nothing quite like the sound of the classic Hammond™ B-3 tone wheel organ, especially
when played through a Leslie™ rotating speaker system. We’ve done extensive testing and
analysis with several tone wheel organs, and created our own models to emulate the unique
tone wheel sound. We even took into account the way that older organs start to sound different
(and arguably better) as their capacitors begin to leak—and we included a parameter that lets
you vary the amount of grunge (leakage) in your sound.
KB3 programs use oscillators to emulate the tone wheel sound. Each oscillator operates
independently, and has its own pitch and amplitude control. You can control how many
oscillators are used for a KB3 program. There are two oscillators per voice, for a total of 256. You
can use up to 91 of them in a KB3 program (the 92nd is reserved to produce key click). Because
the oscillators start running as soon as you select a KB3 program, there are always voices
available—unlike VAST programs, which start “stealing” notes when you reach the polyphony
limit.
The oscillators—we’ll call them tone wheels from here on—are divided into an upper and lower
group. The upper tone wheels use the samples in the PC3’s keymaps to generate sound, while
the lower tone wheels use sine waves. You can change the keymap of a KB3 program’s upper
tone wheels to produce a large array of sounds.
KB3 Mode
KB3 programs are different enough from VAST programs that we use the term KB3 mode to
describe what’s going on when you play a KB3 program. Whenever you play a KB3 program,
you are in KB3 mode. The blue LED in the KB3 button will light when the current program is a
KB3 program.
If you want to create your own KB3 program, start by editing an existing KB3 program.
You can play KB3 programs only on a single channel at a time.