What if my keyboard doesn’t have poly pressure?
You should buy a MIDIBOARD. Or, if you have a synth that produces monophonic afterpressure (such as DX-7) you can
use that instead. But then the pressure will affect all notes at once. With polyphonic afterpressure, you can control each note
individually.
What other MIDI controls do I have?
You have MIDI destinations for: Sustain and Sostenuto pedals like those on an acoustic piano. And a Timbre FreezeTM
pedal that works like a sostenuto pedal with a difference: the notes sustain without decaying. And a real soft pedal that alters
the timbre of the notes without changing their loudness. The control assignment table is programmable; any MIDI control
number may be assigned to any control destination.
Is that all?
No. The 150FS also features programmable MIDI velocity mapping, selectable loudness mapping and programmable
intonation.
Programmable intonation?
Right. You can tune each scale step individually. You can also set the key that you wish to play in so that the altered
intonation can be applied to any scale.
Can I program my own basic sounds, too?
Hal Chamberlin has developed the Sound Modeling ProgramTM which runs on an Apple IIe personal computer. Sounds
with up to 64 dynamic partials and any number of pitch roots and timbre levels may be interactively created using the
Apple’s graphics capability. This powerful sound creation tool comes standard with the Kurzweil 150FS at no extra cost.
You said it’s free. Is any other hardware required?
Your Apple IIe must have a disk drive and a good monitor. The only other hardware you have to buy is the Passport Designs
MIDI interface board which costs less than $100.
How does the Apple communicate with the 150FS?
Via standard MIDI using the 150’s MIDI In jack. User-created sounds are loaded into the 150FS which can hold up to 64 of
them in its non-volatile sound memory. The loading process via standard MIDI is much faster than with samplers due to the
very compact sound model format.
How much user sound can the 150FS really hold?
The sound RAM is 64K bytes. The entire factory sound set of 27 complex acoustic sounds only takes 128K while additional
ROM sound blocks are a mere 32K each. For the simpler "synthetic" sounds likely to be created with the Sound Modeling
Program, you will probably hit the 64 sound limit before the 64K limit. In any case, sounds can be saved on disk. And since
they are so compact possibly hundreds will fit on a single 5-1/4" floppy disk.
Can the Sound Modeling Program do everything Kurzweil engineers do in creating sounds?
Actually, it can probably do more. The factory sounds were produced mostly by staring at and editing long lists of numbers
from acoustic instrument analyses. The Sound Modeling Program unleashes the power of graphics to accomplish the same
things in much less time.
Can I examine and modify the factory sounds with the Sound Modeling Program, too?
Yes. One feature of the program will be the ability to read any ROM sound or previously loaded RAM sound back into the
Apple for examination, modification, or storage on disk.
Samplers allow me to simply record live sounds and use them musically. Can I do this with the Sound Modeling
Program and the 150FS?
One future enhancement being considered is a Fourier analyzer program that does just that. The recorded and analyzed
sound can then be manipulated much more freely than can a sound that’s merely been sampled.
What about other computers?
The Apple was chosen initially because it is the computer most commonly owned by musicians. Others are being
investigated, so cast your vote.
