I just got back from the 2011 NAMM show.  There was a great buzz about the KRONOS throughout the show- a really nice way to celebrate the announcement of the product. 

It was truly inspiring to see and hear some great musicians playing KRONOS, including Korg’s own Steve McNally, Jack Hotop and Rich Formidoni.   But the highlight for me was getting into the packed standing-room-only demo room while Jordan Rudess of Dream Theater talked about his inspirations and masterfully improvised on the KRONOS.

I captured this video on my handheld camcorder.  Unfortunately it’s only using the built-in mic, so the audio isn’t great.  And people kept bumping into me!   But in spite of that, Jordan’s musicality and skill shine through, as do the fantastic sounds and capabilities of KRONOS.   Enjoy!

I think in this picture, I was saying “sorry about that voice stealing bug we heard during your playing-  I just tweaked the stealing algorithm, so it’ll be fixed in the next update!”    Thankfully, he was very understanding, and was asking Rich “When can I get one?  No seriously, when?”

Bill Jenkins, Me, Rich Formidoni and Jordan.

At long last, the KRONOS workstation is being unveiled at this year’s NAMM show.  This is the successor to the acclaimed OASYS, which was released back in 2005 . As some of you may know, I work at Korg Research & Development.  I’ve spent nearly 10 years (that’s a quarter of my life!) working on the technology that lives inside this beast!

The big “nine” in the teaser announcement hinted at the number of synthesis engines in the KRONOS. In addition to the seven outstanding engines from the OASYS (HD-1 high definition PCM, AL-1 analog modeling, CX-3 organ modeling, STR-1 plucked string physical modeling, PolysixEX analog modeling, MS-20EX analog modeling, and MOD-7 waveshaping VPM), there are two exciting new synthesis engines:

SGX-1 grand piano- carefully reproduces every nuance of a grand piano, with over 9 gigabytes of sample data (Japanese and German grands)
EP-1 electric piano- faithfully recreates six different vintage Rhodes and Wurli EPs, along with a whole rack of vintage effects and full speaker cabinet simulation

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This is the teaser announcement for an exciting new product from Korg.