Welcome to KARMA Second Generation technology!

KARMA is an intelligent, interactive pattern generating technology that responds to your playing, providing endless inspiration, capturing musical gestures of every family of instrument. The purpose of this document is to familiarize you with KARMA???S possibilities so that you can take possession of this powerful technology and sculpt it to your own musical goals.

Some KARMA basics

KARMA exists thanks to the vision of Stephen Kay, its creator. It???s an acronym, standing for Kay Algorithmic

Realtime Music Architecture. The patterns that KARMA utilizes are called Generated Effects, or GEs for short. Your M3 is loaded with GEs, 2092 of them to be exact! Each Program can be assigned one GE. Combis can be assigned four GEs, and Sequences can be assigned four GEs???at a time! (Record the output of four: it???s preserved as MIDI info; grab four more if you like!)

The parameter values for the KARMA GEs are organized into Scenes. Each GE can have eight different

Scenes. There???s a wealth of creativity and inspiration awaiting you, simply by trying out the Scenes developed by Korg???s expert international team of programmers.

The following pages will give you an opportunity to dig in and experience KARMA???S power and creative possibilities ??? enjoy, and keep making great music!

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Working with KARMA on the M3

KARMA in Program Mode: Select this Program to begin: I-A-116, Hard House Kit

Eight Scenes possible per KARMA GE

1.Play any note on the keyboard or one of the eight pads: the KARMA ON/OFF switch ???wakes up??? ON (lit) when you select Hard House Kit, and the GE pattern starts playing immediately > The LATCH switch also wakes up ON: you need not hold a key down for the pattern to continue playing in this state > Turn LATCH OFF and you can manually re-start the pattern with any key or pad whenever you wish.

2.Select another Scene by pressing one of the four SCENE switches.

3.To toggle to Scenes 5-8, press the KARMA switch in the CONTROL ASSIGN column to choose KARMA control; then press it once more: the SCENES 5-8 LED will flash > Press the 1/5 switch, and now Scene 5 will play.

KARMA Realtime Control Models

For ease of use, everything that KARMA generates has been organized into a dozen types of musical activity: these are

called Realtime Control Models (RTC for short).

1.With Hard House Kit still selected, touch the ???KARMA GE??? tab in the display > Touch the ???Drum??? box to the right of ???Module A??? > Touch ???GE #1669: House 5??? [Some Kits], and a new GE pattern begins playing. The Kit name in parentheses lets you know which Kit will deliver optimum performance. You can achieve very pleasing musical results by selecting other GEs within a single RTC model!

2.For more daring experimentation, stray outside of the current Drum RTC Model > Touch the ???00 Arpeggio??? tab, for example, and select ???GE #0040: Kalimbish 1??? > Play note C#2, and a crazy but cool fill/breakdown idea happens! > Touch ???OK??? to accept this GE change, or hit ???Cancel??? to pass it by.

3.The M3 has the unique ability to link KARMA to the Drum Track > Check the box, ???Link to Drum Trk???, to the right of the GE name and number, and the GE stops running > Press the DRUM TRACK ON/OFF switch to turn it on > Play any key or pad: Now KARMA and the Drum Track are running, in perfect sync!

4.Press the PAGE SELECT switch, and touch ???P7-1??? in the display >Touch the ???Drum Track??? tab: You can decide whether or not the Drum track will run alongside KARMA for each of the eight scenes.

KARMA Realtime Control: Consistency of RTC with flexibility of experimentation

The power of KARMA lies not just in the musicality of the GEs, but in their ability to be modified in realtime! Second Generation KARMA technology always brings the same parameters to the Control Surface for a given RTC Mode.

1.In the current Hard House Kit example, touch the ???KARMA RTC??? tab in the display > Verify that the Control Surface is still assigned to KARMA, and move FADER 1, labeled Swing % > Select SCENE #3 and play a key or pad > Park the value at 000 for a very even-sounding groove > Slowly-move the FADER up to hear different shuffle/swing percentages, all in real time! > Try values of 126 or 127: The percentage is so extreme that it force-quantizes the 16th notes to an 8th note groove.

2.Notice that the original value of FADER 1, 038, is shown in the display to the right of the fader > While holding down the RESET CONTROLS switch, nudge FADER 1 in either direction, and notice that the pre-programmed value is restored, both audibly, and visually on the display > Try to mess up the musicality of the GE by drastically moving all eight FADERS at once and change the status of the switches above the faders: simply hold RESET CONTROLS and press the SCENE 3/7 switch, and all of SCENE 3 is restored, good as new!

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The point is that KARMA is meant to be an interactive process: Feel free to experiment, as the settings of one fader,

or the entire KARMA section, can be restored at the touch of a switch. (Note: RESET CONTROLS works in similar

fashion for all the other modes of the Control Surface)

3.FADER 4 is labeled ???Rnd/Imp???: this stands for ???Randomize/Improvise??? > Slowly move FADER 4 upwards,

stopping somewhere in the 80s: At each value change, the KARMA ???drummer??? is making stuff up! > Feel free to experiment with other faders and switches in similar fashion.

Remember, when you come up with a winner, there???s that loyal standby, Auto Song Setup/One-Touch Record: Press the

ENTER and the SEQUENCER REC/WRITE switches, hit the START/STOP switch after the M3 creates a new song, and you???ve captured all of KARMA???s output as easily-editable MIDI information!

Work with these great ???KARMA-fied??? Programs:

KARMA in Combi Mode: Select this COMBI: B-080, Dreaming w/o Sleeping

Module Control; Scene Matrix

1.Touch the ???KARMA GE??? tab in the display: You can see four GEs in this example > Play any key or pad, and experiment with selecting different GEs within the RTC Model, as above >Press the COMPARE switch by the numerical keypad if you???d like to get back to the original Combi at any time.

2.Touch the ???KARMA RTC??? tab in the display > Play a pad or a chord on the keyboard: Notice that, above the display???s fader-and-switch graphics, KARMA works by analyzing what chord you???re playing, and responds accordingly.

3.Above this area is a MIDI keymap, showing you what notes KARMA is generating for each of the four GE Modules > Select a different SCENE, and the Scene # is displayed to the left of the chord indicator.

4.Notice that directly above the Scene # and chord field is a boldface, outlined M: This denotes that the display

is showing you the settings for KARMA???s Master layer: In addition to four layers of GE settings, KARMA 2nd Gen provides a Master layer, for parameters that you wish to govern in similar fashion for all four running GEs >

FADER 1 is a good example: The generated music might sound ???broken??? if all four GEs didn???t share the same swing percentage.

5.Press the MODULE CONTROL switch to the right of the KARMA ON/OFF and LATCH switches: The display now indicates the parameters and values for GE#1 of four, occupying Module A > Keep cycling through the

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Modules: KARMA 2nd Gen keeps track of, and lets you change, 48 independent parameters, on these screens

alone, plus 16 additional ???global??? parameters.

6.Press the PAGE SELECT switch and touch ???P7-1??? in the display > Touch the ???Scene Matrix??? tab: The eight

scene boxes along rows M, A, B, C, and D are all ???live???: Touching any one of them works the same as if you press the ???hardware MODULE CONTROL and SCENE switches.

7.Touch the boxes in row M, the Master layer: Notice that for this Combi, the four GEs all change to the same Scene number???But they don???t have to! The Master is the recording secretary for the Scenes of its four subordinates > Touch ???Master Scene #2???: Let???s say you want KARMA???s melodic components to be as note- simple as possible, while the drum activity is bigger > Touch ???Scene 1??? for Modules A and D, and touch ???Scene7??? for Modules B and C, and play something: you???ve done it! Think of the countless mathematical possibilities of combinations of Scenes, coupled with the flexibility of each scene???s independent RTC parameters, and you already have a wealth of inspiring musical choices, thanks to KARMA!

There are many more KARMA parameters to examine, which are beyond the introductory nature of this document. Imagine that you could change the percentage of starting randomness of each aspect of KARMA independently per GE (You can: P7.1: Random Seeds). Imagine that you have even more finite control over the range of values assigned to the switches and faders (You do: P7-3: GE RTP: 64 parameters per GE!)

Tip: Is there really such a thing as Negative KARMA?

There are times in live performance situations when you may wish to disable KARMA from kicking in, so that you can just play the M3???s sounds. This is easily accomplished in GLOBAL mode. Press the PAGE SELECT key; make sure that the

???Basic??? tab is selected. Check the box in the lower right, under ???KARMA/Drum Track??? by touching it, to select ???All KARMA/DT Off???. That???s it!

For more information, see the M3 Parameter Guide, and make sure to visit www.korg.com/m3 and www.karma-lab.com/m3 for more support, tips and tricks!

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