Korg KORG Pa50 user manual STYLE’S Structure, Chord Chord Variations CVs

52Style Record mode

The Style’s structure

10. STYLE RECORD MODE

By entering the Style Record mode, you can create your own Styles, or edit an existing Style.

THE STYLE’S STRUCTURE

The term “Style” relates with music sequences automatically played by the arranger of the Pa50. A Style consists of a pre- defined number of Style Elements (E) (Pa50 features ten dif- ferent Style Elements: Variation 1-4, Intro 1-2, Fill 1-2, Ending 1-2). When playing, these Style Elements can be selected directly from the control panel, using the corre- sponding buttons.

To explain the Style structure, we can use a tree-structure, as shown in the following diagram:

Pop Ballad

Variation 1

CV1

Drum

Perc

Bass

Acc1

Acc2

Acc3

Acc4

Acc5

CV2

CV3

CV4

CV5

CV6

Variation 2

Variation 3

Variation 4

Intro1

CV1

CV2

Intro 2

Fill 1

Fill 2

Ending 1

Ending 2

Each Style Element is made up of smaller units, called Chord Variations (CV), but not all of them have the same number of CVs. Variations 1-4 have up to 6 CVs each, while the other Style Elements have only up to 2 CVs.

When you play on the chord recognition area (Lower, Upper or Full, depending on the Chord Scanning section on the control panel), the arranger scans the keyboard and deter- mines which chord you are playing. Then, depending on the selected Style Element, it determines which Chord Variation (CV) should be played for the scanned chord. Which Chord Variation corresponds to each scanned chord is a setting of the Style: the Chord Variation Table. Each Style Element contains a Chord Variation Table, whose prototype is the fol- lowing:

Chord	Chord Variations (CVs)
	Variation 1-4	Intro 1-2, Fill 1-2, Ending 1-2
Maj
6
M7
M7b5
Sus4
Sus2
M7sus4
min
m6
m7
m7b5	CV1 – CV6	CV1 – CV2
mM7
7
7b5
7sus4
dim
dimM7
aug
aug7
augM7
no 3rd
no 3rd, no 5th

After deciding what CV to play, the arranger triggers the right sequence for each track. Since each sequence is written in a particular key (for example, CMajor, GMajor or Emin), the arranger transposes it according to the scanned chord. Notes in the sequence are carefully transposed according to the Note Transposition Tables (NTT), to make them work fine with all recognized chords. The NTT allows you to record just some Chord Variations, and have all the notes play in the right place, avoiding dissonances and transposing the pattern notes to the notes of the recognized chord.

Going deeper into the Style structure, we can see that each Chord Variation is made up of Track Sequences, and the Pa50 supports 8 different tracks. DRUM and PERC are used for drum and percussion sequences, BASS for bass and