A review by David Etheridge (Performing Musician magazine)

Last year I looked at Ketron's SD5 arranger keyboard, which represented a quantum leap in the technology with it's unrivalled level of backing tracks with complete grooves, riffs and countermelodies. Over the past five years I've looked at the Ketron range and been fascinated with how the company do things in their own (at times perversely different) way. Despite this, they are one of the leading contenders in Europe for workstation and arranger keyboards, offering features that companies elsewhere tend to regard as irrelevant or just not worth the trouble -to their cost, as it turns out.

This month we're looking at the SD3 Arranger module, in itself a keyboardless version of the SD5. You might think that another look might seem redundant, but not so, as the SD range offers so much that's different from the rest, that it's always worth checking out new ways of working. Where the Ketron range is notable is in their entire raison d'etre, which is for the gigging musician. Whilst any keyboard or workstation can be used live, Ketron have thought long and hard about what a live musician will actually want to enable him or her to get the best in a performance -and then gone ahead and provided it.

The Ketron SD3 comes as a large and chunky tabletop module bristling with controls and features. The polyphony count is excellent, with a total of 128 voices, divides as 64 main voices plus 65 GM voices. Distributors BCK tell me that there's a voice stealing algorithm if you start to run out of notes in either section! There's a raft of onboard sounds: 290 Orchestral sounds, over 1000 drum and percussion sounds, 292 second voices, 120 programs of layered sounds, 60 programmable 1 touch sounds, two independent drum sets, the first with 24 new drum sets and the second with 62 live drum sets with audio loops, 10 drawbar settings for Hammond sounds and a multi effect DSP with 60 different effects. Now while any decent workstation can offer similar features, the difference with Ketron lies in the live performance features. Not only do we have a comprehensive onboard sequencer, but a MIDI file player with text and karaoke features, 13 Arabic scales (Ketron still lead the field in alternative tunings), the famous accordions (Ketron even do a dedicated accordion based model -the SD8- with accordion buttons rather than a piano keyboard!) and a whole lot more.

Future features.

The SD3 controls are helpfully grouped into sections to make navigation relatively straightforward. Using your own controller will access all the usual features, but one point of note here is that the Leslie FX are enabled via the sustain pedal rather than a mod wheel. On the front panel is the disk drive which loads HD or DD disks, together with jack sockets for Mic (with gain slider) and headphones. On the far left are 16 multi-tabs which select various drums, FX, registrations and groups. The first set of buttons on the main panel select the different part volumes for multitimbral and performance setups (drums, bass, chord, lower, 2nd voice, right) and below this is the master volume slider. Next to this are the disk drive sections. As well as the floppy drive, there's an optional massive 24 gig IDE drive (uprated from the original 6 gig drive of the SD5), which should store all the material you'll ever need in your career! There are buttons for the vocaliser section with it's harmoniser and vocoder options, transpose and cursor buttons (making navigation very easy), save and exit, and at the bottom of this section buttons for rotor on/off and fast/slow, bass to lowest, manual bass, jump and tap. The centre display uses soft multifunction buttons (F1-F10) for entering sounds and styles, menu pages, and the display has an adjustable contrast wheel. When playing back MIDIfiles, the display will show tempo, the relevant chord, and karaoke lyrics where included.

Below the display are the style select buttons, with transport controls and play modes, including the four arrangement buttons, doubling as vocaliser controls. The right hand side of the control panel covers voices, which are grouped generically, as is common practice on many GM instruments. Together with these are buttons for performances and registrations, adding harmonies, octaves, pattern play and edit and drum remix features. Around the back are connection for the video interface, PC/Mac interface (which is Ketron's own proprietary 9 pin host socket instead of a USB socket), 2 MIDI Ins (GM and keyboard), a single Out and Thru, jacks for sustain and volume, a multi footswitch 'D' connector, L(mono)/R out and mic out sockets.

Sounds interesting.

The sounds on the SD3 are typical Ketron, which is to say drastically different in their sonic nature from anything else on offer! It's the Italian approach that is very much in evidence here: good keyboard sounds (with a full set of drawbar tones), warm strings with their uniquely passionate sounding vibrato, excellent woodwinds and realistic saxes, while the brass are perfectly usable although the trumpets are rather MOR than in your face, which given Ketron's intended market is totally understandable, and none the worse for it. The guitars have a wide range that you won't find elsewhere (their gypsy jazz sounds are unrivalled), and the pedal steel is a delight, where the sustain pedal enables bends and slides within the played chord.

The synths and pads are excellent again, as are the voices, and of course there's the very comprehensive range of accordion sounds. If you're a tango aficionado, this is the gear that covers all the bases! The drums cover all the styles you will ever need on a gig, with an excellent selection of kits covering most, if not all musical idioms.

Style trial.

The styles section of the SD series offer what's currently the most sophisticated accompaniment section on the market -not only intelligent chord accompaniment, but added audio files that slot seamlessly into your backing tracks. There are ten musical genres: Unplugged (unique to Ketron at the time of writing), Pop, Dance, Ballad, Swing, Folk, Country, Rock & Roll, Latin and Ballroom. Now most of these are not just the usual one or two bar vamps with fills, breaks and intros/endings, but complete 12, 16 and even 32 bar full band arrangements with audio samples. Listen to the ones on offer here and it takes your backing tracks to a completely new level. For example, the Unplugged style captures guitar strums with uncanny accuracy, which are always challenging to reproduce accurately.

Each style offers several pages of grooves, with four different levels/variations of arrangement: A, B, C and D. The basic grooves are on level A, with added instruments and vamps on B, C and D. The full monty is on level D, and this button will flash if the selected style/groove has the complete arrangement with audio licks rather than a MIDI vamp over a single chord. Each arrangement can be adjusted to key or tempo, and using the hold button keep the groove cycling while you play over the top of it.

The quality of the arrangements truly are of the highest level, and the intelligent chord analyser works all the way up to 11th chords with ease, while the jump button let's you switch between levels of arrangement whenever you press the fill button. I'm guessing that this level of backing has never been made so easy and controllable before!

From Pushbutton to Plectrum.

The accordion mode might not seem useful unless you're an accordion player, but stay tuned, because you can set up the SD3 for use with MIDI guitar using accordion mode. Distributors BCK found this out with one of their customers. Basically, in accordion mode pressing chord buttons sends a three note chord to the SD3 and produces a chord. Any notes less than this will not change the chord. So, using a MIDI guitar, you can play a three note chord and this will change the xchord on the SD3, and then solo over the top with one or two strings and the chosen chord will sustain underneath this for as long as you desire. How do you do this? From the home page, go to F3 'Utility', press F1 'Accordion Mode', F10 to set it active. Exit the Utilities, go to F6 MIDI, set F2 MIDI receive, and turn the 'Upper' keyboard part off. Then set the MIDI menu to a Global MIDI receive channel 1, and you're ready to go. The full power of the SD3 is under guitar control, and you can play along to MIDIfiles using the guitar as well. BCK can provide further details and hints on this.

Finding your voice.

The Vocaliser section is one of the most sophisticated ones you'll find on the market. The mic input (which can be used in stereo mode) can be used for two mics with an adaptor lead, although only mic 1 can be used with the vocaliser, and the mic 1 out jack can send the vocal signal to n outboard mixer if desired. Reverb and Echo can be added to both mic inputs. When talking to the audience between songs, the FX can be switched out by pressing the 'talk' button on the main panel. The Vocaliser itself provides full transposition and harmony modes (Harmony Right and Left, Full 1,2 and 3, Jazz 1,2 and 3 and MIDI mode, which selects the harmonies from chords in the chosen played MIDIfile. In fact the harmonisation modes offer a very wide variety of chord and inversion recognition, giving a very flexible approach to harmonies and backing vocals. And while we're about it, all the backing voices are fully editable for formant, resonance, frequency, vibrato and FX levels. With the Vocaliser to Arranger button, different vocal backings and modes can be assigned to the Arrange A, B, C and D buttons for a song, and vocal sets can be saved and recalled with the registration buttons. Lastly in this section, there's the vocal effects button, to add humorous effects to your voice in a show. I'm not saying that you'll get everything from Darth Vader to Bugs Bunny, but you never know........

CONCLUSION.

As you can guess, I've got a very soft spot for the Ketron range. Above all, they're different, and have an approach that's ideal for the gigging muso, whether soloist or band member. This powerhouse of an arranger keyboard is still currently the most sophisticated of any on the market, with truly distinctive sounds and that extraordinarily comprehensive onboard arranger with its combination of MIDI and audio technology. While some of the styles and sounds might seem rather surprising to more rock oriented musos, for markets outside that genre Ketron have obviously thought out the whole approach very well, including both sounds and styles designed to appeal to continents and not just countries. The ace in the hole is the styles section, which through the us of audio as controllable backings points the way to the future. Indeed at the time of writing, Ketron have announced a new keyboard that takes the use of audio files as backing to a new level. When it hits these shores next year, I'll be looking to see how far they've taken it.

Summary.

The SD3 offers a colossal amount for the money, with sounds ranging from the classy to the eccentric, but offering something to please just about all gigging musos. The performance and arranging styles are still the most advanced and sophisticated I've ever heard, and the way they're implemented shows great creativity and ingenuity. Likewise, the vocaliser is comprehensive to a fault and very flexible in use. Like all deep instruments it'll take time to master, but Ketron owners are the most brand loyal in the business. A powerhouse workhorse for all occasions.