I am sequencing and notes are being cut off, even though I am only playing a couple of tracks. / I am trying to play a KB3 program along with other programs and notes keep dropping out.

KB3 Program called up on Drum Channel (called KB3 Channel on the K2600)

The KB3 Mode is designed to model the manner in which sound is created on the Hammond B3 organ. On a Hammond, the tone wheels are constantly spinning, ready to produce sound once a key is depressed. For this reason, when you call up a KB3 program, a specific number of voices are permanently allocated and not available for any other programs. In a regular K2500 program, on the other hand, voices only start when you play a note. You can see this if you go to the Voices display (Master mode Util page) while a KB3 program is selected. You’ll see that a number of the K2500’s voices are active, even when no notes are being played.

The amount of polyphony allocated in a KB3 program is determine by the Number of Tone Wheels parameter (on the TONEWL page in the program editor). This parameter lets you specify the number of tone wheels used by a KB3 program. The classic tone wheel organs used 91 tone wheels, though the lowest 12 were for the pedals only. Therefore, you may find 79 a good number of tone wheels to specify for realistic organ emulations. For every 2 tonewheels, 1 voice of polyphony is used. Key click uses on additional voice. Therefore a 79 tonewheel program will use 40 voices: (79/2)+1=39.5, which is rounded up to 40. This would leave you eight voices for other programs. You can specify up to 95 tone wheels.

Of course, you can edit the programs to lower the number of tone wheels and thereby increase your leftover polyphony. As you lower the number of tone wheels, you will find that the upper part of the keyboard will “wrap” back to a lower octave (In exactly the same manner as found on a real B3). The lower the number of tonewheels, the sooner it wraps.

KB3 programs can only be played on a single MIDI Channel. The channel selected with the Drum Channel parameter on the Master page is the channel used for KB3 programs. It is important to remember that if a KB3 program is called up on the channel, the voices are being used, whether or not you have assigned that program to a track in your sequence.

A second possible explanation for the sequencing problem:

Stereo Samples Voice Stealing Problem

In version 2.13 of the operating system, there was a problem with stereo samples which would cause voice stealing even when there were plenty of voices available. This problem has been fixed since v2.31, so the solution in this case is to update your K2500 to the current OS.

Knowledge Base