Has anyone out there tried Karma Motif with the MOX?  $200 is a lot less than a Korg with Karma built in.  Thanks!

MarkBeauchene - 02 March 2017 06:35 PM

Has anyone out there tried Karma Motif with the MOX?  $200 is a lot less than a Korg with Karma built in.  Thanks!

As you see you’re not an exception using your MOX without such option. Formerly I got a Korg Karma for a while and made some tests with Karma function. Firstly, I’m quite convinced that Karma technology, as a whole, is a great invention. I was really amazed when practicing some of the presets. At the same time it is a bit cumbersome to understand, manage and “tame” parameters and behavior. And then to apply them in your music pieces. Not to mention about additional software tools for deep editing (I think the Karma for MOX does not contain ALL tools of Karma but I may be wrong). And that’s why its success has been moderate and remained in some niche status. Too complicated for amateurs while pros may think that they - with more and more advanced sw solutions available - do not need it at all.
But at the same time I don’t have any concrete information about range of usage of Karma in the musical industry.
Anyway, I think that Karma may be interesting and exciting either in integrated or external software based setups. I think you can ask directly in an email to Steven Kay. Sometimes he posts in different topics here at Motifator and seems to be a kind man. 
Hope that’s help a bit :-)

MarkBeauchene - 02 March 2017 06:35 PM

Has anyone out there tried Karma Motif with the MOX?  $200 is a lot less than a Korg with Karma built in.  Thanks!

I tried it with my MOX 8.  It is awesome tech, and you are right its a lot less than getting a Korg, just for the purposes of using Karma.  If you’ve mastered the Yamaha Arpeggiator, and want something a little different for your MOX Karma could meet that need.  I am not a Korg player, but have several mates who are, and its the integration of Karma with the Korg that they love.

In my own experience, I found that I had not yet really taken full advantage of my MOX arpeggiators, and so I had “jumped the gun with Karma.  I found out that there is somewhat of an intersection between Karma and Motif Arpeggiator, Enough that I soon realized that I should really have a firm grasp, and have taken full advantage of the Arpeggiator features of my MOX before I went any further with Karma., So I put Karma down, haven’t really picked it up since (almost 2 years ago I think).  Both the Arpeggiator and Karma are in some ways about controlled, programmable and triggered automation. They both approach a lot of the same subject matter but in different ways with differing degrees of success.  I found myself liking some things that Karma could do easily and some things that Motif Arpeggiator does easily, and the temptation was to try to use them both at the same time, on the same song, for me, that was not successful.

IMO Yes, Karma was worth the money for me.  And yes if you’re interested in the KORG only for the Karma you can get out of it, then by all means save the money and buy Karma Motif.
But I think the biggest thing I got out of Karma was an appreciation for how deep my MOX arppegiator is and how with a little extra effort and problem solving I could get some of the same stuff out of the arpeggiators (that I thought) I could only get out of Karma.

Karma and the arppegiator are different animals, but they do solve a lot of the same problems, and create a lot of the same possibilities.

Even now, its not clear to me whether I’ll ever need to load Karam again, the more I learn about the Arpeggiators, the more I realize there is to learn. And then when I learned to combine the arpeggiators with master mode and mixing mode I just got what I had originally purchased Karma for.

So at least for me (in the way I wanted to use Karma) Karma Motif with the MOX has so far turned out to be redundant.  Now that I’ve invested so much time into learning the Yamaha Arpggeiators I don’t know if I have the will to get back into Karma anytime soon.

Thank you both for your extremely helpful responses!