Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Kurzweil Forte Initial Reactions

There are very few user reports on the Kurzweil Forte so I thought I’d write up a bit of my initial experiences. I bought the keyboard from Sweetwater without ever seeing it in person but trust in their return policies and the relationship with my salesperson built up over many years of equipment buying.

My needs were primarily for live performance. I have many keyboards in my recording studio and lots of software sounds, etc. as well as an acoustic 7 foot grand. But I wanted something that would be an all in one unit that was portable for my occasional live performances. The Forte was on my short list.

Overall I would say I am impressed with the keyboard and that it has arguably the best samples of any portable keyboard currently available. I have never found a stand alone keyboard that could come close to the sound of my software Ivory collection of keyboards but that was what I was after. I would say the Forte does that, or at least comes very close with their 9 foot grand. The “16 gig” of samples do really produce excellent sounds, particularly in the acoustic and electric pianos. I would not say the sounds are extraordinarily better than other top keyboards from Roland, Nord, etc.. They don’t blow the others out of the water but I do hear a difference with these larger sample files. Frankly its about time someone started putting large files into stand alone keyboards. To me 16 gig is hardly enough to brag about but at least Kurzweil is stepping up. Its beyond me why keyboards don’t routinely come with 100 GB or even Terrabytes. Memory is much cheaper now but I think keyboard manufacturers are stuck thinking the same way they have done for the last 25 years. I’m frankly surprised that there haven’t been more huge advancements in recent years.

Anyway - I digress, back to the Forte. So the quality of the sounds to me are excellent for a portable keyboard, comparable to some top software pianos and synths, albeit without quite as much diversity of sound. There’s a lot of sounds and its competitive with other stand alones but not with huge software libraries. The best is the 9 foot grand and to a slightly lesser extent the 7 foot grand. And the Rhodes and electric pianos are all very nice, superb really. A lot of the Multi instruments are very nicely executed as well. All the samples are very rich and with 16 gig you layer some very complex sounds. I have been a fan of all the Kurzweil sounds for many years.

The layout of knobs and sliders and their functions is very nice and facilitates changes and selections in live performance. There’s a lot of customization that can be done quickly and easily. I am finding it really comfortable and quick for live performance. The split and layer capabilities are easy to use and produce superb results. The interface is a joy to work with. The “flash play” is quick, especially compared to say the 2600. But really - so what? It should be by now. What decade are keyboard companies living in? The color display is very nice, certainly better than most other keyboards. But again its really no big deal compared to what can be done with modern displays.

The keyboard itself is OK. I was using a Roland 300NX previously to play out and its in that same ball park, action wise. Maybe a bit better although I think I might like the action on the newer Roland 800 even better, but not by much. Compared to playing a real piano they all suffer unless you have wooden keys like on the Kawais. I used a keyboard like that to play out for a while but the problem is the weight. Just too heavy unless you have a crew to carry it for you. Even the Forte is to me what I would consider on the upper end of acceptable weight. So its a trade off - portability over action. One thing I found was that it made a big difference to set the Velocity map in the Global menu. It comes standard with what to me is a very light touch. If you are like me and often play an acoustic piano this will result in a sound that is very jumpy and not so nice. When I first turned it on I played with my heavy hand I was not blown away by the sounds because they so easily jumped to the harder layers. When you go to the Velocity map menu there are about 10 levels with names like easy touch, light, heavy, etc. I think the default is easy touch and for me its not good. There is one called piano touch that they recommend for “piano players.” However I found even this one to be too light. I ended up choosing “Hard 1” (There is also Hard 2 and Hard 3 which have the hardest touch.) Once I did that the samples were much more pleasing. So even if you normally don’t read manuals I strongly suggest you dig into the Velocity map and adjust according to your playing style. These samples have a lot of layers that respond to velocity so it makes a difference.

The sustain pedal is another somewhat average thing. It only does standard on and off. I have to remind myself that it can’t do the expressive pedaling you can on a real piano. You can accidentally let off the pedal just a bit and bang it goes dead. I wish their samples supported at least half damper pedaling and even better - lets get going with full range pedaling.

Finally there is the intangible - is it enjoyable to play? Despite the average action, at the end of the day I found this to be a very enjoyable keyboard to play. Once you tweak the velocity and other sound parameters it produces very pleasing sounds - I’d have to say the most pleasing of any portable keyboard I’ve ever played (and I’ve played most).

Is it worth the price? Couldn’t you just connect any keyboard to a laptop and use Ivory or any of the thousands of other soft sounds. Yes. It’s all a matter of convenience and personal preference. Is it 3 times as good as the 300NX I was using? Probably not in those strict terms. But it is worth it to me as it increases the pleasure of playing and I think makes for a better performance. Is it the best of the top ones by Nord, Yamaha, Roland, Kawaii, Korg, etc. I have owned or have played most and I don’t think there is a “best.” Each are excellent and have certain strengths. It is certainly one of the best. If you’re like me and did not have access to a Forte you might have watched all those You Tube videos with people playing various keyboards side by side. But its very difficult to tell just by watching those videos. You don’t know how their playing style affects things or how the keys are set up (see velocity mapping above). The Forte will be most worth it to someone who wants the very best sounding samples in a portable keyboard - and is willing to pay the premium price they are charging for it.

Disappointing about the no half-pedal feature.

What is the weight of the Kurzweil? Also, I'm curious as to how noisy the action is.

I, too, and perplexed as to why more memory can't be used in DPs these days to allow for a more software-like sound, or updatable software libraries within the same company, anyways.

+1

No half pedal feature in a $4000 board?!? Not sure what the manufactures are thinking when they debut their "flagship models" that don't have the features of "lesser" boards.

The lack of memory thing is reminiscent of Apple products, milking it on all four.... Which is why I am back to using PC and android.

The action is not too noisy. Not objectionable to me. Playing side by side with the Roland 300 I'd say it is more muffled than than Roland. A lower thump, while the roland makes a bit more bright knock.

Weight is about 50 lbs.

The half pedal thing is a bit more complex than I wrote. There's some indication the keyboard can support half pedaling when used as a MIDI controller and with an appropriate pedal. But their samples DONT support half pedaling. HUH????

I don't want to make too much of a negative tone on the review. It really is a spectacular keyboard, It's just frustrating that they're so close. Perhaps this is something that can be addressed in an update. One can only hope.
There might also be some way to do it that I'm missing too. I've only had it a short while and could have overlooked something.

Well, so with software pianos great. But since they have more memory than most boards, why didn't they use that to support half-pedaling? I don't think an update will resolve this, as it has to do with the actual number of samples taken I believe.

I completely understand the sentiment. However I believe there is to much of that these days. We need to be impartial and call it like it is. If not, "A", the manufactures never make changes because we aren't pointing out the faults we find in their product, and "B", someone like myself might order a $4000 board based on these reviews. In doing so we think we are safe buying sight unseen and ultimately end up being disappointed.

With that said I appreciate your overview of the Forte. Thanks!

Updatable sound libraries requires an expensive kind of rewritable memory (as in the Nords, the Kurzweil PC3K series, and the Yamaha MOXF/Motif XF with the optional flash cards); or they can stream from a rewritable disk if they are built on a platform that supports it (i.e. Kronos, which is built on the foundation of Linux running on a standard motherboard, or Muse Receptor). In the Forte, Kurzweil is using some kind of patented tech to manage their large samples, but I haven't seen any indication that the Forte samples are rewritable/updatable. Korg also does something interesting in the Krome, where I think they are basically loading large samples from flash into RAM, but again there doesn't appear to be any facility to change the contents of flash or load data from some other source into the RAM. Still, they did come up with some way to have large samples in a relatively low-cost board, which is interesting, even if the trade-off is a slow boot.

vidio, thank you for sharing your thoughts about the Forte, and congrats on your new board!

Oh, and welcome back to the forum too!

Cheers,
James
x

Just perhaps, the next step for Kurzweil would be to use their current "direct FLASH streaming" technology purely for the pre-load (instead of RAM), backed by perhaps slower, but much larger storage. I.e - it'd be like current disk streaming software players, except that the RAM "pre-load" would be in FLASH, obviating the need to "load" the pre-load, if that makes sense.....

Greg.

Nice to see some more Forte reviews showing up online! Thanks for sharing.

If anyone needs help finding a unit to audition in the US or just has questions I'd be happy to assist.
Also, anyone in the Boston area is welcome to drop by my place and take my Forte for a spin.
weiserdav@gmail.com

While I did work as a contractor on the Forte, I'm not a full time employee and I don't speak for Kurz. But I'm hopeful that there will be some good news coming with the next OS release regarding half-dampering.

What I can say with certainty is that the Kurzweil R&D group, with a very small team of engineers and musicians, managed to pull off a near-miracle with the Forte. I witnessed firsthand some amazing creative thinking applied to head-explodingly complex challenges. These guys and gals worked late nights, weekends and holidays for over two years on developing an instrument with GB sized samples (plus 32 layers of synthesis per program), very low latency, very quick boot-up time and robust reliable performance. All this while keeping in mind that the thing couldn't take 5 years to develop and cost $9K.

Of course the Forte isn't perfect, and every product has room for improvement... but I do think Kurz has made some major strides with this one.
The good news:
1. The Kurz team has always been very interested in and responsive to customer feedback.
Keep the reviews coming and I'm sure they'll do their best to respond with future OS updates. (Ask anyone who's owned a PC3/PC3K - many of the current features are direct responses to customer requests.)
2. A board like the Forte should up the ante and spur other manufacturers to make their own great strides, which is great for everyone.

How cool to hear from someone who actually worked on it! Can you shed some light on why your team decided to not do half-pedaling? It seems from this reivew that it is indeed innovative, so was there an issue that prevented you from doing this?

Nice, what do you think about sympathetic resonance?

In my experience at Kurz (13 years full time as sound designer and later product manager) we were often faced with difficult feature decisions that without context/explanation could seem strange to anyone outside of the R&D group. (I'm sure this is how it is at most companies.)

With a small group (around 20 full timers plus some contractors like me), they had to be very careful about allocation of man-hours and prioritization of features. At no point do the engineers say something like "Nah let's not do half-dampering, we don't care about that."

First, there are usually big-picture items that demand the most attention: sound quality (this includes sample editing but also the quality/flexibility of the synth and fx engines), performance (low latency and fast boot up speed), and stability. Deadlines come and go, and as with many projects at many companies, the Forte deadline was extended a few times. But eventually they *have* to release a product... otherwise it could be in development forever as feature-creep takes over.

As painful as it is to the engineers, most of whom are musicians, some features must get pushed off to a later OS release. For a small group this is a much safer path than trying to squeeze in a few extra features at the last minute before initial release.
The reason: every time a new software feature or bug-fix is added, there's a chance that it can introduce a new (unknown) bug somewhere else in the system. Avoiding these bugs requires testing, testing requires time. Letting a few features wait until an OS update allows time for getting it right. It also gives the team a little time to come up for air, clear their heads, see their families and re-charge... and all of those things lead to much better, more focused work.

For me personally the Forte was the most fun I've ever had on a work project. My small role was creating all of the EP and Clav programs and contributing some of the AC pianos. Getting to work with these amazing new samples in an architecture with 32 layers of synthesis and 32 blocks of insert fx (all of which respond to hundreds of control sources - sliders/pedals, velocity, release velocity, envelopes, randomizers, etc) was a blast, a "kid in a candy store" type experience. Added bonus for me was getting to play along with some classic tunes from Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan, Ray Charles, etc while dialing in emulations of sounds from specific songs.

While I spent much of this and last year working on Broadway shows and big rock tours I was honestly always looking forward to getting back home and programming more Forte sounds.
I'm very much hoping that one of these future OS updates will involve some more programming work for me, as it's one gig that does not seem like work at all.

Note - if I do end up getting more sound design work for the Forte, I will post here (and at the Keyboard Corner forum) to ask for sound requests. Several KC forum requests I received last year made it into the Forte as presets.

When used as a MIDI controller, it is capable of passing continuous controller messages onto another MIDI device (such as those MIDI cc signals from a half damper pedal). But the Forte internals don't support half-pedaling, and I don't see that it will because the sustain/damper input jack merely detects on/off signals from a pedal. It has other pedal jacks that do support continuous controller signals (ie: from say, an expression pedal)...

Actually, I just posted my initial overview / operations / review on the Kurzweil Forte over here:

http://youtu.be/xIYOipiyYIM

And a supplement to that review here:

http://youtu.be/sBVBOdHQzbI

Hope you find it useful!!

Just got off the phone with the Kurz software department and received the "all clear" to say:
Half-damper is a definite for the next OS release.

Turns out the sustain pedal jack is a continuous jack, the hardware has been there the whole time. It was just software that had not been enabled.
I've been told that for now the pedal that definitely works with 100% compatibility is the Korg DS1-H.

Customers who are part of their beta test program should see this feature sometime next week in a beta release. I'm psyched to check it out but I'm working on other projects at the moment.

Interesting, because on the back of the unit, the sustain pedal input (1 of 3 1/4" switched jacks) is clearly labeled "Switched". There's another set of 2 1/4" jacks labeled CC.

The problems of sampling a "half-pedalled" note are serious:

. . . dampers hit the strings at slightly different heights.

To test for this, take a well-regulated acoustic piano, depress the pedal half-way, clamp it there (or put a block under it and hold it down), and play some scales, slowly.

I'll bet that the notes don't all decay at the same rate.

I could be wrong about this (and DW would know for sure):

. . . I think you could implement "half-pedalling"
. . . by putting a decaying envelope, with a
. . . time-varying low-pass filter,
. . . on the "sustain" portion of the piano sound.

That is, you'd make the high partials die out faster than the low partials, which is how a piece of felt held lightly against a string would act. The decay time (and the time-varying low-pass filter) would be controlled by how far the pedal was depressed.

If that's true, you don't need more samples, but you _do_ need more software (and there's a heavier load on whatever DSP chips do all the work). To maintain "naturalness", each note is going to need its own time constants.

. Charles

Good to hear as I joined the beta program. Looking forward to testing the new release. I just ordered a Korg DS1H pedal to try it. Apparently all of the pedal inputs are TRS jacks as even in the current release you can use the switch pedal inputs to generate continuous CC data - just not half pedaling yet.

I have been using my Forte for a while now for live playing, replacing my Nord NS2, and I have to say I love it. It has been a while since I got excited about a stage piano. I was of the opinion that all the top ones sound good, just have different character - so just buy the one you like the most and go play it.
But the Forte is something special, at least to my ear. They even got the EPs right ( close at least ). I love the Rhodes sound, I still have my '78 Rhodes suitcase, could never part with it. And the Forte is the closest I have heard as far as dynamics and expressiveness to the real thing.

One other thing I will mention that surprised me is how good KB3 mode is. Especially if you use the dual leslie ( none of the factory presets use them which is just plain weird ). But once you change the effects chain to one of the dual leslie presets they sound great.
Not as authentic as my SK2 / vent combination but has a nice edge and the dual leslie sim sounds really good in a live mix.

The Forte OS is young and I'm sure the folks at Kurz have big plans for all that hardware.

3 things I am waiting for are:

1) Please get the editor done!

2) Need better support for importing PC3 sounds. There is a ton of great sounds available for PC3 that could be used in the Forte.

3) Sample loading! No doubt there is available ram for user samples. Hope they decide to implement it at some point.

Aside from the 50 lbs I only have one complaint. The default leslie fast/slow switch is right below the transpose + button. I found out the hard way that is not a good thing "Hey guys I was being artsy playing that lick a half step higher".

So now I use a foot pedal for leslie switch

Ah this is exactly how I would do it on an existing platform like the PC3K, if somehow we were able to mod it with a half-damper input. The programming tools in both the Forte (for developers) and Kurz include numerous envelopes, including the natural amp envelope, which can be assigned to filters on a per-note/per layer basis. (That part actually isn't such a huge DSP hit.) You can also create equations (called FUNs) that add, subtract, multiply or combine in a number of ways an envelope with something like a shape, key-tracking, release velocity, number of notes held, or with things like sliders, pedals, LFOs, etc. Nerdly stuff but powerful. That FUN can then be applied anywhere that you'd apply an envelope.

To be honest I have not seen exactly how they do it on the Forte because it wasn't implemented during my contract work, plus I was focused mainly on EPs and Clavs. But knowing how much work it took I think it must be more complex than just filters and envelopes. They've got a ton of samples, and a ton of DSP, so my guess is that it's a combination of both.
If it's something really clever, they probably don't want to reveal the method. Usually Kurz is cool about sharing "how we did it" unless it's something really proprietary and this seems like it might qualify.