Pa588 Digital Piano and Arranger Keyboard

The Korg Pa588 is a digital piano and arranger keyboard that is for the no-compromise pianist who wants to add an extra dimension or 2 to their performances. Korg created the Pa588 keyboard to be sonically identical to the Pa500. The Korg Pa588 digital piano adds Korg's 88-note, top-of-the-line RH3 graded hammer piano action, an attractive stand, a half-damping pedal, and a more robust speaker system, providing a complete instrument package. To complement this superb piano action, Korg also equipped the Pa588 keyboard with the incredible piano sound of their flagship C-720 Concert Digital Piano. A dedicated "Play Piano" button instantly transforms the Pa588 into a world-class digital piano.

Keys to Please

In addition to a satisfying and authentic keyboard, the Pa588 provides a four-way joystick, assignable switch, assignable slider, and an assignable pedal jack. Four pads provide the tools to spice up your performance by changing effect settings, adding or muting parts, slowing the tempo, or even adding "mini-sequenced" solo, arpeggio, or backing riffs. Nothing will stand between you and your professional performance.

Real eXperience (RX) Technology

It all begins with sound. The Pa588 allows unparalleled expression and articulation. For example, a single guitar sound may play a harmonic, a mute note, a soft note, a loud note, a pull-off”all determined by simply how hard you strike the key. They've even included the sound of the pick lifting off the string when you release the key. Overblown and triple-tongued flutes, brass slides and falls, all of the facets that provide an instrument with its own identity are preserved and easily replicated during performance by the natural gestures of varying dynamics as you play. With up to 16 oscillators available per note in a single sound, the breadth and range of realism is truly astounding. Based on the same EDS (Extended Definition Synthesis) that powers the popular M3, the Pa588 offers top-quality sound. Over 882 fully editable sounds are preloaded, representing a full range of musical instruments from almost every genre, each exploding with depth, nuance, subtlety, accuracy, and richness.

Cause and Effects

Four internal effect processors allow you to add any of 124 different effects to any and all of the Style instruments and/or the parts you play live (realtime tracks). Developed for Korg's Digital Recording Studios and Pro-level workstation instruments, these effects are all studio-quality and offer full parameter editing. A final semi-parametric EQ allows even more custom control.

The Elements of Style

The heart of the PA588 is the powerful Style engine. A Style is basically a collection of drum grooves, bass lines, and other instrumental parts that can be mixed together, transposed, and used as the building blocks for creating your song. Each of the over 320 Styles is a self-contained song creation environment that includes variations, fill-ins, an introduction and an ending, all themed to a particular musical style and genre. You can chose which parts you want to use, set the mix, select which sound each part will use, edit and re-map drumkits, and assign various effects. Or you can use each Style as it is, using the settings created by our world-wide team of ace musicians. By constantly analyzing the notes you play on the keyboard for voice leading and chord content, the Pa Style engine is always in tune with your musical performance.

Guitar mode

When creating a guitar part for your Style, you can chose a chord, capo position, and literally transform the keyboard into the fretted strings of the chord to allow realistic picking patterns, strums, chokes, slides, hammer-ons, and other guitar-specific artifacts. As an added bonus, the Pa588 can automatically enhance the guitar tracks of existing Standard MIDI files.

Creative Sequencing Scenarios

In addition to traditional track-at-a-time workstation sequencing, the Backing Sequencer allows you to create songs quickly and easily by capturing multiple Style driven parts at once. You don't need to be a master programmer”even beginners can write their own song in minutes. In fact, you don't even need to play at all. Using the Step Edit/Entry feature, you can simply type in the chord changes, fills, and style changes in step-time. This is a big boost for arrangers and non-keyboardists. Once it's done, you can even try out your finished song as a Latin bossa or a country ballad, making it easy to find the right feel. This quick approach to programming is also useful in the studio for creating professional, great-sounding backing music for commercial, film, video, multimedia, or internet applications. The sequencer provides massive editing power allowing you to edit the tone parameters of each track.

Non-stop Entertainment

With Korg's XDS Dual Songplayer, one can load as the other plays, and a DJ-style cross fader can blend between them, providing a seamless, continuous musical performance. The Pa588 can playback SMF (Standard MIDI File), Karaoke files, and GM (General MIDI) files - and is able to display lyrics in most popular karaoke formats.

All together now

Need to switch sounds fast? STS (Single Touch Setting) buttons allow you to have up to four sounds split and layered across the keyboard and switch them all instantly with a single button press. Four STS assignments can be saved independently for each Style. Each of the 256 Performance settings can instantly recall the Style, Sounds, effects, tempo, key and scale used to perform a particular song.

Endless Possibilities

Time to add the finishing touches to your compositions? Each of the four Pads can also be assigned to a sound effect, instrument solo / arpeggio, or even one of your own riffs or phrases. Advanced features such as Syncro Start/Stop, Fade In/Out, Tap Tempo, Bass Inversion, and Manual Bass allow you to spontaneously add complex and professional touches to your performances.

Expanding SongBook

The exciting SongBook feature was developed to make your life easier while playing live or working on that next big hit. The SongBook is a Musical Database, completely user programmable, containing all the settings needed to play a particular song. You have only to search for the song you would like to play by Song Title, Genre, Artist, Tempo, etc., and press "play". Each SongBook entry will instantly recall every setting you've saved in order to play that song perfectly”Sounds, Style, Performance, Volumes, Muted Tracks, FX settings, Easy Edit, STS settings, Master Transpose, and more.

Less is More

With all this technological power packed inside, it was vital that Korg made the Pa588 easy to understand and easy to use. Their goal was to create an instrument that provides an intuitive, musical, fast, foolproof experience. This is hopefully accomplished through the TouchView display. Simply think, see, and touch the panel for easy and intuitive control. Switch between Easy and Expert modes for a clean, uncluttered screen or an in depth status report. When you need more information, check out the on-board contextual Help System in any of seven languages.

Save it for later

In addition to providing a USB/MIDI computer connection for moving and saving data, the Pa500 can also save and read data from SD/MMC memory cards for instant access to your custom data, MIDI files, and songs. The back panel also features MIDI (In, Out), Audio Ins (1, 2) and Outs (L, R), and pedal (damper, assignable) connections.

All-in-One

Hiding inside all of this is a full stereo sound system with four premium speakers in a bass reflex enclosure for a high quality sound in a small box. The Pa588 is completely self-contained and easily transportable, whether rushing to a gig, jamming with friends, or teaching a new tune to the band.