Korg Pa5X 61 Oriental

Take Your Music to a Whole New Level with the Extraordinary Sounds and Rhythms of the Middle East!

The Pa5X is the flagship of the KORG Professional Arranger series packed with countless innovations. The newly developed sound engine and streamlined, color-coded user interface make operation easier and better, delivering a new sonic experience that will ignite your creativity and performance! Now the Pa5X ORIENTAL transfers the full potential of the Pa5X into the musical world of Turkey and the Middle East. No matter what style you want to play—Western or oriental, Arabic, Persian, or Turkish—the Pa5X ORIENTAL has got you covered!

The Pa5X ORIENTAL contains thousands of inspiring sounds and several hundred new styles that can be accessed lightning-fast and precisely thanks to the new user interface. The control panel has been completely redesigned, featuring a versatile pad matrix and a new mixer section, multicolored LED buttons, and a large tablet-quality touchscreen for intuitive control over your music. The Pa5X ORIENTAL feels right at home on stage and in the studio, inspiring you anytime. It comes loaded with a massive collection of tones from the Arabic, Turkish, and Persian musical worlds, all created by top-tier musicians from the Middle East.

Oriental Excellence

The Pa5X ORIENTAL is a powerful addition to KORG's internationally successful Pa series. With its collection of cutting-edge integrated sounds and styles, the Pa5X ORIENTAL is the perfect partner for your performances. In addition to the features, sounds, and styles of the standard Pa5X model, the Pa5X ORIENTAL includes musical content specifically tailored to the musical styles of the Middle East. Strings, wind instruments, various percussion instruments, and many other sounds are included alongside dozens of additional styles suitable for both traditional and modern music genres.

Premium Quality in an Elegant Design

Both appearance and durability played key roles in the development of the Pa5X ORIENTAL: the robust aluminum housing is fitted with real wood side panels, giving it a correspondingly classy look. All keyboard variants of the Pa5X ORIENTAL offer authentic response and expressive control for every application. Both keyboard versions (61 and 76 keys) are lightly weighted and feature aftertouch.

Modern, Uncluttered User Interface

At the center of the Pa5X ORIENTAL is a large, tiltable 8" touchscreen display with a completely revamped GUI (graphical user interface). This allows lightning-fast access to all sounds and functions of the Pa5X ORIENTAL in live and studio settings. The color coding on the display is mirrored by the LEDs on the programmable buttons, making operation easier and adding color to your music.

Powerful EDS-XP Sound Generation for an Inspirational Boost

KORG's Professional Arrangers have long been the benchmark for musical instruments, thanks in no small part to their outstanding sound quality. The EDS-XP sound engine (Enhanced Definition Synthesis - Expanded) of the Pa5X ORIENTAL uses the technology introduced with the Pa4X but combines it with high-end hardware and a powerful operating system. This makes the Pa5X ORIENTAL sound even richer than its predecessor. With 24 stereo oscillators and 160-note polyphony, it offers lush, high-quality sounds for a wide range of musical styles. Additionally, the EDS-XP sound engine features groundbreaking functions such as drum and percussion parts with round-robin technology, smooth sound transitions, three sound controllers, and more. The sounds of the Pa5X ORIENTAL therefore come across as authentic and expressive.

Real-Time Control

The Pa5X ORIENTAL is equipped with a control section containing 9 buttons and 9 sliders. Any functions can be assigned to these: volume for the mixer, drawbars, mute/activate microphone, bass inversion, lyric scrolling, and much more. The assignments are shown on the new strip display, so you always know what each control does.

For expressive playing, there are numerous performance aids as well as KORG's DNC (Defined Nuance Control), which lets you trigger many distinctive articulations of the selected instrument. Faders, buttons, physical and virtual controls, the joystick, and the ribbon controller are available for modulating nearly all parameters. This is one reason why the sounds of the Pa5X ORIENTAL feel so authentic.

Real-Time Control of Oriental Scales

The Pa5X ORIENTAL includes a virtual keyboard on the screen that can be used to select alternative scales or even tune individual keys "on the fly." It is possible to use multiple scales simultaneously, so for example, the solo voice can sound in an Arabic scale while the accompaniment tracks continue in equal temperament. Each keyboard set can save an alternative scale tuning and apply it to any sound of the style.

MIDI songs can be played back with any alternative scale tuning saved as SysEx data. Each tone of a song can be individually tuned, and it is possible to use different scales for each sound on the keyboard as well as within the style and song.

Advanced Chord Recognition and Numerous Chord Sequences

The chord recognition system of the Pa5X ORIENTAL is one of the most advanced available. It offers an expert mode where nearly all jazz piano harmonies are possible. The chord recognition can be as simple or as sophisticated as you want—even allowing you to play chords with just one finger if desired!

With automatic harmony voices, a chord sequencer, and groundbreaking chord recognition, the Pa5X ORIENTAL provides the tools for perfect arrangements in virtually any music genre.

Seamless Transitions Between Sounds, Styles, and Songs

The Pa5X ORIENTAL also uses our Smooth Sound Transition technology (SST), which ensures transitions between tones, styles, and songs are seamless. When selecting a different style element, sounds, effects, and parts naturally fade out: no abrupt note cutoffs or clipped effects disrupt the flow.

Powerful Players with Crossfades

The Pa5X ORIENTAL can play two styles, MIDI files, or MP3 files simultaneously thanks to two independent players. The crossfader allows real-time crossfades between two styles/files and also lets you prepare a song while the previous one is still playing. The sound generation of the Pa5X ORIENTAL is designed so that both the effect processors and polyphony rarely get pushed to their limits.

Lyrics, chords, notation, and markers can be displayed either on the large Pa5X ORIENTAL display or on an external screen with HDMI input. Numerous lyric formats are recognized immediately, and the instrument can display the notation of a MIDI song as sheet music in real time. Markers allow repeated jumps to marked passages using the STYLE ELEMENT buttons, which is invaluable when learning new songs, rehearsing, jamming, or performing live.

Creating Your Own Styles and Songs

Of course, you can create your own styles and record your creations as MIDI or MP3 songs. Thanks to numerous functions, all recorded events can be edited in detail. The background transposition table ensures that accompaniment parts sound convincing in every key.

Furthermore, you can record your playing with the fully equipped sequencer as MIDI songs. To share your music and vocals with others, we recommend recording all parts (including MP3 songs) in the popular MP3 format.

The SongBook: The Musical Library

Songs and styles can be saved in the so-called "SongBook," a database whose entries can be easily synchronized with lyrics or sheet music on a tablet. This allows controlling the Pa5X ORIENTAL with a "digital music book." The songs in the music database can be saved in additional setlists for different occasions (tour playlists, dance sets, presentations) in a specific order. When selecting a SongBook entry, all necessary sounds, style, song, effects, and even the chord sequence are loaded.

Sounds for Every Occasion

The internal sounds include not only realistic acoustic tones but also electric vintage keyboards, synth classics, and novel sounds and effects for gaming, multimedia, and film productions. The tones cover several centuries and cultures and can be expanded if needed.

Special attention was given to Arabic, Turkish, and Persian sounds, with both melody and percussion instruments recorded by renowned musicians on outstanding instruments. These tones are programmed so that the same authentic performances can be realized using the real-time controllers of the Pa5X ORIENTAL.

For piano and electric piano sounds, extra effort was made: they come from our acclaimed SV-2 Stage Vintage Piano and can be played with incredible nuance on the 88-key hammer action keyboard. Selected sounds from our synth workstations KRONOS and NAUTILUS also join the lineup.

The brand-new drawbar organ section can be operated exactly like a tonewheel organ thanks to the sliders and buttons on the Pa5X ORIENTAL control panel. The matching effects were directly adopted from the legendary KORG CX-3 combo organ.

The new drumkits use a new round-robin technology, where every hit sounds different at every dynamic level. These usually subtle differences contribute decisively to a natural-sounding drum part. It is guaranteed that no sample (up to 32 samples per drum instrument) ever sounds twice in a row!

If the immense sound selection still leaves wishes unfulfilled, a sampler is available for additional sounds, drumkits, and audio loops. New sounds can be recorded yourself or imported from supported formats (AIFF, WAV, and SF2). The samples can also be edited in detail. Two highlights here are fine-tuning the samples and the lightning-fast conversion of an audio loop into a percussion kit (time-slice).

Intuitive Mixer with Effects Galore

The tones of the Pa5X ORIENTAL can be polished with studio effects on multiple levels: up to 10 insert, 3 master, and 1 finalizer effect are available for each of the two players. Keyboard sets also get 3 insert and 3 master effects.

Right before the audio outputs of the Pa5X ORIENTAL, mastering effects are available for a high-end studio sound. These effects were developed by KORG engineers in collaboration with Waves Audio, the studio reference for professional effects par excellence.

Separate Microphone and Guitar Inputs, Each with Matching Effects

The Pa5X ORIENTAL offers separate inputs for a microphone and a guitar. Both signals can be processed with suitable effects: vocal harmonies in KORG quality and powerful guitar effects. For vocal processing, we collaborated with Shift Audio, a company dedicated to this topic for 30 years. As former employees of a globally respected company, the founders of Shift Audio know exactly how convincing vocal processing should sound. Their new algorithms use the technology contained in the Pa5X ORIENTAL for impressive vocal processing.

The result: four-part choruses that give the impression you are accompanied by a real vocal quartet. The also new "Auto Pitch" function of the Pa5X ORIENTAL finally produces the nowadays popular "autotune" vocal sound. The separate guitar input naturally has its own gain control. The guitar effects include simulations of vintage pedals and amplifiers for a fat and powerful sound. Numerous guitar presets with up to 4 insert effects and memory for self-programmed sounds are available as a starting point. These new guitar effects allow guitarists to play carefree, as all effect sounds and parameters are managed by the Pa5X ORIENTAL at the push of a button. Each SongBook entry can be assigned, among other things, a vocal and a guitar preset to enable quick changes.

Connections: MIDI, USB, HDMI, Audio In/Out, Pedal

The Pa5X ORIENTAL offers numerous audio, control, and storage connections. Controllers and storage media can be connected to the MIDI sockets or USB ports. The HDMI connection allows connection to an external screen, and audio connections include XLR, jack, and mini-jack sockets for external keyboards, a condenser or dynamic microphone, guitars and bass guitars, smartphones, and tablets. The instrument can also be connected to active speakers or a PA system via the balanced outputs. Four also balanced individual outputs with line level allow separate output of desired parts. For control, there are connections for a damper pedal (including "half-pedal" models), a footswitch, and a volume or expression pedal. These are suitable for pedals/footswitches from KORG and other brands.

Standard File Formats

The file formats .MID, .MP3 as well as .WAV, .AIFF, and .SF2 for samples are supported by virtually all instruments and external players, allowing easy data exchange. The MIDI and USB connections are intended for connection to external storage media, computers, smartphones, tablets, and external control units. The HDMI connection supports current screens and video networks, which is invaluable especially for live use of the Pa5X ORIENTAL.

The Pa5X ORIENTAL is the most elegant, powerful, and user-friendly professional arranger to date, offering a wide range of possibilities at the highest level. The successful combination of outstanding sound offerings with an intuitive user interface and a rich feature set makes the Pa5X ORIENTAL an exceptional instrument.

KORG Pa5X ORIENTAL: The Most Impressive Generation of Arranger Keyboards!