KORG Hanon to the Rescue! M3 and KRONOS RH-3 Note Dropping or Choking?

I have a very low serial number M3 88 with the RH-3 keyboard, and have had occasional note dropping or choking issue ever since I bought this.

For the longest time nobody seemed to have complained about this issue, but now I am starting to read them all over the places on the Internet, so if you have landed on this page, then rest assured that it is a well known issue now and with a bit of modifying yourself, it can be fixed for free!

I decided to post this, as I was also listening to another person's performance on her brand new Kronos, and lone behold! I can hear this same happening to her too.

What's The Problem?

Under some playing style, the RH-3 sends out two same short notes very rapidly on the MIDI interface; two very very fast staccato notes. Even if you got a pedal pressed down, the note does not seem to sustain, in fact, that's where the problem happens the most... when you are pedaling.

Why is This Happening?

This is due to the key bouncing very fast when you press it.  I think that this probably escaped the QA because they probably used experienced strong piano players to test the RH-3.

Many of you have, like myself, came from playing synth keys and not have been playing a true weighted action keyboard or a piano. Our weak fingers are actually forming a classic oscillation-damping (bio) mechanical circuit with the weight on the piano and spring on your muscles.

You will likely notice that this happens mainly on fingers 4 and 5. With these fingers, they do not have the strength to press and hold the key steady enough, it bounces off the bottom rubber then somewhere half way it oscillates up and down at some frequency which triggers MIDI on/off twice in very fast succession.

And those are the weakest fingers so that's explains why.

I do agree that Korg should have caught this issue sooner and corrected them, but on the other hands, it actually is pointing also to our poor piano playing technique.

We can correct this issue by adjusting our playing style a bit, and also train our two of the weakest fingers by some arpeggio exercises.

Just make sure that all fingers will press the key all the way to the bottom and keep it there for the duration of a note. After all, those notes will not sound good on a true grand piano if we are keep playing that way. For me, just playing a few weeks on Hanon exercises, I am starting to eliminate them.

It's really a shame as otherwise this RH-3 is a very excellent keyboard with the feel, and I am a big Korg fan with M3 Karma and the sound it comes with are always great.

It is likely a fundamental mechanical issue in the design of the thing that I am afraid it cannot easily be corrected by software updates, and also the bouncing issue seems to get worse as the keyboard wears. I see this happening a lot more in the middle of the keyboard than the outside.

Another Workaround

If you are sequencing using a DAW like LOGIC or Pro-Tools, Live etc., then just let it play and you can edit out the MIDI notes when you hear them. You see two rapid notes successively. I take a pencil tool and edit out these notes or do the List view and see two successive notes very easily.