Originally posted by The Pro:
From the Tyros manual and what I've read in other places, I get the impression that you cannot select or use the MegaVoices at all, even in creating your own custom styles. You can immitate a MegaVoice though. If I'm right then a MegaVoice is just a stack of existing individual sounds on the Tyros seperated by velocity zones. Example: an acoustic guitar MegaVoice could have the following individual voices in it: acoustic guitar (possibly seperate voices for high and low tones), acoustic guitar pluck, ac. gtr harmonic/overtone, slide noise, etc. You can select and play those individual sounds yourself, sequence with them, and create custom styles with them by assigning each sound to a midi channel and using lots of midi channels... say five or six to get a psuedo-MegaVoice guitar. And instead of using six notes of polyphony to make a six-string acoustic guitar you might use far more. Yamaha can use the real MegaVoices to get all of those sounds with just one midi channel and probably has a custom sequencer/style creator program and/or a specialized controller setup for preventing overlapping sounds, thereby freeing up more free midi channels/memory/polyphony for other sounds when the MegaVoices are used in performance. This would have the clever side effect of making you rely on Yamaha for more styles that take full advantage of the MegaVoices. Or I've totally missed the boat here and sank to the bottom of the lake...
No you can play a megavoice, but you must realise that a megavoice IS a combination of sound elements, each triggered by either velocity or octave range. If you attempt to play a megavoice on the keyboard, you will find that you achieve different elements of the voice according to how hard you hit the keys, and also in which octave you play. To achieve the best effect from these voices, you need to fine tune the phrases you record using a sequencer program, in order that the velocity of individual notes will trigger the required "element" in the voice. So, for example if you record at constant velocity of say 100 (example), you might end up on playback with a few chords of lightly strummed steel string guitar. Now, if you increase the velocity of the first notes in each chord to say 110 (example), at the beginning now of each strum in the recorded phrase you will hear a harder strum sound. Then you might like to add a few extra notes at velocity 120 at the end of the chord to produce a finger release sound from the strings...
Achieving the effect of a real guitar strumming will require a lot of practice and no doubt analysis of both a real guitar performance and some of yamaha's megavoice phrases in their styles and songs. One idea would be to first record the best guitar strumming rhythmn as chords on the keyboard using a standard guitar voice. Then, choose a megavoice guitar instead, and tweak the velocities of the recording to the megavoice, such that harder notes in the recording trigger the hard strum elements, and soft ones trigger the soft elements. This is of course a very broad and simplified explanation, but megavoices fetches a whole new concept in playing technique on the keyboard.
As it was said though earlier, yamaha's main intention is for you to enjoy the sound of these new voices with their already preprogrammed styles. The voices are there for those who have the courage to program musical phrases for them!
Regards
Simon
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Simon G.K. Williams
simon@svpworld.com
Creative Music & Multimedia
http://www.svpworld.com________________________
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