Ok, I think I've figured out how to sync to the arranger keyboard's clock. And I guess I'm just gonna record the chord picking notes off one picked channel, play em back on that same channel in a loop, (and clear it all out).

I'd still like to get a ReChord.txt file and look at the details. I think Dennis is workin on that, but is running into PianoCheetah bugs which I'm furiously trying to stomp.


So let me take a step back and ask about arranger keyboards in general:

1) Since styles have to be at least a bar long, I'm guessing that you really have to adjust your playing so that YOU stay sync'd to the keyboard's master time, right? You can't really "lead" and mess with rubato?

2) You have freedom to chord change at any time, but during the keyboard's recognition phase, notes CAN glitch out and are "tweaked" in real time to adjust to the right notes of final recognized chord?

3) I'm curious how often you change the chord sequence live in a song. Can you think back on the majority of songs you play and tell me if you ever change the chord progression much for a given song? Maybe looping a chorus an extra time would be useful... But how often are you changing the main chord progression of the song you're playing?


I think I'll try to get a VERY basic chord sequencer working as a proof of concept. This will be messy enough with no dang arranger keyboard. After that's done, I'd like to take a step back, and try to solve some of the "not as live as I'd like" problems inherent in style players. (That'd be the longer run, of course).


I'm thinkin a conversion program to turn a .STY into a .MID with particular markers and conventions that make it directly editable in any midi editor. These will be the background tracks and follow your live played velocity. (as you play the melody from quiet to loud, the style tracks' note velocities are scaled the same).

What styles are really doing is arpeggiating chords. They sound like regular background music, but you're -actually- picking when to use the 1,3,5,7,(etc) of the chord of whatever chord type. So another component will be a program to make crazy wild (hopefully musical) arpeggio arrangements jammed into a style-LIKE midi file.

And finally, there's a "main song" you are gonna play live that says "use this list of midi styles as my background". It's got the keysig, timesig, and song sections(intro,verse,trans1,chorus,bridge,coda) with their component chord progressions.

But the main thing it has is the notes you plan on playing live in a single (maybe 2 for LH,RH) track. Just the "to play live" notes are shown on screen.

As you play them, the song position moves showing where you are. Since the sequencer knows where you are, you can play with rubato and time will keep sync with YOU. This will consequently force the style events in the background to follow your rubato. As you play this "lead track" song, you can have options like "play this section again" to loop a chorus an extra time, etc. And a "swap to background loop X" to pick a new style/arpeggio. This is just me typin' out loud and shootin my mouth off (for now). But it seems possible and might be pretty cool.

If you could give me your answers to 1) 2) 3) above and lemme know if you think I'm on the right track, that'd be cool.

...Steve