Someone highly recommended styles by Peter Solley in an earlier thread. http://www.petersolleyproductions.com/ . I purchased six of these very expensive styles: Big Band 1, Beguine, Klezmer 1, Klezmer 2, Polka, and 60's Pop. Here are my thoughts:

Charting out some nuances of musical territory not explored by Yamaha, these styles might fill a void for some. Nevertheless, they are not in the same league as Yamaha internal styles. I had to do some intense editing to get them close.

These styles are probably created on a PSR740, so they only have 2 intros, 2 endings, 4 variations, and 4 fills. The voices don't include many of the new voices found on the PSR2000, PSR2100, PSR9000, and Tyros. Revoicing is necessary. With the style creator, it is possible to create a break section by borrowing parts from another style.

The drum fills on these styles are almost non-existent. You have to use the style creator to get drum fills from other styles.

Another thing I don't like about the Klezmer and polka styles is that there are some very involved clarinet parts on the C and D variations. Way too busy.

On one of the styles, the 7th chords played on the keyboard, don't sound right.

Another thing that makes these styles inferior to Yamaha styles is that the timing is too perfect - overly quantized. It is obvious that these styles weren't created on real midi instruments like Yamaha styles are. And there isn't any variation in the velocities of the style parts. The beguine style sounds nice, but kind of mechanical.

After, some intense editing and some style morphing, I got some new styles that I feel pretty good about. I needed a new polka. The klezmer styles will be good for the Jewish retirement homes I go to. The 60's pop style is a lot like 60'sGtrPop, but different enough to be appreciated. The Big Band style is so so. Fixing it up, it is pretty suitable for Mack the Knife.

I will use these styles. I don't regret getting them, but I do question the hefty price tag of $9. The person who recommended these styles raved about the blues styles. I don't do much blues, so I didn't have any reason to purchase them.

I hope Peter Solley continues making styles, but I won't purchase any more until I hear some improvements: Create real drum fills, make a break section, make the rhythms a little less mechanical, don't insert extra busy parts that make it impossible to sing over.

Beakybird

Hi Beak
Thanks for telling us your thoughts on these styles. I was excited to discover the Peter Solley site from the post here at SynthZone. It looked promising - a pretty large assortment of styles. But the $9 price per style is THE MOST EXPENSIVE price I have ever seen anywhere. I thought that the price of the MidiSpot Tyros style disks are high ($37 each), but Peter Solley is much more than expensive.

Having said that, it would still be worth the price for some great new styles. But the samples didn't sound to fantastic - ok, but not great. I thought the same thing you mentioned - these sound like PSR740 styles. I'm glad to hear that taking the time to tweak them and improve them helps. But at $9 bucks each - I'll pass. I've purchased a LOT of styles from a LOT of places, for many different keyboards I've owned. It's too bad these styles didn't have you saying that they are worth the price and more. I appreciate your opinions on these.

Tom G.

Beaky,
Thanks for the review....you just saved me some money.
Terry

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jam on,
Terry http://imjazzed.homestead.com/Index.html

The styles at styles-music.de (I believe that is the correct address) are the most expensive at 12.50 euros each. However, they are usually very high quality. I'm extremely happy with my New York, New York style.

Beakybird

Beakybird,
I recommended Peter Solley styles, but if you revisit I said Blues styles. I don't understand why you bought the ones you mentioned, as those are allready excellent excisting internal styles, and therefore a waste of money, yes.

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Roy-Andrè

Hi,
I tend to agree that the styles do appear to be rather expensive.
One good idea is that you can buy them individually, so you don't end up with a disk full of styles you don't have a use for.
I used to hate it when I wanted a specific type of style like a waltz or a big band, and the rest of the disk included anything from Rockn'roll to rap.

best wishes
Rikki

Rikki,
I agree. I would be much more interested in buying styles if they were sold by genres, rather then a general mix. I would be interested in buying a disk full of ballads or pop styles, but don't need waltz and polka with that.
Star

Hi Starkeeeper,
actually Technote used to do their styles in genre's for the kn's, I don't think I've seen any new styles recently, which is a bit dissapointing.
I remember checking out the Yammie ones for my Pro, but their's seemed to be a real mix on one disk, and I wasn't going to pay for styles I wouldn't be using.
Fortunately the style creation tools onboard my kn7 are great, so I've started to try and create a few of my own. Don't know how good they'll be, but, it's worth a try.

best wishes
Rikki

best wishes
Rikki

I believe this thing is to encourage each other to learn to create own styles.

The reason we buy from other people is because we do not create our styles or we do not create very good styles. This needs to stop and we need to do something about it.

Maybe we can basically have a topic about tips on how to create cool styles.

To create the professional level styles that appear inside a keyboard like the PSR2100, you have to go in the recording studio with studio musicians who are versatile in dozens of styles of music, and who are playing midi drums, midi bass, midi guitars, midi accordian, and midi wind controllers.

There is a program that interfaces with Cakewalk called Rhythm 'n Chords. This program gives you a library of guitar strums and guitar picks, and helps the user to create guitar picking and strumming too. With this program, some quality midi drum loops, and some good keyboard playing, I think a lot of great styles could be created by someone knowledgeable in style creation.

The only people who sometimes - and I say sometimes - create styles that are in league with Yamaha are the styles-music.de people. I don't know if they piece together professional midis (I imagine they do) or what, but some of them sound really hot. On the other hand, some of the Yamaha styles incorporate advanced studio techniques that you don't find in the styles-music styles.

Beakybird

Beakybird

Larry, I agree with you, and may add that what you wrote is especially true for the Tyros; I have recently tried a few styles from styles-music.de; they were labeled as "Tyros styles", but this is only partly true: they were styles originally done for the 9000 and then adapted to the Tyros. None of them used the megavoices and -overall- they were nothing special.
I think that the only way to develop good styles for a keyboard like the Tyros is to use the "morph" function and pick up tracks from the original Yamaha styles, to build up your owns (I think that Terry is doing something along these lines).
Re. styles-music.de, I think that in the past they used to hire professional musicians who were able to lay down some really cool tracks (personally I have learned a lot from their midifiles, both in terms of harmony and improvisation). Right now, it looks like they cannot afford to hire such good musicians anymore and their latest styles and midifiles are rather disappointing (I know that Roy André will disagree with me here... )

Hi,
I used to do a bit of style converting
( personal use only) back in the early 90's between my keyboards . One thing I did notice, the style never sounded as good as it did on the original instrument, even after tweaking.
Also the keyboards back then didn't have some of the features available now for creating your own styles.
Morphing ( I think Terry called it) I found is a great way to go, if your keyboard has the function. It can mix parts from different styles internal & user, to create new ones.
I tried a bit of an experiment on my kn7 with a wersi style that a friend sent me.
I put it through the style conversion program , and it sounded nigh on unuseable. If I hadn't been a case of really wanting this particular style, I would have just thrown it in the bin. Instead I decided to see if I could fix it.
The bass, piano & guitar parts, ended up sounding quite good with just a change of instruments and volume adjustments, but the drum parts were woeful. They didn't convert too well.
I ended up using the "morphing feature" ( pattern copy page 2 in my kn7) to give me new drum patterns. I auditioned some of the kn7 styles, found one with similar drum patterns to the wersi style I was editing, and replaced the drum parts using the "morphing feature".
Now it's sounding quite useable. I could probably add additional parts like strings, using this feature also.

The kn7 also has a midi to style feature. I've found that even though it's not that simple to create an actual style from a midi file song ( because of all the chord changes) I've used it for creating styles from BIAB and from my other keyboards by recording the style parts as a midi file.

There's all sorts of things you can do to create your own styles, just depends on the features of your keyboard or the software available for doing it.

best wishes
Rikki

The trouble with converted styles is that the instruments don't sound exactly the same on each synth. The ones that were converted by amateurs also often contain errors. There is some info on how to repair and improve Yamaha styles at http://www.1manband.nl/repair.htm

If you have midi files that sound great on your synth you can easily make styles from them that sound just as great. At http://www.1manband.nl/course.htm there is a crash course for this.

At http://groups.yahoo.com/group/onemanbandgroup/ in the file section in the folder "XG styles from midi files" there are a few styles I made that way.

Jos