I am very curious:

Why does everyoone always ask for certain styles? Why don't you just make them yourselves? Is it too difficult? Can everybody say it's own thing about creating own styles for Yamaha, Solton, Korg and Roland and Technics?
I am not interested in Help fromt he keyboard, but making OWN styles, which means you start from nothing untill an own style with variations etc without any help, solely played with YOUR hands.

I think the Technics is the easiest, but I would like to hear people say what they think of their arranger and the way to make styles.

* Is it easy or difficult?
* How does it work?
* Can you just play the notes and ready or do you need to acces a lot of menu's?
* Can you store them easily?
* No bugs or anything?

THANKS MATES!!!!!

Ilija Petkovski

Hi Dutchie !

Looooong time ago, I thought to be capable to make my 'own styles', but after a few years of trying I found out it is not as easy as I thought it would be.

To build your own styles you have to be 'player' of all the instruments you use :
Drums, guitars, piano, percussion-set .... etc. I cannot compete with pro-drummers that record drumparts for arranger keyboards.
(They do it using drumpads (MIDI) or 'live' for (X1)grooves (WAV-samples))

I'm realistic enough to admit I cannot play all instruments with the desired 'live-feeling' like pro-musicians do.

Some of us (I guess 15 %) do make 'own' styles and all others use the factory-styles or other (bought ?) styles.

Sure, making an easy 8bt- or 16bt style is not too difficult..... but try to make one including 3 intro's 4 variations, 4 fill-ins and 3 endings... ;-)

That's 'different cake' (Dutch expression )

My X1 has 198 perfect internal styles and I have no illusion to be able to improve them myself ever Ilija !
Perhaps you can ?

Roel

Yes my friend.

I can not only DO it, but I even HAVE to do it, since there is no synth. available on this market that has the styles that I need. My current keyboard (E70) has more styles that I can use than a brand new Solton or Roland TOGETHER! What a BIG shame. Mine is from 1991 and has 8 useable styles for me. Both Solton and Roland only 1.

Ilija

Hi Ilija

One nice thing about Yamaha is that the styles are really midi files. They can be created in Cakewalk or another sequencing program. One implication is that you can cut and paste parts from standard midi files. Since there are 100,000's available on the internet, they serve as a vast resource for creating Yamaha styles. Of course, the graphics are better on a computer than on an arranger display in that you can see more of what you are doing.

Clif

Ilija,

My G1000 came with a cartridge full of vintage Roland styles, including the ones from E70. These should be compatible with Roland and convertible to Solton. Let me know which E70 styles you use and I will try to e-mail them to you. BTW, I like my E70 more than my G1000 as far as ease of use goes.

Regards,
Alex

The new Roland (and other keyboards) have almost nothing from the Balkan. My E70 had this what I needed:
1. PASODOBLE
2. KARS
3. ANADOLU
4. ARAB
5. MALFOUF
6. KERONCONG
7. TROT
8. ENKA

So Arabic, Turkish, Oriental styles I seek.

Ilija

Hello,

I know my post is too late but here is GEM's perspective for SK/wk series:

Creating a style is very easy relatively speaking (compared to the old Yamaha PSR SQ16):

1) select an empty style (total of 32)

2) select a variation 1, 2, 3, 4

3) select whether you want to create a core of the variation, the filling, the intro, or the ending.

4) select which chord you want to work with: minor, major, major 7th. It is enough to work with one. However, if you work with all, you can make your style play differently depending on what chord you play: minor, major or seventh!! Nice feature I think Especially for introductions and ending. You want a different minor intro from a major intro for the same variation.. right?

5) select how many measures that part will be

6) select the signature: 4/4 3/4 ....

7) select quantization level ( you can apply it later if you like... I think). Remember complex drums pattern requires multiple quantization. Therefore, create your drums in multiple passes.

8) select track, sound, dsp, panning, volume ( you can do it later, I think). This requires experience.

9) select and save to "style performance"; you have 8 performances for one style. A performance allows you to use the same style but with different instrument components: sounds, volume, dsp, panning and so on.

10) hit start and listen to the intro beat

11) play freely for the amount of measures. If you need to overdub, wait till the parts end and the part will repeat so you can overdub

12) push stop

13) select the next track


Now, Here some questions to be answered:


1) how easy is it? easy

2) how many menus you need to access this. Few. However, it will be very good idea to be familiar with the sequencer first. Because when working with styles, in GEM, there are two modes: active recording mode, and editing recorded-material mode (so you can do all your copy/paste/editing stuff afterword). But I need to investigate this further because I only tried the "active recording mode."

3) Do I need to be a drummer to create great styles? Of course not. The fact that you are a keyboardist, you automatically should know how to play drums with your fingers UNLESS you are the kind of person who is like an organist. For me, when I am playing solo and there are no drums playing with me, my hands will play in such a way to compensate for the lack of drums.

4) But what about the familiarity with different drums sounds and pads and which one to use? Don't you think that a drummer be a better person to do this? yes, but you can learn and if you already use styles, you ears already has some training to know the difference. Start with a standard kit for the type of music you like and play freely first and then record a style.

5) so is it that easy to create a style? Not really. If you have four variations and each variation has four parts, that means you need to spend a lot of time. You need to research and try and expirement. Creating an outstanding ending that makes your audience feel good or creating an intro that automatically captures the audience attention takes creativity and thinking. I suggest you listen to professional live bands.

6) Would it be discourging when you have to put a lot of time into it? The answer is maybe and therefore start in the beginning creating random easy incomplete "fun" styles so you can practice all of this and when you feel comfortable, create one fully complete usable style. GIVE IT TO A FRIEND and feel good about others are using your style. Or use it in recording and with live audience. Afterwards, you will barely depend on factory-made styles; you will always want to create your specific one for that special song.


I know It is too long and my appologies as well. I hope this helps.

[This message has been edited by sk880user (edited 07-12-2000).]

Hello Ilija,
looking at your post I would suggest you go for an oriental keyboard.
Yamaha-Roland-Gem-Solton they all have oriental versions, which will provide you with the styles you need.
Also I see them offered regular in small adds thru VIA,VIA (as you are dutch you must know that magazine.)

Hello All,

I almost never create my own styles as there are so many out there I can make use of and I already spend so much time recording and composing that I would probably never make music If all I did was compose styles, I strongly think it does take a person with a knack for it and thats probably not me.
If you ever wanted to get endlessly caught up in the making of many styles you could go into Cakewalk or Steinberg and either import or create them from scratch. Cakewalk has many drum patterns to use and modify. As was already stated, a style file is not much more than a MIDI file, if you initialize a Yamaha disk you can load any midi into it you want and by changeing the name from.mid to .sty you can load styles with a little knowledge of A/B /Fill1/Fill2(this info can be found at synth zone).
I do have a question for a style maker that might read this . Can I load a style into my sofware program which supports Sysex and write program changes, volume changes,etc. onto my Yamaha disk to be fed midi out to my other performance gear?

guys ,
the easyest keyboards I have saw in my life for creating styles is the E-300 , E-500 or E500OR and the E-600 too and trust me they are too easy to use I always use my E-500OR style converter when I do any thing in my keyboard even if I am sequencing I am kinda lazy to record a drums trake on the composer so I make the drums a style and then I put the song and I record it very fast and same for the chords and then I put my final fixing and endings and then I waste my time on fixing things , but the only problem is that you have only 4 sounds and a drums trake (including the bass) to creat your style and I have other problems too but that's what I look for in the new arrangers keyboards to have a style converter and to have more than 4 sounds (including the base)and I hope that the new VA-7 have the same way as the last E-serous had and I hope too I can see the pa-80 have the same functions becasue when they will come here I will have to see them both becasue I love Roland arrangers but I also love triton's voices and it's the first tiem that I love something on Korg and becides I had to sell my Triton becasue I was looking for an arranger not synth and I wouldn't sell my Triton if the new Pa-80 didn't have the sound enging of the Triton too and.becides guys with speakers or not it doesn't matter the important thing is the sounds or the qualty of the keyboard and the speakars wouldn't affect your korg becasue you will still have like any other stuped keyboard an output for amp! , other people say it looks like a casio too! guys, it look's like it or not it's in the End a triton with styles and you wouldn't compare a triton's voices with a casio!.right?