I think that you dont understand the european keyboard players and there taste of music .
And we dont understand the US market, the US music scene doesnt take the arranger keyboard serious
and you never seen ant serious review of any of them like we have here in europe ( http://www.tastenwelt.de/twhome.0.html )
And dont forget that the most Tyros buyers are mostly aged 50+ , and this group have a lot of money to spend these days.
My dealer has sold more than 100 tyros 5 , before it was to play in the shop. Thats serious bussines .

Impuls

Tony I already had the Pa3x or did you forget?
But I'll admit The Pa900 is my second choice at this time after the S950...
they each have things the other doesnt.

... how COULD I forget with all the help you gave me ... I should have said "c'mon BACK over to MY side... "

I think the Tyros 5 ensemble voices sound absolutely lovely. I have been using them more and more playing them with styles. Perhaps the video shows other ways and types of music using these voices that some see unpopular in the US?? I totally disagree..............These voices should be treated as any other voice bank one would use. They seem to have a better way of playing harmonies while playing styles. Even with Tyros 5's harmony button turned on the harmonies are lovely playing single finger melodies. If you have the skills to play multiple finger right hand the results are even better. All this to my ears of course.......................-charley

Love the Tyros 5,
At this stage not so much the ensemble, or the organ world. However the balance for the money is excellent. The guitars! Well i challenge any other arranger, synth to give better guitars, with the dsp on board it's fabulous. My repitoire has opened up imensley just with this inclusion.
Hoping instead if a Tyros 6 that Yamaha develope new and greater add ons for a price to the T5! It can be done and the new advances awm should allow for it.

Tony it was my pleasure,....would do it again at the drop of a hat for you my friend ....glad your getting along now with the PA900..

I can't believe Donny can't think of a use for this stuff! This is NH heaven!

I don't think Donny has quite got a grasp of what's going on with this feature. Think of all your UNISON brass patches... A trumpet, a couple of saxes, a trombone. Let's just take that as a starter.

So you play ONE note, they ALL play that one note. But when you play TWO notes, now you have twice as many players, because the trpt, 2 saxes and trombone are playing BOTH notes. Three notes, 12 brass players, 4 notes 16, etc., etc.. Not to mention, there isn't much range you can play that tutti sound in before either the trumpets get screechy, or the trombone becomes a tuba!

What the Ensemble feature does, when you are simply PLAYING it, is it SPLITS those players up... play one note, all four are on one note.Play two notes, and one of the trumpets and a sax play one of the notes, and the other sax and the t'bone plays the OTHER note. Play a four note chord, and only one instrument plays each sound. Just like the real thing!

The other thing you may have missed is, if you use the Melody Intelligence feature (or whatever Yamaha call it - you play a chord in the left hand, and single notes played in the RH section now play chords), it splits THOSE notes into single notes for each sound. So you get a FAR more accurate voicing for ensemble work.

For big band and jazz, this is amazing. But it also applies to ANY pop brass and wind voicing. Thing EWF, think Chicago, think Tower of Power. OK, not necessarily NH material, but you wanted examples of what you could do with it..!

I would be ecstatic if this feature were added to a Roland (some of the WS's can already do something similar, along with the VPP's, I think, but no arranger yet).

If this does not appear to be useful to you Donny, the failure is in your imagination, not the basic usefulness of the feature.

At the recent keyboard clinic, I got to try the Ensemble a little bit on my buddy Johnny's Tyros5-76, using it, as Diki mentioned above, with the Big Band/Jazz styles, as my friend is a very capable jazz player. Needless to say, it freaked the two of us out...pretty startlingly realistic. Almost uncanny even without adding the Harmony Voice Effect that reads the left hand chord and applies appropriate notes...some of the harmony settings we tried were pretty complex, (4-Way open/close) with equally complex chords, but because the individual sounds were separated it didn't turn into mush...it actually sounded like a bunch of horn players, including the very slight tuning discrepancies, and phrasing imperfections.

I can get a little bit close with the Tyros4 SA Horns and Saxes and Trumpets when stacking R1, R2 and R3 and carefully assigning the harmony to each sound, and tweaking the tuning a bit, but it really wouldn't put a patch on the new Ensemble's arse.

The only thing I tried on the Ensemble Strings was using a factory preset and the full keyboard (no style) to play the tune Yesterday...it sounded pretty cool, but I'm sure I could get better results if I dug into the settings, or used it with the style I have made especially for the tune (it has various string sounds with a lone acoustic guitar) if I dug into it a bit. Again, even without my tweaking, it was very realistic.

All in all, both of us thought it was pretty clever, and I'm looking forward to our next clinic.

Ian

PS...At the next clinic I'll try and record myself playing a few tunes using Tyros5's Ensemble Strings and Brass to give an idea what these things sound like when played by your average arranger player.

I'll make sure to convert them to Audio.

The people in nursing homes today, in their 70s to 90s enjoy hearing songs that were popular when they were in their prime, 30, 40 or 50 years ago. This means they like songs from the 1950s, 60s and 70s. I never play Big Band or Swing songs in the nursing homes.
However it seems the Ensemble feature would be good for a lot of things, from James Brown to the Beatles, to the Tijuana Brass, Ray Charles . . .lots of things.
I like to retain the feeling of a small 4-piece band most of the time. Drums, Bass, Guitar, Piano plus selected lead voices such as Sax and Organ. That's why there are so many options and so many great choices.