KVR Announcement

This release is particularly appealing to PSR and Tyros owners. The massive body of styles supplied has been reworked and contains hundreds of new fresh styles, perfectly playing out of the box even on these arrangers.

You can check the styles list and listen to some of them with the online player. You won't believe to your ears (rendered on a "humble" PSR S770, with stock sounds and DSPs)!

Of course you do not have to believe us: you can directly play first hands all of them (860 !!) on your arranger with our free demo. So that you can even experiment the advanced features, unmatched by any competing product.

The demo is fully functional (saves are disabled) but forces you to exit and restart it every 15 minutes or so. You can keep and use it forever.

Regards,
Groovyband Live! Team

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Groovyband Live! Realtime Arranger is a modern software running on Windows 10 devices (desktops, laptops, tablets). Touch screen is not necessary but strongly recommended. The program generates a stream of midi messages that must be rendered to audio with a compatible sound generator.
To deliver an outstanding result (= guaranteed out of the box immediate satisfaction with no need of any tweak), Groovyband Live! and its preset styles are painstakingly optimized for any sound generator it officially supports. Currently supported are XG Sound generators built-in mid/high end Yamaha arrangers (let's say PSR S950, S770 or better).
Support for other sound generators is under development.

Check our website for further details and the up-to-date online manual.

How does this compare to Arranger?

spam?

So, I looked at the styles list and played some demos.
I recognized all the styles from various Yamaha models, that are free for download on the PSR Tutorial site. ....
Mmmmmhhh
Eric

Expensive too especially because you need an Yamaha psr aswell. No thanks.

Hi,

1. I installed your demo.
2. Set-up midi exactly as per your instruction manual.
3. It works partly, but the notes hang immediately.
4. If I select "Panic" every second it sort of plays.
5. StyleMagicYA works perfect with my unit.
6. MixMaster works perfect with my unit.

I use a PSR S770

Anxious to try it out.

buildtofly@yahoo.com

Henni

Re-installing my Yamaha midi driver solved the problem!

Much to expensive and doesn't look that professional. vArranger gives you thousand of styles and works great.

Can’t come even close to V-arranger

Since there is no demo for vArranger, I cannot compare. What I CAN say is that there are some stunning effects added to many of the guitar voices. It seems like Groovyband is mostly about adding more effects to styles. Yamaha styles are generally known for relying heavily on effects, so these new effects do add great value to the nearly 900 supplied styles.

Pity I cannot duplicate these results direct on my arranger as I now miss those effects sorely after auditioning the Groovyband styles. (i.e. my new 220CountryStraitsRvo style is as close as I can come to theirs) It would have been wonderful to use the program to add those effects and then afterwards use the style direct on the arranger like any other style.

Also, according to the documentation they've added the same Revo drum technology that the Genos uses in that every drum note is different to the previous one.

Thanks Henni for your appreciation. It is exactly because we are so confident to have a good offer that we want everybody to try it out for free and listen with their ears what they get before spending their hard earned money.

Since you liked so much the effects applied to the guitar tracks, in a couple of minutes we have prepared for you this mod of the preset CountryStraits style:

Open online audio player at Audiomack

We have added an extra DSP to the second guitar track, we have (slightly) customized these DSPs for Intro3, Var2, Var3, Var4 end Ending3 so that they always sound (subtly) different. As a real guitarist would do with his pedal effects when changing riffs. Additionally for Var3 we have muted some tracks to better standout the surviving guitar track + drum&bass.

Added additional compression + hard limiter in post processing. It sounds like any professional CD master or radio broadcast. As always for our demos, the sound comes from a stock PSR S770: everybody can effortlessly obtain such results with Groovyband Live!

We attach the modded style. You can open it with the demo to play it live or as a base for further experiments: unzip and copy it anywhere into the "USER STY" or "PRESET STY" folders found in the program main install directory.

-------

Groovyband Live! is not just (easily editable) stunning effects. It has a lot more functionality over the stock firmware.

Here you can find some hints: features in depth (5 minutes read).

Of course we have a complete up-to-date user manual that explains everything that can be done (and how).

We are also continuously improving the program at a fast pace: changelog.


In a following post we will summarize some of the killer features on offer you "can't live without".

Regards,
Groovyband Live! Team

Thank you so much for the style - it played once and now complains about an "Read Error" Even if I unblock the file, the results stay the same.

You are right. It is corrupted. We re-uploaded it and re-downloaded it: still corrupted!

There is some issue with the forum upload/download facility.

To solve the problem we zipped the file. Go to the original post, download the zip file, unzip it into a *.sty. Copy the *.sty into Groovyband's folders.

-----------------------------------------------------
Now it works for us. If not for you, let us know!
-----------------------------------------------------


This shows that our software, unlike Yamaha arrangers that usually hang beyond hope (you have to power down them), is resilient to badly corrupted files.

You cannot put it out of service this way. It stays up and running as nothing happened: as you would like in a Live! situation in front of an audience.

Also these details make the difference!

Thank you, now the style works great. Very nice effects added. I really enjoy your free demo as I love good styles.

I think your software should be good for someone doing studio work with Yamaha styles. Maybe you should add a song/style sequencer so that a complete song can be arranged from scratch. Then one can add all the effects and when done record the final song with voice direct on the Yamaha arranger.

Else you should at least include ALL of the Revo drums and all other new voices from the Genos to justify the price. This way one can upgrade to a "Genos" at a fraction of the actual cost. For this your price would be competitive as you no longer compete against other virtual arrangers but rather against other modules like i.e. the SD90.

Why I consider this to be possible is the fact that Varranger can re-produce most Yamaha Genos voices rather faithfully through a PC only - no need to use the Yamaha arranger engine for that. Hence you can leave everything as is and add only the extra non standard PSR S770 voices utilizing the PC hardware/software though the "Aux In" of the Yamaha and synchronize all of this to the rest of the style.

I myself would seriously consider purchasing such a beast!

Here are some Groovy Band Live style demos that I've recorded on my PSR S770:

Groovy01

Groovy02

Groovy03

Groovy04

Groovy05

Groovy06

Thanks Henni for taking the time to demo a substantial number of Groovyband Live! preset styles.
This a great service for all the readers that did not (yet) give a try to the free demo you have used to produce the recordings. By trying the demo it is also possible to audition whole categories of styles you did not demo, and actually interact with the program. And have a lot of fun too (zero need to tweak anything, everything sounds good out of the box, including the full complement of OTSes)!

We invite them to also carefully listen to the audio demo of a competing product of ours you linked a couple of posts above this (unfortunately they do not allow prospective customers to try a demo of the actual program before buying). It comes directly from their servers so it should show what you get at its best. It is a bit long but you'd better resist till the end since in all movies surprises always come later, and so the listener has the unbiased whole picture.

Groovyband Live! Team

!

At least you don’t need a Yamaha arranger with the competing product you mention. Also the competing product don’t use only Yamaha styles but also Korg, Ketron and Roland styles.

We can also plug vArranger on the Yamaha keyboard, load styles, change few chords, and see that it sounds very good too....

I think the whole point of buying a software arranger is that you don’t need or want a hardware arranger at all. Just a good controller or synthesizer and you are ready to go.

Normally, that is probably true, but wonder how my 970 would interact with vA2 as an advantage over a straight controller. I mean, if you have to carry a board anyway.

Better to not talk about vArranger in this thread. I don't like to change the initial subject

By the way Groovy, you seems to have done some good and hard work for your product. No need to be sarcastic about vArranger

Hi Henni

I don't get involved on this forum because of my bad English. However I come to read the speeches every day
( since Synthzone exists ).
I'm not sure I understand you well, but here's what I understood
this software is able to communicate with a Yamaha PSR keyboard (only) . It therefore appears that it transmits the exclusive codes to the engine
The software itself does not have emulation of the Yamaha engine. So he seems unable to play anything other than a generator PSR ; in XG format .

As it is said and everyone seems to have understood , the use of a PSR is mandatory and there is no Yamaha expander with a
style reading .
The question is: What use it to use this software with a PSR since it does nothing more . If it is not that we can then dispose
a well-mentioned touch interface on a PC screen with the advantages that this can bring for some.

The PC's transport to a scene becomes problematic so that it has just this interface that won't be able to compete with the PSR itself.
Emulating an engine and the sounds that go well with , this is at least 10 times more programming work and I know what I'm talking about.
Not sure that the team here , who didn't deserve it anyway , is considering launching this into such a challenge ? Especially for a niche market that
remains very modest.

Thank you Henni for sharing all your experiences from your interest in arrangers and we are always attentive to all
innovation in this field that we are passionate about .

Hi Magali,

As I said, if this software could add the Genos drums & voices to my PSR S770, I would have definitely purchased it.

The demo is free, gives you ALL the styles that comes ONLY with the most expensive elite version and is fun to play with. I REALLY like the added effects to many of the styles.

In my opinion the main advantage of this software is the ability to add more effects to the styles. (Plus of course 8 variations, 8 OTS settings, two Fills/Breaks, extremely easy style editing, the use of registrations etc) I would not attempt performing live with it - yes, I am sure it CAN be done, but it will not be easy until one gets used to it.

I also cannot pay a quarter of the full price of a new SX900 just for some added effects to some styles. As it stands the newer styles as lately available already put the PSR S series in a totally new category sound wise.

But I certainly enjoy listening to those effects. I think Yamaha relies very heavily on effects (they are masters in this department). Groovy Band Live makes the Yamaha guitars sound even more amazing!

For studio work this will be a nice option to have & hence the need for a style sequencer to be urgently added to the software. Ad to that a built in digital human voice harmonizer and then this would no longer compete with similar software arrangers but be in a niche of it's own.

The styles from Groovy Band live DO sound better than the default styles of the PSR S770 - I'd even say they sound MUCH, MUCH better and to achieve that must have taken quite some initiative. So I give the developers credit for that.

Thus it really might be the best sounding Soft Synth currently available even though it requires the Yamaha sound engine to do so. If you want studio quality sounds, you should seriously consider looking into this product. And nothing better than their free demo to explore all of this hands-on for yourself...

Henni

Someone at the PSRTutorial site made the following BRILLIANT suggestion:



Now THIS is something that developers can seriously ponder upon... Just imagine the new possibilities as you can now apply FULL DSPs to ALL style parts!!! Styles can then be sold as registrations that apply the correct DSP settings to each midi channel for each individual style.

Some more Groovy Band Live! demos recorded using the demo program to my PSR S770:

Groovy07

Groovy08

Groovy09

Groovy10

Groovy11

Groovy12

Groovy13

Groovy14

Groovy15

More to come...

WOW!!: Thanks for such a review. Given your standing and 10+ years long career in this forum (and others) it should be clear to everybody that we did NOT pay or influence you in any way.
In the splash screen of our software we write that our product is designed " .... with love, passion, and attention to detail ...". We are glad that this shows up and is noticed by the users.

With our software, even a 2 generations old mid tier arranger can, sound and content-wise, compete in the same league of big guns battleships. And certainly give great and renewed pleasure while playing it.

But wait! There is more.

Features-wise Groovyband Live! outclasses any Yamaha arranger, irrespective of price. Here is a (surely largely incomplete) list of what you add to your table/workflow:

• Modern flat UI (inspired by the latest design trends in Win 10 and Android). Razor sharp graphics that scales to any resolution and screen size. Natively touch enabled, but you can also augment it with keyboard, mouse, and fully configurable physical controls from attached midi devices. More in depth discussion.
  Sensible layout and real estate utilization to convey a lot of useful information, be easy on your eyes and offer easy targets for your fingers.

• Native first class support for up to 4 midi input devices (keyboards, pedalboard, control surfaces).
  You decide the size, action type of the keyboards to use to play chords, lead voices, auxiliary voices to embellish your performance. You decide what physical controls you need to offload (almost) ANY parameter/command editing task.
  Auxiliary voices (playable on a second/third keyboard/pedalboard, with configurable splits/layers) are saved with the style, and hence they are automatically instantly configured at each style change.

• Limitless utilization of DSP power built-in the XG sound engine. You can assign all the available DSPs (whose number depends on the actual keyboard you have: see this discussion) to whatever part you wish (style, lead, aux) with no restriction. You can even use 2 inserts per part. The unleashed power is clearly showcased in the preset styles and readily noticed by Henni.
  But power is nothing without control. That's why we have implemented a visual DSP editor that lets you freely experiment everything with immediacy with few clicks (or finger touches). And also have a clear visual feedback of what is going on. If you can assign/move/change a DSP algorithm and/or parameters in seconds with the sequencer running, then the limit is only your imagination! See more with the manual chapter on Dsp Editor. We have also implemented a Pedal Wah effect that is modulable with a pedal (surprise!, surprise!), and Rotary Slow/Fast whose speed can be changed with a pedal (or any other switch/controller, including mod wheel).
  With Yamaha's firmware these seemingly elementary actions cannot be done! With Groovyband Live! you can!

• Smooth (= glitch free) transition of OTSes. When you change an OTS the decaying tail of the old voices (and effects) is not abruptly cut/fed into the new effects (if any) with unpleasant sound glitches.
  Groovyband Live! uses all the unused hardware resources available (DSP units and midi channels) to dynamically assign new resources to the new voices, leaving the old ones playing/dying with their old channel/DSPs. This strategy is so effective that you can even hold some notes, change the OTS, play new notes and hear at the same time both the old and new voices with their respective effects!
  The more free DSPs you have the more this is effective. Groovyband Live! automatically and transparently uses whatever is available to achieve the maximum benefit possible: you only notice the final result, which is amazing even on a PSR-S, which is the most resources constrained of all Yamaha arrangers.

• Advanced style structure. Each style has 3 Intros/Endings (as usual), but has 8 Mains, 8 Fills, 2 Breaks. All the mixer parameters (including mutes), DSPs and Voices are independently configurable for each section (intro/ending/main). You can also change on the fly by pushing a single button (with immediate feedback from the playing style) the pattern played by each part in each of the 8 main variations. Mix & match everything to countless possible combinations with little effort.
  Thanks to the ample real estate and the well thought UI, you have always a clear visualization of what is going on (and you can quickly change everything without leaving the main screen).
  Given this flexibility in editing and the ample availability of mains, you can easily arrange the whole song by assigning a (heavily) customised main variation to each part of your song (chorus, verse, ...). Of course you can copy and reorder mains as you see fit, so that their order always reflect the natural order of your performance.
  In a while you can readily experiments dozens of combinations of patterns, mutes, (edited) voices, DSPs. Copy a main before attempting further changes, and when you are done with your brainstorming reorder everything the more logical way.
  Groovyband Live! never hinders your creativity: whatever you want to experiment is always only a couple of clicks away with realtime feedback from the running sequencer.
  During the editing process, and without stopping the sequencer, styles can be saved either on-disk or, even faster (= single click), in on-board scratchpad memory locations.

• Flexible and clever Style Conductor. You have a fill button for each Main variation: you hence decide where a fill should you bring to. Groovyband Live! knows where you are (let's say Main 2) and where you want to go (let's say Main 6) and builds on the fly a suitable fill taking into consideration the complexity of the starting and landing variations. You can bias this dynamic fill building process by explicitly requesting a fill closer to the source or destination. The fill can be synced to next measure start, even if played in advance. You can request an Half bar fill for each division which has an even number of beats per bar. You can force an immediate beat reset to the measure start to cope with a false start or odd measure (i.e: 3/4 bar in a 4/4 song). The beat reset function always acts at the end of the current beat, and hence it is 100% musical and your tempo is always exactly preserved. You can also spice-up your running main with an in-line fill that does not reset the pattern natural looping cadence.
  You have two breaks (busier, simpler) and they, as the fills, are context aware: the same break is more or less crowded of playing parts depending the context it is played in: you never gets a disrupting 8 parts break while you are only playing a 2 parts drum&bass. But the same break will be 8 parts wide if later the context calls for it!
  Intros and Endings can be looped (useful while editing) and if an intro is used as a break the possible sequenced count-in bars are automatically skipped.
  This reinforces the fact that Groovyband Live! is not a dumb midi player with some built-in mechanic transposition rules: it has smart algorithms that run under the hood, and tries hard to behave like a real band made of humans!

• Randomization. The velocity of played notes can be randomized to varying degrees of "humanization". As usual the algorithms are clever enough to know what is possible (and credible) and what is only a computer artifact. If you strum a guitar chord, all the strings (played a few milliseconds apart) can be hard or softly hit, but you definitely cannot play some of them hard and the others significantly softer.
  We also randomize, where possible, the noises of mega voices (= we select similar but different samples) so that a looped guitar part never sounds identical to the previous loop.
  We know all the fingerings possible on a real guitar (for all the chords and neck positions). Whenever possible (a real guitarist cannot play all the chords in all the possible keys) we strum guitar parts only using actually playable finger tabs, and when a given chord can be played in different ways we randomize the actual finger tab depending on the context (and keeping into account the current position of the "virtual" left hand on the neck).
  All this randomization going on automatically under the hood is subtle enough so that you do not consciously perceive it, but all adds to the realism and illusion of a real Live! performance.
  We also implement a virtual round robin to all drumkits by subtly varying many sound parameters (ADSR, cutoff, resonance, ...) to each stroke, so that no two strokes are identical to each other.

For now we stop here. There is still a lot to say! More to come in a following post(s) ......

I pondered all day about this software. Here are my thoughts in words:

1. a Chord sequencer is a MUST have - every studio utilizing any Yamaha styles should have this software.
2. Limiting styles between the different versions is a serious put-off.
3. If more people purchased this, I would have loved to create/modify more high quality styles for them.
4. The existing styles really are of outstanding quality - ready for recordings as is.
5. The extra variations, breaks, OTS's & fills can mean a lot for detailed recordings.
6. I like the registration function.
7. It would be nice if voices from installed packs could also be used in styles.
8. That way I could add real Revo drums which would boost the styles tremendously.
9. That way I could add human choir voices which would boost some styles also.
10. If I had the funds, I would have purchased a copy.
11. I could do a LOT with the free demo program if used for recordings only. I could create extremely high quality backtrax with it as is plus the demo version comes with ALL the styles.
12. The demo runs for around 10 minutes at a time forever. Enough to record one song completely.

As for my contribution on this thread - I received a 63MB demo version of Groovy Band Live! for free. Apart from saving, it is fully functional & I am having a blast with it. The least I could do for them is to evaluate it properly and to give my personal feedback on it. On top of this, I've ALWAYS been known to make demos of any high quality styles I discover and share those demos with others. I thoroughly enjoyed recording those style demos. They are ALL on my phone and I listen to all of them a few times a day as good styles always inspire me.

Henni

Henni, send us an email (contact us page) with attached the VCE files of all the Revo Drums installed into your keyboard (the VCE files encode the Bank MSB:LSB:PC).

We will prepare a special Groovyband Live! "Henni edition" just for you with built-in the required voices (calling your Revo Drums expansion pack voices) you can substitute into the preset styles as you will.

Remember that I stated recently that with Yamaha new things pop up so frequently that I could hardly keep up with it. This is yet another one of those.

1. Not too long ago the GHENOS Revo Drum pack revolutionized my PSR S770 and caused a huge improvement in all styles modified since then.

2. It is hardly a month later and here I find yet another product that will do same. Please take note of the styles produced with this package in future as now I can play with the effects also - something I longed to do for a very long time already.

Yamaha has NO!!! competition in this regard. There is always something new to do & to try if you are in the Yamaha camp.

Decided to do some side by side style comparisons. First version is the ABSOLUTE best version I have of the style on my PSR S770. Second version is the standard Groovyband Live! style. Judge for yourself:

Country

Ballad

Some personal demos as promised:

CountryStraitsHenni

Mor16BeatHenni

50sRock&RollHenni

I am in LOVE!!! with this AMAZING!!! software & the results say it all. The following was created LIVE!!! using My PSR S770, a Desktop PC and a mouse:

WeExaltThee

Thus you CAN!!! play live with this as a touch screen tablet mounted slightly higher than the keyboard will make things much less complicated. Also, I've discovered that you can link certain things to any key/s on the arranger - So I've linked FILL UP, FILL DOWN, INTRO3 & ENDING3 to the very end keys. This makes things much, much easier.

Tell me that everything does not sound much more real with the 8 variations & 8 OTS's? The interface is absolutely BRILLIANT!!! - much thought & care went into it. You have to play with it to discover it's real power. I learn something new every few minutes that makes things much easier. Just see how quickly I am able to record with it and the results get exponentially better with each recording.

Never before could I create such beautiful styles with such ease...

Made some more recordings of modified styles today:

70sScatLegendHenni

ChoirSoundtrackHenni

Live play becoming easier & more natural with every attempt:

LiveImprovision01

Another nice feature - you can select the split point to be shifted continuously to just above the chords you play, making room for your right hand performance. Play chords lower and split point moves lower also!

Watching with interest amid all the developments. I am somewhat confused over your styles,Revo drums, and the purchase of one of three levels of Groovyband Live. Then there is the question of suitability for live play. It started out with your better sounding styles, then Revo drums making it even better, to $400 software.

I am sure I am missing something here.

Bernie

Bernie I am confused also..with all the gear you already have what do you intend to do with this program for live play ...etc...?

Let's recap a bit, shall we?

1. The Yamaha styles are 90% about effects. Don't believe me? Go listen again to the effects demo on your very own arranger where Yamaha themselves demonstrate this clearly & even bragging about it.

2. The PSR up to S975 is limited to the type and number of effects that can be used by it's internal style engine. So apart from the new voices, this is why the SX900 & Genos sound so much better.

3. Groovyband Live! developed a way to replace the style engine totally with software. The results are then driven through midi to the PSR which allows many more effects to be used.

4. They perfected this along with a intuitive interface which allows advance editing not previously possible.

5. They seamlessly apply the next OTS settings allowing the current settings to first play out in full.

6. They included 8 variations, 8 fills to & from, two breaks and 8 OTS's which follow the correct variation exactly as per Yamaha.

7. They included the registration function exactly as Yamaha.

8. They move the split point continuously to just above the chords you play giving your more room for your solo performances.

9. They allow 3 RH voices plus 1 LH voice, same as the Genos/SX900

10. The velocity of played notes can be randomized to varying degrees of "humanization"

11. Same Beat Reset function as per the newer Yamaha's.

12. Half bar fills.

13. Round Robin drums like the Genos adding humanization to the drums too.

14. Every L/R voice can have its own independent harmony settings. All the L/R voices can be configured as R (R1÷4). You can therefore build quartets of different instruments, each one playing possibly different harmonized notes.

There are more, I am still finding them

Hi Bernie.

1. The Revo styles will still continue to be updated - the Groovyband Live! software sidetracked me for a while, but for good reason. New Revo styles will follow soon. It will cost you $30 for the Revo drums (not supplied by myself) and obviously the price of the styles.

2. Next I'll ad a page purely for Groovyband Live! styles. It will require everything that the Revo styles require plus off course either a Groovyband Live! demo or the full version to play. It will cost you $30 for the Revo drums (not supplied by myself), the cost of Groovyband Live! and obviously the price of the styles. Groovyband Live! Demo is good for 10 minutes at a time and cost you NOTHING! Thus you can make studio quality recordings immediately at no extra cost. Or you could play live and close/open the program every 10 minutes - silly but doable! Or you could simply purchase Groovyband Live! which as far as I can determine does not cost more than vArranger, another FANTASTIC! softsynth program.

So please don't be confused. Both style versions will be outstanding. As for me, I will not perform live again without this software. It ads a new dimension to what I am able create.

I am so impressed that I've advertised my Audya - I no longer have need for it & neither will I miss it. It can no longer compete with my Yamaha.

Henni kool stuff but looks like many are confused whats going on..
could you possible make some kind of YOU TUBE video of the process
and what's happening and how to use it live etc.

Thanks Henni
I will see what shakes out. I just think that it might be better to soup up my 970 than get an SX900, even if the SX900 has improvements, to be sure.

Donny: With my present stable, the 970 is the only one I can take to a smaller venue,plug it in,and play. I have NH jobs with smaller quarters, where on board speakers are plenty. Plus, I have years of work in it.

Hi Dnj,

I will never perform live without Groovyband Live! again - I am just THAT much impressed by it.

BUT... I have to purchase an Ipad or other mini flatscreen touch display computer. I used the income earned from styles to SERIOUSLY upgrade my PC, operating system and various software.

Now I must first earn something from styles again. As soon as I do, I will demonstrate your request properly. If I do it with my desktop, some might think is too tedious to do when actually it's NOT!

Henni

Henni that sounds terriffic.....
I will surly be watching for it.

Exactly the reason you need a SX900 with it's excellent newly
designed Expansive Soundfield Speakers and New Styles & features.
Would work great for your NH gigs & beyond for sure.

Bernie,

absolutely! The sound engine of the PSR S970 is still top notch, and not that much different from that of the SX900. Especially if you can use it at its fullest with our software (a thing that is not possible with the firmware supplied by Yamaha, which is practically unchanged since the '90s of last century).

Although Yamaha wants to always sell you the latest and the greatest HW (which incidentally is ~90% equal to the previous one), what really counts is the man who plays it (as Henni's demos clearly show).

The weakest link of the chain is the player, not the machine. To improve the strength of the whole chain you have to improve the strength of the weakest link. As Henni said, a tool like our software lets you better exploit your creativity and then obtain better results. Probably not as outstanding as Henni's, just because not many of us are as much talented as he is, but surely you do see a difference (listen to Henni's audio demos just playing the supplied preset styles).

In addition you get MORE and BETTER features that not even a 4 k€ Genos will bring you (its style playing engine and features are no different than those of your PSR S970).

When you have time, download for free our demo. Play with it for a while just listening to the 860 (!!) supplied styles. It will take you busy for a while. But we are sure you will definitely see a difference (quality and variety) with what you have heard till now coming out from your PSR S970's audio jacks.

You can download the demo anonymously (nobody asks you the email). If you do not like it, just delete it and you are done. It will not cost you a dime!!
If you like it you can keep it and use it forever as a preset machine (saves are disabled). You just have to restart it every 10 minutes. For home self entertainment it could be acceptable. And it still won't cost you a dime!


Since you have similar arranger softwares, we would like you to make a comparison and hear your opinion. We are sure many forum readers will be interested as well, since a demo for a direct test is not always available.

Thanks.

Thanks,
I just might do that.

Taking my PSR s970 as an example, what about the hundreds of registrations I already have in place? How can they be utilized?

Hi Bernie,
If you’re getting confused , possibly best option would be to download the demo version of Groovyband software, and try it out. That’s the only way you’ll know if the software will work for you in a Live situation , which is what I gather you want it for.

The prices are in euro’s not USD, in the basic pak you only get 450 styles for 299 euro the top of the range pak has the 860 styles , its 499 euro.

All going well, then look into the Revo drums and additional styles.

Henni also mentioned he’ll be continuing on with his regular Revo drum styles as well.

So you still have choices

Someone please clarify:
1) To access the new sounds/styles from this program, do you need external hardware?
2) I see a tablet in one picture. Do you make all you selections on the tablet, and never touch the keyboards buttons? Seems awkward, if that's the case.
3) Is the Groovy program playing itself, or the internal sounds of the Yamaha host? What do you hook up to audio amps?

I've passed over most of these Groovy related posts because I don't think this is something I want, or need, but I'd like to know a bit more, just to stay informed.

Hi Dave,

1. You only need a tablet plus your arranger.
2. You can bind commands to your unused keys like I did.
3. The software plays the Yamaha which plays the amps.

I no longer find it awkward. I use my upper last keys for:
1. Fill next
2. Fill prev
3. Fill curr
4. Intro 3
5. Ending 3

Auto splitpoint lowers the split to the lowest possible place when I play so there are ample keys left to play. This way I do not have to touch the software during playback of the current song.

If all of this can be done easily when using an added module like i.e. the SD90/40, then nothing is more difficult IN THE LEAST using Groovyband Live!

Rather think of Groovyband Live! as another module that you could load onto a tablet of your choice - the tablet now being the module but using the audio outs from the Yamaha.

GROOVYBAND LIVE! IS ANOTHER MODULE LIKE A SD40

YOUR TABLET TAKES THE FULL PLACE OF THE MODULE

THE YAMAHA OUTPUTS DRIVE THE AMPS

IF YOU CAN USE A MODULE LIVE, THEN YOU CAN USE GROOVYBAND LIVE!

Bernie,

unfortunately you can NOT use your Yamaha registrations in any way. Too many different features and software architecture between our and Yamaha's style playing engine.

Sorry.

Our software runs on any Windows 10 PC (desktop, laptop, tablet) and interacts with a Yamaha arranger only through MIDI (usually a USB cable connecting the PC with the arranger).

The sound is generated within the arranger (using the arranger's voices and DSPs) and can be heard through the arranger's built-in speakers and/or through its audio out jacks.

In practice instead using the aging 20+ years old Yamaha style playing engine (running on a CPU within your arranger), we use our own (hopefully better) software algorithms to replace Yamaha's firmware.

Both our software and Yamaha's own firmware send midi commands to the built-in Yamaha chips in charge of actually producing the sound. We use the midi commands documented in the Data List that comes with your arranger.

You have 3 ways to interact with our software:

1) Touch native UI (i.e.: your fingers touching the tablet's screen). EVERYTHING can be done only with your fingers if you wish.

2) Mouse and keyboard connected to the PC. Optional. A bluetooth wireless mouse that augments a tablet touch screen is a killer combination, that boosts enormously your productivity.

3) Up to 4 physical midi devices (keyboards, pedalboards, control surfaces) connected via MIDI (USB cable) to your PC. You can map almost ANY command to any physical switch, knob, pedal, button, key, ..., available on the connected physical devices. Bindings howto.

More in depth discussion, about the merits and synergy of the various options, here.

Unfortunately ANY Yamaha arranger, irrespective of price, has a totally dumb midi implementation (do you remember the 20+ year old firmware, the lack of audio over USB, not being MIDI class compliant, ... ?) and does NOT send out exploitable midi data (i.e.: CC messages) when you push its buttons.

Even worse, every time you push a button the firmware changes the internal state of the sound engine, EVEN if you set midi local control to off (one of the MANY bugs we have discovered during the development of our software and we had to sidetrack).

So you'd better forget about it, do not touch any button, and use only the black and white keys of your arranger. It is a pity since all those buttons right above the arranger keyboard would have been quite handy to use!

All these limitations and lack of features that in 2020 everybody thinks are granted even on cheap devices, are a testament of the 30 years old design living within your Yamaha arranger, they never bothered to upgrade to modern standards.

In other market segments, where the competition is stiffer, things have gone differently (compare what you get - bang from the buck - from a ~1k€ MODX6 vs a ~4k€ Genos).

Everything is clearer now. Thank you for concise and straight answers.

Bernie