Inside the BK-9 , I selected a medium jazz swing style, and the drum's volume inside the MIXER was low even though it was at 100, so I moved it up to 127.

And I was wondering how else can I achieve the same thing, and came up with the idea to use the Make Up Tools for the Style. I boosted the Volume from 00 to 127, froze it, and saved it as a new style.

It turned out louder, but it wasn't super loud, but it was better than before.

Is there any other way to do what I described?

I mean I could've just brought down the Piano and Organ tones' volume down to a 60, just to make the drums stand out, but when I would've played a different registration, everything would've been louder.

Nothing annoys me more when there is a volume difference between songs...

You could try a couple of things… The first is to add some velocity (maybe about+ 10-15), which will make the Drummer hit a little harder, and those jazz kits respond to that well. You can do this in the make up tools, either to the whole kit, or to individual drums you would just like to boost a bit.

The other thing is to add some EQ to the kit at the make up tools and boost all the bands. Experiment with the parametric EQ, sweep it through the kit and find out what frequency helps make the Drums more present.

But, push come to shove, in jazz the drums generally are not mixed as hot as they are in pop anyway…

By the way, if you haven’t already tried it, try enabling the dynamic arranger. This will allow you to make the Drummer play harder (not just louder!) as you PLAY harder. It is an amazing feature, well worth spending a bunch of time with to see how you can make your styles respond to your playing a lot better. It works incredibly well if you are playing in piano mode With both hands. Set the chord recognition to pianist 2. Utterly amazing!

As far as I know, no other arranger at this point has Roland’s advanced “three note chord with sustain pedal up, five notes before a new chord with the sustain pedal down“. It makes playing pianistically and still getting good chord recognition better than any other arranger I have ever played!

If I play with velocity wouldn't that change the sound of each drum? I mean it wouldn't just make it louder, but it might trigger a totally different sound that resides on the same drum key note...

Since you mentioned EQ, tell me what's your favorite EQ setting for the "parts" in the Master Equalizer setting. I use "Jazz" since the piano sound on the left side sounds low.

Or what's your setting if you tweaked things yourself? (I would need the exact numbers "parameters" for the High, Mid, Low that you use, so I can set it up on my BK-9 and hear your setting)

I think the BK9 sounds pretty good with no compression and no EQ at all. And any settings that I use would be of no use to you, you don’t use the same PA I do, you don’t use the same speakers at home I do, and your room is undoubtedly different to mine!

Your ears can be your only guide, and comparison to well recorded CDs.

The dynamic arranger seems to have a bit of a “window“ of velocity recognition. In other words, if you play a really loud note then a really quiet note then a really loud note then a really quiet note quickly, the volume of the affected parts (or more accurately the velocity of them, the feature doesn’t work on the part volumes, but on the note velocities) doesn’t yo-yo around. I have never done any testing, but it feels like maybe there is about a couple of beats or more worth of analysis before you get a change.

I would suggest playing around with the feature and listening to what it is doing! Five minutes of listening is worth an hour of written explanation!

Finally, as to thinking the left hand of the piano sound is “low“, I would suggest going and sitting at a real piano. You will quickly find that a real piano’s bottom end is not fat like a bass guitar or an upright bass but so often keyboard players EQ the low end so it sounds artificially full. But that is not how a real piano sounds! I have played on 9 foot Steinway D pianos where the bass is thunderous, but it still isn’t like a bass guitar!

Networking, and finding people around you that have the “real deal“ and getting a bit of sitdown time on them will help you enormously to avoid the mistakes of artificially hyping the sound of real instruments. Play a REAL piano. Play a REAL Fender Rhodes. Play a REAL Clavinet. You will often be surprised by how they are not designed to be full and fat over the entire range. There is a reason that bass players still have a job!

Finally, playing a piano sound on plastic keys ALWAYS compromises the sound. The dynamics of moving a chunk of wood around leads to a much more pianistic performance than tickling little pieces of plastic! If you get the opportunity, pick up a VERY old digital piano with 88 wooden keys. It will not sound very good, but if you MIDI it into the BK9, you will be amazed at how more alive the BK9 piano sounds.