I was speaking with Jorgen Soresnson today about using an electric drum set to make really long and authentic style variations, and he mentioned that there might be a limit to the size a style file can be. Does anybody know if this is the case and if so what is that limit?

Thanks, Chony

Hi Chony,
are you refferring to bars or kb's ??
I notice some of the T2 styles are quite large ( kb's) compared to earlier PSR'styles.

Sorry, but I don't know what the limit is, if there is one.

best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by chony:
[b]

[This message has been edited by rikkisbears (edited 04-12-2007).]

Just checking my style libraries...The average Yamaha style is around 10 bytes...Roland's average is around 25 bytes...I have many Roland styles over 40 bytes, and no Yamaha's over 14 bytes...So I would think the Yamaha style size is small compared to Roland..

You probably mean Kbytes Korg styles are 15-20 Kbytes but they are compressed to save space.

Kind regards,
Tommy

A quick look at my T2 styles, the largest is 129KB called 70's TV theme

Hi Fran,
they must be the earlier styles I was reffering to like the Psr9000's etc .
The newer styles are much larger ( even on my little psr1500,) more bars & additional tracks , on the whole more sophisticated.

Hi Chony
I think there was definately a limit to the size of the style a psr9000 for instance could load,I'm going by emc's conversion software,
ie try to convert a large t2 style for instance to psr9000 format, the conversion works, but a message also crops up noting
the whole style probably won't load due to it's size.
May also be restrictions on the size the lower end arrangers can load, though to date I haven'tcome across one yet that my psr1500 won't load.

best wishes
Rikki
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Fran Carango:
[B]Just checking my style libraries...The average Yamaha style is around 10 bytes...

Hi Rikki, I actually selected the PSR9000 styles..I picked them out at random..Craig has mentioned the Tyros 2 styles were larger..I remember the PSR's that I owned had trouble loading converted styles because of size.

There is a limit, but with others I do not remember what it is! I know that when I had a PSR3000 and tried to use some Tyros styles, the keyboard would not accept them, as being too large. I think also that one or other of Michael Bedesem's software tools will tell you if the file is too big for a particular PSR. Perhaps if Michel is looking in he can perhaps give us the numbers.
Keith

Fran's Bytes are bigger than your Bytes.
Geeez.

Yamaha style size:

The PSR-2000, PSR-1000, PSR-2100, PSR-1100, and PSR-550 seem to have problems when a style is larger then 78 kb.

I have personally not found any limit with the newer instruments (although I agree with Jorgen, that there probably is one) and I have not heard of cases where the largest T2 styles will not load.

Regards,

Michael

Hi

Chony and I discussed real LONG parts. I think Chony mentioned that the maximum length of style parts is 256 measures.

Then my answer was: Maybe there will be a file size problem; but I really dont know.

The measure length of "normal" styles is often app. 50 measures; the 4 main parts being 4 measures long each.

If the main parts are 64 measures each the style will be app. 300 measures (6 times "normal"). And if the main parts are 256 measures each the style will be app. 1050 measures (20 times "normal").

As mentioned above I do not know if this will work. I doubt!

Regards
Jørgen

PS: And the style FILE SIZE will be 6 respectively 20 times bigger too. At least there will be room for very few styles in memory etc.

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The Unofficial YAMAHA Keyboard Resource Site

[This message has been edited by Jørgen Sørensen (edited 04-13-2007).]

I have a related question about total measures? From the previous post, can I assume that there isn't a limit on total measures per style part? The limit is more on the total measures per style?
Starkeeper

Thanks Jorgen,

The basic idea for those who are wondering, is to record extremely long variations with an electric drum set and a sequencer, that could be then used to give the music an extremely live feel. It would be like using MIDI files, but having the control of a style file.

Many of my styles already have 16 measure variations to them, and they total about 60-70 bytes, so I'm happy to hear that some of the T2's styles are up to 129k! That at least gives me some space to work with!

Hi Chony,
one way to test it would be to use a midi to style program , & create a dummy style.
The style doesn't have to make any sense, just use it to test the amount of bars etc you can use.

best wishes
rikki
[QUOTE]Originally posted by chony:

Hi ,
decided to try it on my psr 1500.

The psr 1500 definately has a limit to the size of the style it can load.
It won't load a file larger than 135kb's, preferably 134kb to be on the safe side.
Don't know if the T2 can do better??

The junk style I put together had 4,8 & 16 bar intro's & endings, normal 1 bar fills, & 128 bars for variations abcd. Well over 500 bars in total.

Maybe it would have worked with longer variations, but if there is a limit to the size of a style even a T2 can load, then the variations would have to have rather sparse instrumentation.

Actually rather an intersting exercise just to be able to find out what size style my psr was capable of loading.

best wishes
Rikki

The biggest style i was able to load without it saying 'not enough memory' was 54KB,on the 9000.I did sneak around this a few times by 'direct access' from floppy disk and into 'stylecreator'then
'fulledit' then find the parts measures you don't care for and make it smaller,then save to the'flash-memory'.Just make sure your going from 'Floppy' to 'style creator'-to 'user-flash-banks'.

[This message has been edited by mr9000 (edited 04-13-2007).]

[This message has been edited by mr9000 (edited 04-13-2007).]

Hi

[QUOTE]Originally posted by rikkisbears:
[B]Hi Chony,
one way to test it would be to use a midi to style program , & create a dummy style.
The style doesn't have to make any sense, just use it to test the amount of bars etc you can use.
[QUOTE]

To make a proper test, the style must have "normal" instrumentation. Meaning there must be "normal" patterns in drums, bass, 2 chord, pad and 2 phrase channels.

A file size at 134 kB and 500 measures sounds to me as a rather "thin" instrumentation.

Regards
Jørgen


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The Unofficial YAMAHA Keyboard Resource Site

[This message has been edited by Jørgen Sørensen (edited 04-13-2007).]

Hi Jorgen,
my style was very thin. Basically I just quickly did a midifile to style from a BIAB midi.
Drums , Bass, Strings, Piano.
All the intro's endings fills & variations were included that a psr requires. Just a copy & paste exercise.

I was mainly checking to see if psr could cope with bar lengths longer than 32bars. 32 appears to be the maxium in the style creation section of my psr ( unless I'm not doing something correctly)
I just used OMB to quickly dummy up a midi to style. The psr definately appears to play back the full 128 bar variations.
Also handy to know I can't load a file larger than 135kb's

Not doubt where Chony would run into trouble would be if his keyboard only has the same 135kb limit for a style as my psr 1500 has. The problem may not be the length of the styleparts but the size of the file.

best wishes
rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Jørgen Sørensen:
[B]Hi

[

Hi Rikki



Just my point!

Kind Regards
Jørgen

------------------
The Unofficial YAMAHA Keyboard Resource Site

This link shows (as some others do) that the max Style file size for Tyros1 is 120Kb.
http://www.svpworld.com/tyros_specs.htm

Unfortunately Yamaha don't seem to have given similar info in their specs. for Ty2. The style features are the same though (Number of intros, fills etc.etc.) so it "may" (fingers crossed) be logical to assume Ty2 can cope with at least 120Kb. Whether it'll load more than that presumably depends on whether Yamaha increased the amount of buffer memory allocated to styles in Ty2 compared with Tyros.

John

[This message has been edited by jwyvern (edited 04-14-2007).]

Thanks John,
actually that's a thought. I managed to load 135kb style file, but without OTS settings. That's possibly why I had an additional 15kb's for my style.

Looks like I'll have to aim for 120kb's max also, I do like having ots settings.

best wishes
Rikki


[QUOTE]Originally posted by jwyvern:
[B]This link shows (as some others do) that the max Style file size for Tyros1 is 120Kb.

Riki,

Could you send me a 140k test style? I'd like to see if it loads onto the T2. Unfortunately I'm a Mac person and haven't yet worked out how to use midi2style on my computer.

Thanks!
Chony

Hi Chony



As I told you the other night I have no personal experience installing midi2style at a Mac. However I know that it is possible; and I have even seen screendumps from a Mac.

Unfortunately I have lost the names of those people running Mac; but I think they were in one of the German groups and in the PSR Tutorial Group.

Regards
Jørgen


------------------
The Unofficial YAMAHA Keyboard Resource Site

Hi Chony,
I played around with it a bit more over the weekend.

I'm getting some rather bizzare results.
I actually used omb's import/export pattern copy function.

I initially created the 128bars from a BIAB style (midifile). then used the import export to put the psr style together.

Discovered I had to copy the intro's /endings into the style first. Then the 128 bar variations. Doing the other way round, I ended up with a "File too large" error message , even at 80kb's.

At 134kb's I couldn't open the style editing functions on the PSR. " memory Full " error. One of the styles even crashed it.

I made the file smaller by deleting some of the drums.
Went into the psr's list event editor & noticed only the first 128 bars of the style " variations " will display ie the drums in variation A, but not in the rest of the variations.

I'm still convinced all 4, 128 bar variations play back, ie I deleted the drums except for the first 8 bars on vari 1. , I deleted the first 8 bars on vari2, deleted all the drums on vari 3 & left vari 4 in tact.

I think trying to use more than the 32 bars per variation could cause you hassles. I think the psr's may be designed for a total of 128 bars for the 4 variations ie 32 bars each.

The instrumentation is really sparse, maybe ok if all you wanted was a jazz trio.

I'll send you the 2 files, just let me know where you'd like them emailed.
rikkisbears@hotmail.com
best wishes
Rikki

Hi Chony ,
further to my post below.
Decided to extend the variations on one of my psr1500 styles. ( Movie Swing)

The style started out at approx 50kb's, 8 bars per variation.

The maxium amount of bars I managed to reach was 48 for vari 1 & 2,
& 32 for vari 3&4.

best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by rikkisbears:
[B]Hi Chony,
I played around with it a bit more over the weekend.

I'm getting some rather bizzare results.
I actually used omb's import/export pattern copy function.

I initially created the 128bars from a BIAB style (midifile). then used the import export to put the psr style together.

Discovered I had to copy the intro's /endings into the style first. Then the 128 bar variations. Doing the other way round, I ended up with a "File too large" error message , even at 80kb's.

At 134kb's I couldn't open the style editing functions on the PSR. " memory Full " error. One of the styles even crashed it.

I made the file smaller by deleting some of the drums.
Went into the psr's list event editor & noticed only the first 128 bars of the style " variations " will display ie the drums in variation A, but not in the rest of the variations.

I'm still convinced all 4, 128 bar variations play back, ie I deleted the drums except for the first 8 bars on vari 1. , I deleted the first 8 bars on vari2, deleted all the drums on vari 3 & left vari 4 in tact.

I think trying to use more than the 32 bars per variation could cause you hassles. I think the psr's may be designed for a total of 128 bars for the 4 variations ie 32 bars each.

The instrumentation is really sparse, maybe ok if all you wanted was a jazz trio.

I'll send you the 2 files, just let me know where you'd like them emailed.
rikkisbears@hotmail.com
best wishes
Rikki

Thanks Rikki, I appreciate you going out of your way for me. I guess 32 bars will have to suffice! I'm sure it won't be that much of a problem. After some thought, it would be pretty hard to follow more than that.

My email address is cmilecki@yahoo.com

32 Bars is a lot. I doubt anyone could detect that it is in a loop, escpecially, if there are 3 other variations of 32.

Hi Chony,
I sent the files. Please let me know how you go.

Haven't quite worked out if you're planning to use "customized" onboard styles ( ie extend them & replace drum tracks), or user
styles you've created from midifiles or from scratch.

If it's customized onboard styles, I'd be happy to try & extend the variations on one of your favourite styles, using omb.
Never been quite sure if omb may mess up a mega style. Be an interesting exercise.

best wishes
Rikki
[QUOTE]Originally posted by chony:
[B]

Rikki,

Thanks so much. The past two nights I've had emergencies I had to take care of and I haven't had time to sit down - never mind turn on the keyboard! I'll report back to you as soon as I do.

Thanks, Chony.

THANK YOU RIKKI !!!

I really appreciate you going out of your way for me.

Very interesting: The 136 kb file you sent me called "movie4.sty" did load onto my T2, however the 136 kb file named "test.sty" got me the message "file to large - impossible to load."

The movie one is exactly 136,406 bytes and the test one is 136,900. So it would seem that the cut off point is somewhere in between those two numbers.

Its still a pretty large file, and I'm hoping to make the most of the space.

Thank you again Rikki,

Chony

Hi Chony,
sorry to hear that the memory size is only the 136 kb's, but that still a very large file, and 32 bars per variation is a fair length pattern. Good luck with your drum patterns.

best wishes
Rikki


[QUOTE]Originally posted by chony:
[B]

Let me get this straight... You are attempting to make styles with over 128 bar long variations ? When could you ever use something like this? Doesn't playing a fill reset to the beginning of the loop? So to utilize this, you would have to play for WELL over an entire song (a lot of songs have 16 bar verses or thereabouts) and THEN some, without a single fill....

Why would you want to do this? I would have thought that 16 bars is the absolute limit to how long you are willing to go without a fill (unless you are doing hiphop!). Eight bars then a fill is pretty normal. Filling the style data with countless bars you will never get to seems pointless.

However, if you wish to get to the limit of a style's size AND still get as much bars in as possible, don't forget to strip out ALL aftertouch (plus any other continuous controllers) that may have got recorded. That can eat up the data pretty fast...

Hi Chony

Interesting. I had been wondering for some time if using electric drums for longer more realistic patterns might be an option. I am also a drummer, so that would be easy enough to do.

It seems that pretty much all the styles, especially the "modern" music from the '50's and '60's forward sound pretty authentic, because of the simplicity of these styles.

That is not the case in MHO for jazz, swing and foxtrot type styles. They sound far from being realistic. Outside of short spurts of the horn and piano backgrounds, I have been reducing the background parts more and more as I go over time. Even the guitar and bass parts really don't make it.

So, I have experimented using bass pedals, drums and piano. Bass pedals are no problem to me as I am an organist. This definitely makes a difference in sounding very much "real." Only thing is as I tend to be more of an organist than a pianist, if I decide to go this way, I will have to develop a bit better left hand. But besides that, it almost makes me think why bother with an arranger if I'm considering doing all those parts?

So, with all of this, I kept thinking why they can't make some authentic sounding jazz, swing styles realizing that you could have variations of at least 16 bars. That's half of a standard 32 bar song per variation.

If I spent a little time, maybe I could come up with some longer styles using the onboard style creator, but , I have messed with that a bit in the past and it doesn't really thrill me to do this. I would much rather just sit down and play and have Yamaha or somebody else have done the work.

Another thing I noticed when experimenting with bass pedals while using Big Band Med 2, variation B, and using only the drums and rhythm guitar pattern, that when I played the bass part as I felt it and think it pretty much should be, it sounded quite good and natural.

I also then began wondering if a decent bass line recorded with that and other existing styles might do the trick.

Sounds like a lot of work. I wish Yamaha or somebody would put a lot more effort into the older styles of music so they don't sound so canned and fake.

My 2 cents.

Scott
http://ScottLMusic.com

Hi Diki

Another point I had been considering. Yes, it appears that regardless of how long you make the variation, if you use a fill you're right back at the start again. Unless, you put the fills in the variation. But then again, things happen when we perform, like some kind of interuption of some type, so if we we use a variation with fills built in, if you don't start at exactly the right time, the fills will all be wrong.

I guess it really boils down to the fact that arrangers are great as far as they go, but after playing in live band's for year's, there is no substitute for live musician's.

I think this is where some of the public has a problem relating to what an arranger keyboardist is doing. It is also the reason it seems the majority of arranger keyboardists seem's to never be satisfied with what they have and are either always trying to find that one right style, or keep changing keyboards, sometimes for very short periods of time and wonder why they are never totally pleased.

The funny part is, all I or most would need, I would think would be maybe 20 REALLY AUTHENTIC styles and you could play all night long night after night and be ok with it.

Well, Scott, as you are definitely well aware, a REAL bass line LEADS the chords, and an arranger bass line FOLLOWS the chords. This, to me, is one of the biggest 'dead giveaways' that you are using an arranger, and contributes a LOT to the 'fake' sound.

It's been a very long time since I did bass pedals, but I still do about 60% or so of our show playing LH bass simply because I can't stand the bass line the arranger chooses for me.

For me, music is very much a 'dual melody' approach. There's the melody at the top, and there's the melody at the bottom, and then in between is the rhythm and chords. Kind of like 'figured bass' from Baroque music. Lose the melody at the bottom, and you change the entire 'flavor' of a tune.

A really good exercise for anyone that wants to learn more about the importance of a bass line is to put your arranger into Full Piano Mode, but turn OFF the bass part. Split the keyboard, put your MBS part on, and play a tune. Just sing the melody, play chords in the RH. But PLAY a bass line.

You will notice you almost can't help walking bass lines UP to a chord change (or down, whatever!). The bass player ALWAYS knows what chord is next, and shapes his line to point to it before it arrives. The poor arranger bass line NEVER knows what the next chord is going to be UNTIL you play it! So forget 'leading' up to it... It just jumps there with no voice leading. Once you start to hear this, it is hard to be satisfied with the machine bass.

Hi Diki

The thing about playing left hand bass, to me, is there goes the chords. But, I see in your pic you use a guitar player, so that would take care of that.

There is always some kind of compromise. Main thing is to have fun with what we've got with the current state of technology.

Actually, we do do some tunes in the mode described above. Full keyboard chord recognition, Bass Inversion OFF (to stop the chords re-voicing while the bass moves), MBS on (for the bass line) and Pianostyle mode. This is a cool Roland feature (maybe Yamaha too, I don't know) where you have to play three notes simultaneously before the chord will change. So you can hit a chord with the RH (and LH plays bass note) then lift the RH and you can play a pretty good bass line without the chord rhythm ACC shifting. It works very well, and I set my D-Beam to turn the ACC parts on/off to simplify for verses or breakdowns. My guitarist loves it, as it finally gives him a rhythm guitarist to solo over!

I've got a system where a footpedal changes from this system to the more standard full auto LH chord recognition mode, so I can solo, too! And then go back to the LH bass stuff after my solo. It works pretty well...

We also both sing, so the main thrust isn't soloing or instrumentals, but more on singing and accompaniment (which allows me to use more LH bass). But you're right, it's all about just enjoying which technique we choose to use for any song. I just don't like using auto bass when I don't HAVE to..! As a solo, I would have to use it a lot more, but I rarely gig solo these days, so it's kinda moot.

[This message has been edited by Diki (edited 04-27-2007).]

Hi Diki

MBS, what exactly is that. I probably know what it is, but my mind is blank on it at the moment.

Yes. Yamaha has something similar where you can chord and then solo. The trick is to only have it read a chord when you want.haha

Your footpedal setup sounds like a good idea. I have been considering doing something similar, but haven't figured out how to set it up yet.

I currently have one fantastic singer lined up with another I'm about to contact.
There is a lot to be said for a 2 or more piece act. It is a lot more fun to me generally when playing with other good musicians.

MBS is Roland-speak for Manual Bass... It is one of the three Lower Keyboard Parts (on G70/E80 - E50/60 have one Lower and one MBS).

Diki,

If you listen to the music and styles I have created on my website, you'll get an idea of what I'm trying to do. I don't want my music to sound like it was done with an arranger; I want it to sound as live as possible.

The idea was to make very long variations with a real drummer that would give a very real live sound to the music. Of course you would have to make sure never to make a mistake -- but the most I ever mistake is a note - not a full beat and deffinitely not a measure!

The truth is that I've already made quite a few styles with 16 measures, and I think this is what I'm going to aim for.

Chony

Hi Chony

A little hard to find your web site at http://simchatunes.blogspot.com/
This is the one?

Wonderful music. Just great!

Jørgen


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The Unofficial YAMAHA Keyboard Resource Site

When I make my styles, I don’t make them with less than 16 measures.

That gives me a chance to very the drums and bass within the style. The loop does not sound as mechanical as a 2 or 4 measure loop. Plus it gives a live feel to it if you include some semi fills at the 8 and 16th measures.

Also, I think it is so essential to use foot pedals for fills. When you can throw in a fill for half of a measure with out making it sound like a full fill, that can make all the difference in the world and make it sound live. Especially if the last half of the fill has good drum roles and syncopation.

This issue, amongst others, is one of the reasons I like to encourage people to ask for more ARRANGER features to be developed for our keyboards, rather than taking the state of the art at the moment, and freezing it, and then adding workstation feature after feature, with no fundamental improvement in the actual arranger part....

Why can't we have more variations, more fills, more break/fills, more control over what happens after a fill, etc., etc.?

Why not allow 64 bar variations, and if a fill-to-same is pressed, jump forward to the next 16 bars of the same variation? In fact, there are very few arrangers, if any, that even have dedicated fill-to same fills, yet alone options to what happens next.

Why not have a fill dedicated to each and every transition?

Why not have a break/fill for each and every variation?

Why not have a 'swing' control for simpler 8-beat and 16-beat styles so you can vary the feel? (They used to have this one back in the day)

THESE are all fundamentally ARRANGER features, and to be honest, I've seen very little new on arrangers lately. Oh, yes, they are packing them with more and more questionably useful workstation features, HD recorders, samplers, full 16-track sequencers, dubiously useful database features, tons of non-arranger features. But where are the fundamental improvements to basic arranger technology, lately?

About the only major improvement has been the move from two variations to four, but they didn't increase the fills to allow for this enough. Roland have four Variations, but only seven fills. You need 16 to cover ALL the transitions. I would gladly trade an HD recorder for enough fills that EVERY transition is smooth and natural.

I would gladly trade a full-featured sequencer (we've ALL got computers capable of FAR better sequencing, or you wouldn't be reading this!) for longer variations and better fill-to-same rules, or a dedicated break/mute for every variation.

I don't know about you, but I've already GOT a couple of workstations. I don't need workstation features on an arranger. Where are the fundamental improvements to arrangers?

Also, to address the question of really long variations, with semi-fills pre-programmed in them, these (to me) are of questionable value. Unless the tune you play has all the fills EXACTLY where your style puts them you are no longer in control. You are almost getting into SMF country there, but WITHOUT the advantage of not having to play the chords!

I can see 8 bar styles as very useful, 16 bars without ANY fill (that YOU control), somewhat less, but OK, I can see how some tunes might work that way, but anything longer, and you are getting into 'Song/Style' territory, where the style is only really useful for the specific song it was designed for. Might as well use SMFs with Mark/Jump points (for controlling the structure) and get back your left hand!

The feature that we all REALLY need to make very long variations work is the ability to play a fill-to-same that DOESN'T reset the loop, but just 'jumps' after the fill to the next 8 or 16 bar section in the same variation. Now THAT would be a fundamental improvement in arranger functionality....

Who's going to be the first to implement it?

Hi Chony,
don't know if this would work "musically", but if you're trying to get away from the repetative nature of a style,would it work if you had tiny variations on a style track depending on whether you played, a maj, minor or 7th chord.
You've got 16 tracks to play with, so hyperthetically if you had your main drum rhythm on channel 10, possibly you could set up 2 or 3 tracks for channel 9 and have slight variations
ie setup a slightly different pattern for a minor chord, and another one for a 7th by either
adding/changing or deleting a drum instrumentinstrument, or by altering the pattern slightly. Could also be done for bass etc, depending on how many empty tracks you have in the style.

Technics did it back on the KN3000 with some of their styles. Didn't work terribly well because the differences were too great between the patterns. ie you played the major , sounded fine, you played the minor & the pattern was glaringly different.

best wishes
Rikki
[QUOTE]Originally posted by chony:
[B]

Hi Chony (and Rikki)

Good point Rikki.

Chony, I think you would like to test the method Rikki proposed.

You can read more about it at http://www.jososoft.dk/yamaha/articles/style_11.htm
(section: Chord Type dependent Accompaniment)

Hope this helps you.
Jørgen


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The Unofficial YAMAHA Keyboard Resource Site

Hi Jorgen,
thank you for the link. It explains it so much better than I could have.

best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Jørgen Sørensen:
[B]Hi Chony (and Rikki)

The only problem here is that the variations in the variation (!) are chord type triggered, so the same chord structure will STILL repeat the same pattern. It WILL be different from song to song, but within one song still be repeating....

A better solution (IMO) would be to allow velocity triggered variations, so as you play harder, the drums would not only get louder (as some arrangers allow) but also to trigger different tracks. Now place that velocity crossover point in the middle of your average playing strength, and you will ALWAYS get a different track each time you play.

Roland allow a certain amount of this capability, allowing you to switch parts on or off with velocity (as well as just make them louder/softer), but unfortunately only allow you ONE drum track, so you can only make it louder or softer. But it works well with guitar tracks, and a combination of this AND chord related pattern changes can make for a VERY non-repetitive picking or strumming pattern. Of course, it uses up Parts at an alarming rate, so with only eight style tracks, you have to keep the style very simple (at least in terms of simultaneous sounds).

But it IS one more way to squeeze variation out of shorter length patterns.

Thanks to a lot of great feedback, I think I'm pretty much convinced to go with the 16 measure variations. That's what I've been doing until now and it has worked great, so I think I'll continue that way.

Rikki, sounds like a very interesting idea. I'm going to have to think about whether I want to get my hands that dirty!

Thanks, Chony

Hi Chony,
I did actually test it, before suggesting it,( in omb.) I just created 3 drum tracks one, with bass drum, 1 with hihat & 1 with cymbals . Then set 1 track to play on maj, another min another on 7th. I wanted to make sure that they were triggering independantly, depending on the chord type.

Probably gets too complicated if you try and do variations for a lot of instruments, but you could just create drum variations for maj, min & 7ths.

Personally I haven't got the musical skill to come up with additional style tracks, I'm more into editing existing.


best wishes
Rikki