How much time do you spend just programming your board ?

There are so many features that are available on today's modern arrangers. You can do a lot with them out of the box of course, but I feel the need to tweak mine for different functions.I am working with the PA80 for a live act and it doesn't have the song registry function that the PSR2000 has, but it does have 160 internal performances aka registration memories in Yamaha speak. It also allows for 48 user styles onboard plus another 48 which can be played instantly from disk. With all this plus setting up custom voices or voice combinations, multipad functions, harmonizer settings, etc etc, I find that I have spent a ton of time adjusting and tweaking many settings on the board for convenient use in my live act. ( Initially I had set it up as a board used strictly for composing ). Next order of business for sure for me though is getting a hard drive for it. Between the midifiles I have, the extra styles, and different performance settings ( it morphs back and forth between composing and live play ), I have well over 30 disks filled already and I'm not nearly done.

I find that sometimes the hardest thing for me to do live is just get from one song to the next smoothly, but as I set the board up for my particular performances that part does get easier.

I had the PSR2000 with it's song registry function. I never really got into the board enough to take full advantage of it as the problems with mine started early and I spent most of my time with it trying to figure out how to make my registrations work properly. Ultimately it never happened and the tech at the repair center pronounced the OS fried in it .


AJ

I dont do much solo work, but when I do I'm the same as you; it's all about setting up performance memories (on my PSR630) to get from song to song with a minimum of fuss. On my synth (Ensoniq SD1) I have done very little programming as I'm a basic piano/ strings / brass / organ person so there's not much point in adjusting something thats already pretty good. Given the discernment of most of my audiences (do you know any Roy Orbison and could you turn it down please?) then searching for a killer piano is a bit pointless.

On the other hand, a killer sax would be nice - assuming I could play the keyboard in a sympathic fashion with the two fingers I usually have spare at any one time.

I spent a couple of hours the day I got it, and maybe a couple more since then. Mostly I just play it!
Best way to learn is "under fire".
DonM

I spend most of my time building music databases and then refinning them (forever and ever and ever .....!). The MDBs are my reference from which I then copy entries to my registrations to build a night's program.
I usually find that I am forever "tweaking" my arrangements when ever I play them (at home). So to answer your question - the process of programming the board never stops.
I guess because we have the capability we make the effort.

With the VA7 you HAVE to spend a lot of time programming before you play your songs. There are so many sounds inside that simply searching for the right one for the song you have in mind can take hours. So I usually program before my User Performances and then save them (using the name of the song) to my zip disk. Then, when I want to play that song, I simply use the search function of my database and... voilà. This is not so easy as it may seem, because you can save 10 sounds with each songs, not to mention the volume balance, the effects send, etc...

When I was performing I wouldn't spend too much time on programing. It would really depend on the keyboard I was using at the time. However, I really hated keyboard limitations and never used the internal sequencers on a performance. I felt they really held back performance potential. Mainly sound quality and DSP power. I would always use an external sequencer, so I could use the keyboards effects to their full potential within a performance. That's what's nice about the performance set ups on arrangers. each performance part could use the boards full potential as far as sound quality and its other features. With synths it was often a pain in the butt because you had 16 parts to the performance and those performance set ups were often limited because of the boards DSP limitations and othe things. They weren't really "snap shots" so to say like they were on arrangers. With arrangers when you pressed the performance you wanted the WHOLE keyboard reconfigured for that set up, but with synths you didn't really have that control....

Squeak

Hi AJ,
None!
I have a PSR-2000. All my song setups are ou floppy disk!
There's a lot of songs that I know but don't sing, that's not set up. I have right at 500 song setups on 3 floppies! Only time I have to use programing is when I leasn a new song.
I use single reg. mem. I have the song in front of me I will be ready to play it quickly, there is a code on the page I can have the song setup in about 2 or 3 sec. Some songs require some extra setting maybe a different Intro or Ending!
Everbody to their own taste, but thats the way I do it.
My user area is plum full of styles!
All the best,
Nobby



[This message has been edited by Nobby (edited 04-16-2002).]

I work alot on programming my boards. For one, I play arabic music, so most boards out there are not ready to go for that kind of music. Even the Oriental ones.

I mostly work on making new sounds to use for my solos, and also making new styles/patterns to use for the songs I play.

I personally enjoy creating new sounds and styles that no one else has.

In live performances, the music I play requires alot of pattern/style changes, tempo changes, scale changes, sound changes, so I have to be really handy with button pushing, and setting up performances/registrations, does not help much (at least for me) due to many changes that have to go on so I would still have to change from one registration to another so often.

Every keyboard I owned or own (I currently have T3, X1 and WK2), I have worked alot of hours and still do to program new sounds , sounds that fit the type of music I play. At certain times I would spend 3-4 hours just creating one new Sax or Accordion or ...ETC.

I'm with JonPro,

I have all my songs set up in reg. memory, the way I want them to be, but the changing and tweaking never ends........

Eric