Does Yamaha Yamaha may be humanized by Roland?

I read usually this great forum, and desire to buy a new keyboard.
I listened Roland, Yamaha and Technics.
I like Roland keys, sounds and styles (and morphing); I like some sounds and a lot of possibilities of Yamaha (screen, a lot buttons, pads...), and the friendship of Technics.
But I cannot buy the three ones :-))
Frankly, I would buy a Yamaha by their possibilities, some sounds (not piano sound), its screen, more buttons, etc.
But... (sorry, it is my opinion) I hate its toy keys, and its styles are quite unbearable to me: mechanical, repetive and not human, with very scarce variation, almost all reduced to drums and guitars. I prefer styles from Roland and Technics, richer, various, musical, longer, more human: there is a music behind, not as Yamaha (where there is a machine behind -IMO-).
Because it is not a Yamaha with Roland keys and styles, neither a Roland with the possibilities of Yamaha: ¿what option will be less bad?
1. To buy a yamaha and “try to humanize” its mechanic styles, or to load converted styles from Roland and Technics. But perhaps those styles do not sound as good...
2. To buy a Roland, use and import all the rich Roland styles, and to forget the Yamaha beautiful screen, pads, buttons, etc?

What option will cause to feel me less badly? What decission is the less bad one? What decision I lose less with?
Cheers.
Blue

You are very perceptive! I don't have the answer, but be sure to check out Ketron keyboards before you decide.
DonM

One thing Yamaha has over the other makes is XG. This is Yamaha's extension to MIDI. With the later keyboards (PSR740, 2000 and above) you have access to a very powerful synth, similar to an MU80 but with more effects, or an MU100 with fewer voices. With one of the XG editors available or XGworks to drive it you are way ahead of the others. Much as I like playing keyboards by Technics or Korg, I wouldn't want to be without the power of XG.

Bryan

I use a 2k now, but I bought my PSR 630 on the strength of it possessing XG. Admittedly the sound quality is more MU50 than MU80 (32 note poly, less sample memory) but it made life so much simpler when developing midi files on a pC as I could use a cheapo hardware Yamaha chipset soundcard and get quite a good approximation to the final result.

If you already have a soundcard, a Yamaha soft synth such as the SYXG50 will also do the job in developing MIDI files. I keep a copy on my laptop for that purpose. Just don't try to use it with a keyboard as the latency is quite high.

Bryan

Yamaha may have XG, but Roland has GS. Both are extensions of the MIDI code. One thing I liked about my Korg i was that I could mute accomp. instruments live. I haven't learned how/if I can do that on my Yamaha 2k.

You can mute any instrument by merely pressing the button directly below that instrument's icon. Yamaha, and most other manufacturers seems to add too many instruments to their styles. Most of us would sure prefer at least one variation of each style that has nothing more than a bass and drum--no horns, piano, guitar, strings, etc. Sure would make life a lot easier if you didn't have to mute out those sounds.

Cheers,

Gary

Thanks, Gary. Does that mean I have to go to the edit screen to do this? I assume so...

A thought - it is possible to load Roland styles onto Yamaha PSR keyboards. Many are available at SVPWorld.com and at psrtutorial.com. There are also two excellent yahoo groups that have styles - www.yahoogroups.com

Travlin'easy,
I couldn't agree with you more. It would be nice if they had one variation that would tone the style down a bit. To be honest ever since I started playing arrangers, I have never once used a preset style in its entirety. If I use a preset style I'll usualy just pick one or two parts that I like in that style and that's it. I'd say 95% of the time I make my own styles. I use an arranger for the ability to create user styles rather than use preset ones. What interests me is the ability to trigger changes with the keys. It would be great to find a full blown synth that had an arranger function as well.. That would be the best of both worlds...

Squeak

[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 06-09-2003).]

Hello,
You can purchase a CD on eBay for $1.50 that has 3500+ converted styles FOR the Yamaha PSR series instruments. They are terrific styles (I recognize Roland and Korg and other arrangements) that sound great in any Yamaha arranger.
Zuki

Squeak you might want to check out the new Roland Fantom S. Although the reviews over at Harmony Central are mixed, (some people don't like it, some people do), I heard it in person and it sounded pretty decent to me. The nice thing about it is it is a Full Blown Synth Workstation. Sampling, Sequencer, Expansion Bays, etc., and it is able to make Loop based sounds that in my estimation sound very similar to the Style Accompaniment on the PSR Keyboards. But instead of just 8 tracks on the PSR 2000, for instance, for Style Accompaniment, the Roland Fantom S can have up to 16 different sounds playing at the same time, all loop based. You have to realise that all Style Accompaniment on the PSR Arrangers or any other Arranger, is just sound loops with some variations, breaks, fills, etc. A Keyboard Wiz at GC demonstrated the Fantom S to me and it sounded essentially the same as my PSR 2000 Style Accompaniment sounds, ie., rich full bodied sampled sounds playing in realtime and with the Keyboardist having the ability to play right along with them. The neat thing about the Fantom S is the Sample Loops you can create are basically unlimited in Variation, Style, Rhythm and Expressiveness. As a comparison the Yamaha Motif can only use 4 sounds at a time. I owned a Motif 7 for a short while but I hadn't explored the Sampler capabilities at all by the time I returned it. The Keyboard Wiz at GC told me the Motif was only able to use 4 Sampled sounds at a time as compared to the Fantom S's 16 Sampled sounds at a time. His demonstration was quite convincing. It sounded excellent. On a side note the Fantom S has only 64 Note Polyphony and the SRX Epansion Cards that they have for it do not increase the Polyphony at all. But maybe they will make one in the future that will increase the Polyphony much the same way as Yamaha made one for the 9000Pro to increase its Polyphony. The Fantom S has 64 Megs of WAV ROM and also 32 Megs Sampler RAM expandable to "288" Megabytes, the largest of any Workstation on the Market.

Best regards,
Mike

If I'm not mistaken, the Phantom S uses a loop sequencer similar to the XP boards (called RPS). As I remember, this discussion Squeak is continuing stems from an earlier thread where we lamented the absence of a loop seq. on arrangers. To make my point again, synth loop sequencers are good, but require that you plan ahead and probably pre-record your loops. What arrangers need is a looper that will record a style and some chord changes LIVE.

Look what's on the General Discussion and also the Roland JV/XP Forums
http://www.synthzone.com/ubbs/Forum1/HTML/002935.html

Cassp,
You're right about the sequencer on the Fantom.. It is based on the XP series (which was a great series of synths too). You're also right about my disappointment with the lack of loop based sequencers on many arrangers. It would be great if there was an arranger that had the auto accomp, but also allowed you to completely bypass that and use a standard 16 track that loops within itself (outside of the style recorder).. Something with a set up like 16 tracks plus (1) pattern track.. This way you can utilize pattern chaining and whip out songs fairly quickly if you don't want to use the auto accomp feature. I do like the auto accomp feature, but at times it's quite limited depending on what you want to do... Good example is I'd never attemp to do any serious dance, techno, hip hop, rap, and r&b on some arrangers.. With these styles you really need a straight loop based 16 track sequencer that allows you to chain patterns and so forth.


Squeak

[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 06-09-2003).]

Hi,
just wondering if the ultimate purpose of having one of these keyboards is to play it live( by that I mean using all the arranger functions and just playing) or to actually use it as a basis for recording songs( ie using the sequencer for creating midifiles )?
I have all 3 and they're all so different.
best wishes
Rikki