Chord Variations in Style...Please read in...

Dear Arranger users I have a question to ask some of you might know what I am talking about is that Korg arranger’s keyboards offer up to 6 chord variation in style what actually does that you hear a different ACC every time you change a chord say from major to minor or from minor to 7th now PA80 is one step ahead and you can actually have different instruments assigned for each chord variation, now I want to know what other keyboard in the market offer these same chord variation feature? Is it possible to do it in PSR2000? Now I know that Genesis offer up to 3 chord variation but does Yamaha keyboards offer that? What about Roland, please guys help me out here I am in the market for an arranger and this single feature is a major deciding factor for me…

Arbaz,
the Roland VA7 can record a different variation for Maj, Min and 7th chords for every section of a style (intro, basic, advanced, fills, ending). This means, for example, that it will play an entirely different Intro depending if you play a major, minor or seventh chord. I haven't checked the SD1, but I would be surprised if it couldn't do the same.

[This message has been edited by Dreamer (edited 10-24-2002).]

Can the VA76 do this as well ?


AJ

Thanks Dreamer,
Do you know if it is also possible on PSR2000! or any other yamaha board?

AJ,
the answer is YES, and it makes sense, considering that basically it's the same keyboard.
(are you planning to buy one?)

Arbaz,
I don't have a clue about Yamaha, but there are so many Yamaha users on this board that I bet you'll get soon an answer.

My PSR-8000 does not provide for different accompaniments for different chord forms. I suspect that this has not changed as the new (4-section) styles remain partially backward compatible with the older PSRs.

I am not really planning to buy a VA76 at this time Andrea. I want to check out the XD9 and maybe the Tyros first before I consider making another purchase. I would not rule the VA76 out though, but I need to spend some more time with it and the others before making a decision. I'm not sure I need another arranger anyway ( at least not for now ), and I think I might be hard pressed to find another one with similar editing features and the flexibility of my PA80. Still, the 2 fills per style thing has always bugged me about it and I'm not closing the door on anything. Money is an issue at this time, maybe that will change a little later on, but if I was making the purchase now, I might have to sell the PA80 to get a VA76, and I'm not sure I want to do that at all. I definitely am keeping the Motif, but anything else could become expendable if I really gotta have one of the latest boards.


So for right now, pending demos ( or more demo time ) with these boards my priorities and possibilities look like this for a new arranger:

First choice: XD9. Great sounds / styles ( pending a live demo of course ) and not as expensiveProbably can buy it and keep the PA80.

Next choices The XD1 or the VA76 but would likely have to sell off my PA80 or some other gear. I like the VA76 more than I thought I would, but I'm not quite ready to change to it from the PA80.

After that:
Genesys, I love the concept of the Genesys, but it's another board that I can't really afford right now. Who knows though, I could demo one and like it so much that it would compel me to make the moves I need to to get one

Tyros, and anything else I missed. Unless Tyros is a lot different than the 9000 / other current PSR boards, I'm not really interested. I already have Yamaha sounds in the Motif anyway. Would also have to sell my PA80 for it.

AJ




[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 10-24-2002).]

Cliff

Yes, the Yamaha arrangers including the PSR8k do provide for different accompaniments for different chord forms. However, that is seldomly used in the Yamaha styles.

You can see how that is done by using the CasmEdit program from Evgeni Osonenko. It can be downloaded from http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yamaha-psr-styles/files/Osenenko/

Kari

Hi

ARBAZ and DREAMER say about chord variation in styles for Maj, Min and 7th chords, for every section of a style (intro, basic, advanced, fills, ending). It give a great richness for styles, so they may be less repetitive.

But, when these VA7 styles are converted for a keyboard, e.g. PSR2000, whose styles haven't that "chord variation", what's happens?

Playing these VA7 converted styles on a PSR2000, have you similar chord variation?

Cheers

Tracknet

I am not sure what you mean by saying:

"But, when these VA7 styles are converted for a keyboard, e.g. PSR2000, whose styles haven't that "chord variation", what's happens?"

As I said earlier the Yamaha arranger keybords support the same type of "chord variation" capability as e.g. the VA7.

What happens when you do the conversion is entirely dependent on how you do it. If you do not program the variations then obviously they do not exist. If you use an automatic conversion program then it depends on the capabilities of that program.

Anyway, the results of an automatic conversion program are nowhere near the original quality. A lot of tweaking is usually needed to get a good result.

Kari

Kari, I mean about these previous statements:
"Korg arranger’s keyboards offer up to 6 chord variation in style what actually does that you hear a different ACC every time you change a chord say from major to minor or from minor to, and you can actually have different instruments assigned for each chord variation"
"Roland VA7 has different variations for Maj, Min and 7th chords for every section of a style (intro, basic, advanced, fills, ending). This means, for example, that it will play an entirely different Intro depending if you play a major, minor or seventh chord"

So, what I mean is:
If you get a Roland or Korg style (with these chord variations), and you convert it to play it on PSR2000, will have you similar chord variations on your PSR2000 as you have playing it on Roland or Korg kb?

Tracknet,
the answer is yes, but only if:
1- the PSR 2000 has indeed this option (i. e. to play different variations depending on the chords played -Maj, Min, 7th - which I don't know)
2- the conversion program you use can handle this feature, like Kari1 wrote.

[This message has been edited by Dreamer (edited 10-26-2002).]

Tracknet

Below is the list of chord types Yamaha arranger keyboards support (at least the high end ones). You can select for which types of these the the track you have made (by some means e.g. recording it with a seguencer program) is used. You could select just one of them or any combination you want.

This you can do separately for each section like the intros, variations and the endings.

I suspect that there is a limit for different chord types/chord type combinations for each section, namely you should not exceed the 16 midi tracks available. However, I haven't experimented with this.

Here's the list of chord types:

Maj
Maj6
Maj7
Maj7(#11)
Maj(9)
Maj7(9)
Maj6(9)
aug
min
min6
min7
min7b5
min(9)
min7(9)
min7(11)
minMaj7
minMaj7(9)
dim
dim7
7
7sus4
7b5
7(9)
7(#11)
7(13)
7(b9)
7(b13)
7(#9)
Maj7aug
7aug
1+8
1+5
sus4
1+2+5

Kari

Hello Dreamer so you are saying that it is possible to record different chord variations in PSR2000 and they will change according to the chord you play, that is great so basically PSR2000 offeres 3 chord variations comparing to Korg's 6 am I right?

As far as I remember (and it has been a while since I have had a Yamaha instrument), the PSR series used to record all the accompaniment in C7maj, and automatically change the chord type to a Maj, 7th, or a Min, depending on the chord you played; however, they DID NOT allow you to record DIFFERENT patterns for different chord types. You may want to double-check that the Yamaha keyboards now work differently. The Rolands do indeed let you record different patterns for different chord types.

Regards,
Alex

Concering support for different chord types in Yamaha styles we have to talk about two issues:
First, what is the style format itself supporting, and second, what are the possibilities to use the different style options in the keyboard itself during recording.
As Kari has already stated, the Yamaha style format is supporting different tracks for different chord types, but unfortunately this is used by Yamaha only to a small extend. Basically I detected the ability during converting Roland styles to Yamaha format ;-).
The disadvantage is, you can not use this style feature during recording or manipulating styles with the keyboad itself. You have to use special programs which have the ability to work with the so called CASM section of the style. This section is defining all the relations between style tracks, chord types and used instruments.

Ulrich

Arbaz,
actually I did not say that. I wrote that I don't know if the PSR 2000 supports this feature. For what I know about Yamaha arrangers, they seem to have only a limited amount of memory dedicated to storing your own styles, so I have a feeling that you are not allowed to record very complex styles with a lot of variations.
Again, I cannot swear on this, because I have never owned a Yamaha arranger. I hope that an actual PSR 2000 user will reply to say the final word on this issue.

Hi Kari

Well, I am not familiar with the intricacies of CASM editing. I am sure that varying styles according to the chord played is not documented in the PSR-8000 manual--which I am quite familiar with. Yamaha puts all variations in a style in a single midi file (using an .sty extension instead of .mid). The different sections of the style are identified by metatags, such as "Main A", "Ending B", etc. The manual does not mention separate metatags for different chord forms.

You seem to be saying that, within "Main A" (for example) you can get variations by selecting which tracks are active for which chord forms. Is this right? I can then see how one can get chord variations and how the 16-track limit might constrain these. I would guess that creating styles with chord variations in Yamaha format would be more difficult than for other arrangers. OTOH, the Yamaha approach might give more flexibility in selecting which chords cause the variation.

Clif

Hi Cliff

As Ulrich has already pointed out there is a difference between what can be done with the keyboard itself and what the Yamaha style file format (SFF) supports. The Yamaha keyboards have limited capabilities for style creation (in this respect).

One needs to use special programs that can manipulate the CASM section to be able to use all the features that are supported by the SFF. One of the best is the CasmEdit I mentioned earlier.

And yes, I believe what you stated in your posting is correct. Using all the features supported by the SFF is more difficult because you need to understand the format to be able to use the special programs. But once you do that, it may actually be easier to work with a program which has a nice user interface (compared to the crude facilities provided by the keyboard).

Kari

Thank you all who tried to help I have just read the PSR2000 and TYROS manual and it is sad that Yamaha arranger don't let you record different chord variations all you can do is record in Cmaj7 and the keyboard will change the chord when you change the chord but there is no way of recording minor or 7th variations or any other for that matter, even Roland allows you to do that up to 3 chord variations Korg definitely win in the complex style creation department with up to 6 chord variations in each style.

Hi

Yamaha styles can hold different patterns for the chord types Kari listed in any combination. You have the 16 MIDI channels for this.

In Yamaha style channel 9 and 10 are for drum and percussion. The remaining 14 channels can be used for different patterns to the remaining style parts (bass, chord1, chord2, pad, phrase1 and phrase2).

Lets us say you want to have 4 different bass patterns you will now have 10 channels to the rest of the style parts.

In the CASM section the 4 source channels which holds the 4 bass patterns are redirected to output channel 11, which is the Yamaha specification for the bass channel.

You can read more about this at The Unofficial YAMAHA PSR Resource Site
at http://home7.inet.tele.dk/js/musik/740pages/

Follow menu PSR Links -> Articles

Jørgen

You dont record the chord variations on the keyboard by playing the different chords, its more complex than that and needs to be done using a midi sequencer. I first recall that my early PSR520 featured this, on certain styles if you played diminished or 7th chords you would get extra instrumental phrases being added or perhaps the bass line would change. Later on Yamaha added a feature called "Virtual Arranger", which apparently added subtle chord variations to the accompaniment (perhaps to trigger these extra bits in the styles?) to the PSR730 (and 630 also). This didnt seem to stick though and was dropped on the x40 series. I haven't noticed on the latest styles that different chords trigger different musical phrases in the style, but apparently it is still possible.
The way in which it appears to work is that in the header data of the style, there are a number of bytes for each track which represent whether or not the track will play or be muted if certain chords are detected. So, it is possible for certain tracks in the style to play if a min7 chord for example was played and others muted, and vice versa. Editing the header data of the style requires 3rd party software e.g. CASM EDIT and also some knowledge of style editing. Its an interesting area but one that is seldomn explored.

Simon

Dear Arbaz,

YES, all Yamaha PSR's, even my quite old PSR-500, have the capability of "doing different things" (like introducing different phrases, or introducing different instruments) when chord variations (M,m,7th, etc.) are played. Very few internal Yamaha styles use this feature. I've mostly found it in converted styles from other synth manufacurers. When these styles (Roland, Technics, etc.) are converted so they can be played in a PSR you can here these introduced variations clearly. However, the effect is not very pleasing. You would not like it. Most of us try to MINIMIZE (e.g., get rid of) these features in the converted style (e.g., ELIMINATE the introduced new instruments, etc.) to make it sound better on our Yamaha PSR's.

Bob

So basically it is possible but not in the keyboard it self but using the 3rd party software? Am I correct? in i30, PA80 you simply choose to record what ever chord variation you want and then assign that particular chord variation to any chord change and then do the same you are allowed to do it 6 times it simply means that each main variation in style is composed of 6 chord variations which are freely assignable to any chord of your choice like say you have recorded a bass pattern on bass track now for simplicity name it "A" now change the chord variation from the menu to chord variation 2 and record again a new bass pattern to the same bass track we are going to call it "B" now we can do it up to 6 time after doing that I can simply assign that if I want to hear pattern "B" when I play a minor chord and pattern "A" when I play a major chord and so on, so basically everything can be done on the keyboard itself, but that is not the case in Yamaha boards you will have to use a software am I right?