Steve M sx900 review?

? How do you feel so far Steve

Donny, Since you asked I'll write my thoughts. I know plenty has already been written already but for me here's what I love about it.

1. Touch screen
2. Better Keybed
3. The operating system mimics Genos
4. Playlist feature for me when this was released on the Genos it was the proverbial "goose that laid the golden egg." Makes using the sx900 live much easier than it was with the s970.
5. Improved speaker system, I can really see myself using the speakers only in a small gig situation.
6.The ability and ease of just like on Genos to go in and tweak instruments a little differently.
7. Many of my Genos and former PSR s970 registrations work some need tweaking.
8. It's much easier to access midi file and mp3 file play verus the old PSR series.

The only downside and it's not a deal breaker:
I wish they had kept a "Country" category for styles, just not sure what they were thinking when they put a few of them in the "World Category" and some in the "PopRock" category.

I'm really happy with the purchase.

Hi Stephen,
I agree, a few of the styles were put under strange categories. You do get used to where they are, EVENTUALLY, sorting 4,000 styles helped. Haha

Would it be possible to create a category and then choose which styles to put into it?

My first thought is do something like Rikki did. The way around it would be to create folders for each genre, put them in the user area or onto a usb stick according to country, pop rock, etc. that would help.

Steve thanks for your thoughts on sx900.

Thanks for the review Steve, and I agree the style category is somewhat impractical, especially having country styles spread out that way. I miss the 8 beat category, and 60's seems scattered too. Is it the same on the Genos?

My only arranger keyboard for the last 10 years was the PSR-3000 and a Technics KN-7000. Quite different, I love a lot about the SX-900, but it's still a learning process for me, like calling up recorded songs (midi) from a USB stick, and just being able to play, edit, and save quickly. I'm also slowly getting use to the "player" on the SX-900, it's just a different way of calling up songs, than the old 3000 OS.

And registrations and playlists took me awhile. I mostly get it now, that a Playlist is the new music finder, and links to registrations the same way. It's pretty cool to have unlimited playlists to instantly load.

So everything is great, the speakers, styles, voices, pads, touch screen, are all good, It's getting around the OS quickly, that for now makes it a slight challenge.

Glad to hear so many great reviews on the SX900! I am still a very happy happy camper with mine! I need to learn more about Playlists, but so far, I am impressed, and Larry you are right - wow, an endless whiteboard for saving registrations! Love this board!

Larry, Sounds like you’ve taken right to the SX900 and doing well with it.

To answer your question Genos has the following categories :
Pop, Rock, Olides, Dance, R&B, Entertainer, Country, Jazz, Easy Listening, Latin, Ballroom,
Movie& Show, Classic & Events, Traditional & Folk

Hi Stephen, basically I just followed the old psr / T series categories. Found the odd style in unexpected folders too, but basically Yamaha style categories were fairly uniform over many years.

Can’t understand why they had to change it to the extent they did.

Rikki, Can't see the logic behind the change, but Yamaha must know something we don't?

Thanks for responding to Donny's inquiry, Steve:

I'm guessing Yamaha believes the "Country" Genre is dying because of so much crap emanating from Nashville these days. Twang Town execs seem to have forgotten their "roots" and appear to be hell-bent to embrace RAPish sounding stuff.

Glad you are pleased with your acquisition.

----Dave

Well when you look at the board, it's a question of button real estate. I wish they had put the EXPANSION button elsewhere to have room for the Country button. Having ballad and pop together and country split into two places is a pain.
As there are two USB slots, I think I might get a mini USB drive just for onboard styles so I can categorize them to my liking.

The power lies in the Registrations song setups, etc, when playing at home or live ...
the categories are just style reservoirs to pick and choose to create the songs.
How many styles do you really need and use?...

I've never owned a Yamaha, so I don't know how they work, but on technics and KORG, when I found styles that I might use together, but were in different style 'sections' I would COPY the style, put it in a USER section and rename, tweak, whatever, and then do the same with the second style, placing it close to the first one ... I've done this with LATIN and SWING styles quite a bit ...

Put all the country styles in a user folder. Done.

Hi,
I keep my styles on a couple of sandisk cruzer fit mini nano USB . They’re tiny so they don’t stick out the back too far, don’t get knocked .
Have them permanently plugged into my laptop, used them in my korgs too. Maybe a bit more fiddly to remove because of the size, but I find them great.

I have the 2, one for backup, and one for the main. So simple to do copy and paste, so not hard to keep one as the duplicate copy..

Have one Folder “ Style Library “ in which I keep the dozen or so sub folders with my style library.

Then I have another Folder with the styles etc that I actually use. My USER, folder.

Hi Dave,
no , not really. The country styles still exist, they’re really good too. It’s just the odd placement . There isn’t a dedicated category button for them. Majority are lumped in with Rock and Pop category, the rest are mixed in with a couple of of categories.

They’re there, just need to find them. Haha

Best way could be setting up ones own folders.

At least styles fairly easily recognisable, they have a little icon that says, country, or pop, rock, etc so where a single button houses more than one genre, you at least can tell what genre it belongs to. A few of the styles have rather strange names. Haha

I’ve thought about Gary's method, he saved his styles by the name of the song he used them for. When I used Gary’s method, setting up the S975 it was a breeze, the names were alphabetical, and they seem to fit very well. This time around I am trying to find another method.

For now, I am using the categories, Ballad, Jazz, Latin, ect. Because there are so many styles and pads I use a style that comes close so I can begin to play/enjoy the keyboard. When I find a better one, I replace the first one I selected. Is this the best method? No, I just need to get my fingers going again.

Working with the Registrations.
1-Select style
2-Select instruments
3-Balance the volume of the Accomp. or delete what I do not want to use.
4-Select a set of pads
5-Save the regs.

It is to soon to work on a play List, I have not saved enough Regs.
I spent too much time setting up the Pa4x, it took away from my playing time. I liked the Regs. in my other keyboards, but they were done over a period of time
My next step is to create and edit the pads.

I am attacking my Sx900 with one thing in mind – enjoyment.
John C.

Dave aka Riceroni you’re welcome.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat as they say, it’s not a major problem for me at all, it just takes a little time initially when setting up registrations. There’s also the search function too. I’m of the mindset that Beakybird is maybe they should have placed the expansion button elsewhere and put the Country genre where the expansion button is.

John C. Glad you’re having enjoyment with the Sx900, I’m doing the same!

Depending on how much I may have 'tweaked' the style, I've done the same thing ... Also helps if picking a style for a song that is similar to one that I've setup ...

Hi John ,
I used to do that too, on my pa4x, make all my changes for a particular song, and then name the style after it. I never used the songbook function, for me there wasn’t any real need. Don’t know that many songs. Haha.


For sx900 , because of the great registration function, going to do things differently too.

Probably similar to you. So instead of having to have a clone of the same style over and over with minor changes, and renaming them, as I did on Pa4x, I’m just going to use the registrations.

This is what decided to use on my Sx900 Regs.

Reg 1-Select the song and style.
Reg 2 through 8 --- changing volumes, Variations, instruments, delete parts of the Accomp. and sometimes changing to another style that complements the first one to add another feel; fantastic for Latin music.

I keep thinking, what would the band do if I were singing? – what would it do if a sax were playing, or a piano? All parts of a band are not always playing.

I guess, in a way, I am trying to bring back my band days. (smile)
John C.

John, I like your method, excellent use of registrations.

It would make sense if the arranger would automatically drop the lead sound from the style. In other words when you play piano for lead, the style would drop it out. It would need to be selectable of course. That is a great advantage of using John's method. Seems I recall some older arranger that could do that...maybe Technics??

Another quick fix is the dedicated Arranger Mute knobs - A, and B. You can filter out parts of a style while it's playing.