Genos - Let's discover the Genos together

[Antonio]

Assumed that the moment the best situation is working with a single USB stick, I start with the first experiments:

1) Menu / utility / storage / User / format
2) I turn off the pc
3) restart with power on + Playlist
4) enter in direct (HD) mode with the USER

OPEN THE FILE MANAGER:

I see the following on USER drive directories:

MULTI PAD
PLAYLIST
RECORD
SONG
STYLE
SYSTEM
TEXT
VOICE

THESE ARE THE MAIN DIRECTORIY

In the Multipad I inserted with some subfolders, which I read and worked correctly. ( Press select Multi Pad )

In the Style folder I have inserted some sub-directories, which I read and worked correctly. ( Press Gateway button Style )

The same thing happens in the Songs folder.  ( Press Gateway button Song )

In the playlist folder it is unclear how it turns the Tyros Music Finder into registration. They are under study. ( Press Gateway button Playlist )

Antonio

[EileenL]

I believe Music finder files do have a reg bank but it only contains one button filled. You have to put your favorite voices that you want to use in yourself and then resave.

[pjd]

Hello Antonio --

Thank you. I finally have time to explore a little bit.

I wanted to see where Genos was putting a few new user styles and registrations. On the Genos, I created a new folder "Church" for the styles and a new folder "Church" for the registrations.

I then connected the Genos to a Windows PC and restarted in USB storage mode. (Reference Manual chapter 16 for folks who would like to read the manual.)

Windows Explorer shows the top level as:

    AUDIOREC.ROOT      [A hidden directory]
    MULTI PAD  
    PLAYLIST
    REGIST             [User registrations]
    SONG
    STYLE              [User styles]
    SYSTEM
    TEXT
    VOICE              [User voices]

As expected, I found a Church subdirectory under both REGIST and STYLE, e.g., REGIST\Church and STYLE\Church. The subdirectories contained the right sort of registration and style files, respectively. I found two user voices that I created on day 0 and then forgot about them!

I think that once someone understands "The Yamaha Way", it's quite logical.

I also did an experiment with the registration file. Yamaha uses absolute path names within the registration to refer to the user style files. This seems to be what confuses some folks operationally. I don't want to re-hash this topic here because there are already so many long threads about it. Again, once someone understands the basic concept, the rest is (mostly) logical.

I'm developing my registrations and styles on USB drive with the hope of migrating them to the internal drive. If I think about this carefully enough, I might be able to migrating the files by simply modifying the drive letter at the start of style path names. Seems like there should be a tool to do this... Hmmm?

Hope this helps your exploration, too. It's important to remain dispassionate. 

All the best in the new year -- pj

[EileenL]

I think you would be better creating your registrations in a folder with any third party styles you are going to use and link them there. If you move styles and Registrations once made the links are broken and you have to redo them on the user section.

[pjd]

Hi Eileen --

True that. I have a different migration scheme in mind -- one that I would not recommend to anyone except a dedicated technocrat.  I'm interested in exploring this scheme as it may lead to a simple automated migration tool.

If anyone is interested, I'm going to organize files on the USB drive using the same directory structure as the internal (C:) drive. The goal is to have file path names where the only difference is the beginning drive letter. Then, a tool only needs to modify the drive letter, not the entire path name. Should make for a simple tool design.

Well, this is experimental science.  I always say, "Get one small example working first, then scale up." Even if the whole thing hits the floor, I'll have more experience when I have to migrate my pop registrations, songs and things -- a much bigger problem than the church stuff that I really need first.

Hey, hey, it's all fun (including all the playing in between)  -- pj

[reya]

If anyone is interested, I'm going to organize files on the USB drive using the same directory structure as the internal (C:) drive.

This is exactly what I did.

Now whishing that Yamaha would change their system so as to only include the drive letter in the paths they store in the registration file, when it is different to the drive, where the registration file is run from, which I guess is probably is 99 % of the cases.
Then when using a registration, they could use the same logic and add the drive letter the registration file is run from to the paths without drive letter...

Then we would not even need a tool anymore to change the drive letter in our registration files ....
... and the complexity about which USB stick gets which drive letter assigned would also be greatly reduced for users ...

Just dreaming ... 

[Dromeus]

When I first heard about a big (compared to the Tyros line) USER drive I thought it would be the perfect replacement of the former hard disk. In fact, it's not. What is the difference?

The USER drive is structured as it always has been, the folder structure as given above (well, there was no hidden audiorec folder, because with the size limitation of the Tyros this didn't make any sense).

I'm not sure if the Tyros' hard disk was structured this way too, when it left the factory. My first Tyros was, because there was this SuperEdition giveaway stored on the hard disk and this was structured this way. So I followed this scheme for many years.

Now we come to the difference: with the USER drive you HAVE to follow this folder scheme, with the USB drive you MAY, but you DON'T HAVE TO. When storing/browsing registrations, the USER drive will always use the REGIST folder as the root (of course, you may create subfolders). The same is true for the other file types, styles, songs, multi-pads etc. In contrast, with a USB drive you may store a song in the REGIST and a registration bank in the SONG folder. Well, you might think I'm nuts, and of course this does not make sense, but I have something different in mind.

I like to keep things in a folder that are closely related. Think about your PC. Would it really make sense to store all your docs in a DOC folder, all spreadsheets in a XLS folder, all your PDFs in a PDF folder and so on? I think, when doing a project you would rather create a project folder and store all DOC, XLS, PDF and so on, related to this project in its project folder.

This is how I like to structure my Genos data in the future. The basic entity is the song. There will be a folder for each song. Everything related to this song, registration, style(s), song(s) (score midi file, mid/wav playback), multi-pad(s), whatever will be in this folder. I will even story copies of preset data used (style, multi pad, ...) into this folder. You may think this is a redundancy but it has an advantage. If I ever upgrade to Genos 2, 3, 4... the presets may be different, at a different location or just removed. Nevertheless my registrations will still work on a new Genos model as the links in the registrations will point to the legacy data in my song folder.

In the past this way of structuring data was not really feasible IMHO, because recalling registrations would require to much navigation through subfolders. With the playlist feature this is solved for me.

I'm not advocating this for everyone. I think if you have a large base to migrate from, you may be better off sticking to your approved scheme. I migrate from T3 to Genos and I find myself modifying each registration anyway, so for me it's the opportunity to change.

The USER drive still has a use as a repository. I will store all the styles, multi pads, songs, whatever I acquired over the years for quick and easy access. Here, the traditional structure makes sense for me. E.g., if you want to browse you repository to find a style that suits your needs you want to have all styles in the folder STYLE, possibly structured in subfolders reflecting the genre.

[Antonio]

Hello Antonio --

Thank you. I finally have time to explore a little bit.

I wanted to see where Genos was putting a few new user styles and registrations. On the Genos, I created a new folder "Church" for the styles and a new folder "Church" for the registrations.

I then connected the Genos to a Windows PC and restarted in USB storage mode. (Reference Manual chapter 16 for folks who would like to read the manual.)

Windows Explorer shows the top level as:

    AUDIOREC.ROOT      [A hidden directory]
    MULTI PAD  
    PLAYLIST
    REGIST             [User registrations]
    SONG
    STYLE              [User styles]
    SYSTEM
    TEXT
    VOICE              [User voices]

As expected, I found a Church subdirectory under both REGIST and STYLE, e.g., REGIST\Church and STYLE\Church. The subdirectories contained the right sort of registration and style files, respectively. I found two user voices that I created on day 0 and then forgot about them!

I think that once someone understands "The Yamaha Way", it's quite logical.

I also did an experiment with the registration file. Yamaha uses absolute path names within the registration to refer to the user style files. This seems to be what confuses some folks operationally. I don't want to re-hash this topic here because there are already so many long threads about it. Again, once someone understands the basic concept, the rest is (mostly) logical.

I'm developing my registrations and styles on USB drive with the hope of migrating them to the internal drive. If I think about this carefully enough, I might be able to migrating the files by simply modifying the drive letter at the start of style path names. Seems like there should be a tool to do this... Hmmm?

Hope this helps your exploration, too. It's important to remain dispassionate. 

All the best in the new year -- pj

I agree with you. Perhaps the right way is to rename the initial drive in I: /
and theoretically it should accept everything.

I try to do an experiment and I'll tell you what happens.

THANK YOU

[pjd]

... with the USER drive you HAVE to follow this folder scheme, with the USB drive you MAY, but you DON'T HAVE TO.

Hi Michael --

That's what I suspected. I was thinking a little more about Eileen's suggestion last night and didn't have a chance to experiment and check this out.

Thanks for your comments Antonio, Eileen and Michael. This is helping me to think about the file/directory organization in a more detailed way and to think about the practicalities. In the end, we need to work within the existing system (even though we may dream about the future.  )

Fortunately, the church registrations, etc. are only about 20 files max and are easy to play with. The pop repertoire is a much bigger pile'o'stuff for me. Start small, scale up.

Hey, hey, keep smiling -- pj

P.S. Just confirmed Michael's observation. Hmmm, need to think through migration from S950 USB (all audio backing tracks), especially if I try to keep the path names intact (may not be possible). Off to the gym...

[pjd]

Hi --

I took a few more steps today in between the snow shoveling and the blizzard.

I purchased and installed an expansion pack today (while the Yamaha Musicsoft sale is underway). All went well with YEM. It produced the expected install file.

Only one surprise. I left a few of the free packs selected and, lo and behold, it installed all of the selected ones including the new pack. One of the free packs is the scat voice pack that I put together for S950 (YEP) and S970 (YEM). The old scat pack works fine and now that I finally have a YEM-capable machine, I may make some adjustments in the voice programming.

After installation, the directories at the root level are:

    AUDIOREC.ROOT   [Hidden]
    Expansion
    MULTI PAD
    PLAYLIST
    REGIST
    SONG
    STYLE
    SYSTEM
    TEXT
    VOICE

The "Expansion" directory is newly created and contains one subdirectory for each pack. Inside the subdirectories are the registrations, styles and MIDI files, etc. associated with the pack.

I also copied WAV files to the Genos internal memory. It took about 15 to 20 minutes to copy about 6GBytes using Genos USB storage mode. I'm storing the WAV files in a subdirectory named "WAV" in the SONG directory.

If anyone is ever unsure about where to put files, one can always create a subdirectory in the appropriate directory (by file type) in the regular way. Then, boot the Genos in USB storage mode, look for the new subdirectory and then copy files.

The last discovery came from reading the manual. Owner's Manual Chapter 9 "Data Backup and Restore" mentions a UI check mark to include (or exclude) audio files from backup. Nice touch. I want to be able to save all of my other files (styles, etc.), but not the audio files. With all of my audio files, I could easily exceed the 1.9GB limitation on back-up size. I'll try a backup tomorrow.

Hope all of this info helps someone -- pj

P.S. With the backing tracks at hand, I'm over the moon playing this keyboard.

[Antonio]

Styles that are uploaded to the User often result (not correctly loaded),
the same ones loaded on the USB1.

So in case you make a registration it is necessary to load it from USB1.

As for the Playlist / Registration, only those positioned on the USER are correctly identified.

Will you also convince me that this is so?
Regards