Beginners Questions

[kali291]

Hi All. Have only recently joined this forum / site, and what a mine of information it contains.  I am a new learner (been at it about 6 months), and have an awful lot to learn. My aim is to play for myself - I have no great ambition to perform in public! I bought a second hand PSRE413, and am very impressed. I am considering buying a new 453 when the 463 is available here later this month. I am counting on dealers selling off the 453 a bit cheaper as customers will want the 463.
I have some questions, which are probably a bit "newbie", but I am unable to find the answers anywhere, and hope someone can point me in the right direction.
Firstly styles. I play a lot of liturgical stuff (being the local church music librarian), and there is a definite lack of styles that I can find to fit hymns and choral stuff. I thought of making my own from midi files (I am fairly computer literate), but cannot find a program with simple, full pdf instructions on the process. I got lost on the midi2style example after 3 lines! Does such a instruction exist for any program?
Referring to the above, I have literally hundreds of midi files for hymns, etc. If I take out the melody lines, is there a way of loading this into the 413, and playing along with it? Seems too simple to work.
Finally, reading the manual, it appears that I can load in MusicDatabase Files. Where can I find these?
Thanks in advance for your help.    Ron

[panos]

Hi kali,
The other program people are using a lot for making a style is style magic.
http://www.midisoft.pl/en/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuEKCPtYYeA&t=63s
The owner of that program is also a member of this forum so you can get help.

Yes you can play every midi song by just deleting or mute the right hand melodies.
Of course the chords will be played and change automatically by your keyboard.
So you can't play chords with left hand.
Use it to play melody lines too if you want.

MFD It is just a list of suggested styles to play for specific songs.
Lets say you wanna play "The blue Danube Waltz" so this list suggest a 3/4 valse style for you.
You can make one on your one anyway

https://psrtutorial.com/sty/OF/mfdBonus.html

[panos]

This is a midi file.
If you want to play it with your right hand on your keyboard you have to delete/mute  the red color voice/channel for example.
Every thing else will be played by your keyboard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhXyO1T3LcA

[kali291]

Thanks for that Panos. I am familiar with Synthesia, and also know enough to get inside a midi file and delete the melody. What I was trying to ascertain was that, having done this, can I load it into the keyboard as a song file, and how would I go about getting the keyboard to play it whilst allowing me to play the melody line. Sorry if I am not explaining myself too well.
With regard to StyleMagic, I got lost after 2 minutes :-) I don't do videos very well. What I am looking for is any software (regardless of how complicated) that provides simple written instructions to convert midi to style.
Thanks again
Ron

[panos]

You choose your midi song on your keyboard and press play.
While the keyboard is playing you just play along with it.
Every keyboard can read a midi file like synthesia does.
Try it on your e413.
Can you load a midi file on it?

There is no easy way creating a style 

[SeaGtGruff]

Welcome, Ron!

I agree with panos that playing along with your many MIDI song files is the way to go for what you want to do.

Styles are more useful for playing particular types or genres of music where the backing or accompaniment consists of one or two recurring loops, with the exact notes and key changes being controlled by the chord progressions that you play. (A Yamaha style file can contain up to four loops or "Main" sections, along with "Fill In," "Intro," and "Ending" sections, but your PSR-E413 will be able to access only two of them, the "A" and "B" variations.)

As for using MIDI song files, you should be able to load/import a given file into a DAW or other program. You can then either remove the specific channel(s) whose part(s) you want to play yourself, or rearrange the channels as needed so you can more easily use your PSR-E413's "Track Control" buttons to mute the part(s) you want to play yourself. The easiest ones to mute are channels 1 and 2, but I think you can use the "Function" menu to specify which channels you want to associate with the "Right Hand" and "Left Hand" parts, and then use the first two "Track Control" buttons to mute those parts as desired-- although I've never tried it myself to verify that it works that way.

Note that since the PSR-E413 doesn't contain a "USB To Device" port, you won't be able to insert a USB drive that has all of your song files and style files on it, so you'll need to connect to a computer via the "USB To Host" port and use Yamaha's free Musicsoft Downloader program-- or their free MusicSoft Manager app if you're using an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch-- to transfer the desired songs to your computer's internal memory. Then you can select a song and play it, or in this case play along with it.

[panos]

Ron here is an example how we play along with midi files,
Don't mind if it is a Tyros, also every other Yamaha keyboard can do that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83ucoL1otEY

A midi file is something that keyboards can undrestand the way a cd player can understand how to play a cd.
Even when you press the Rec button on your keyboard you just create a song in a midi file format.

If you are playing music for just 6 months you better not bother with the style creation yet,cause is too difficult to do it and focus on your playing.

I don't know much about church music to see why is hard for you to find styles for hymns and if styles are suitable for this kind of music.
(for example you cannot play music with the style if the tempo of the song is changing)

Here jgriffin is performing an excellent song with her Tyros.
https://www.psrtutorial.com/forum/index.php/topic,43543.0.html
Check out her videos there are also other videos with this kind of music.
I am still "stuck" with this one,never heard it before  and I play it in repeat.

[kali291]

Thank you both for your advice. I shall now go and experiment with some midi files. I think I may also persevere with creating my own styles - you are never too old to learn - and I can't really damage anything by trying.
Thanks again
Ron