Convert all chord in a mesure to C

[marcodg]

Hi

I am just start to create style and i have programm like Cubase, Style Works Universal and midi2style from Jorgen.
What i want to do is to convert some midi files to styles. I have not lot of knowledge of how to scale the Chord. It take a lot of time to think about with note with fit with the chord scale. A solution for this would be as example to convert each 1 mesure or 2 bar on a whole phase (8 mesure).
Can i have a tipp or a program that can make it just by selecting the bar or mesure to convert ?
Thanks for reply

[pjd]

Hi --

Here's a different approach to consider.

The default chord is CMaj7. However, it's possible to set a different source chord type and source root note, e.g., E7. Many Yamaha styles use a different source chord type and source root note, especially phrases for guitar.

I recommend studying the section of the Reference Manual about Style Creator. In particular, look for the section concerning Source Pattern settings, Note Transposition Table (NTT) and Note Transposition Rule (NTR). You'll find that the Yamaha system is quite flexible. By making the appropriate settings for each track, you may not need to convert at all!

You didn't mention which specific arranger model. Otherwise, we could point you to a page in the appropriate reference manual.

All the best -- pj

[Joe H]

Buy a copy of StyleMagic it will be a piece of cake to transpose to C using Channels Manager... but making styles from MIDI files is NOT easy and will NOT bring very good results.  The styles are made up of MIDI drum loops, short loop phrases and chord patterns. Song files usually do not contain the right kind of loops. But if you use just 1 bar... then it might sound OK.

http://www.midisoft.pl/en/



Joe H

[marcodg]

Hi Pjd
Thanks for the reply.
I don't want to modify the root chord or program a a whole accompagnement in the same chord. I want to make all my chord convertible.
As example: i program a whole bass part in 8 measures in any chord root.
I made a scale each two measure. Repeteadly C- F- G- C. Iwant the chord or note played in F und G to be convert in C so that i could play it in style. The style Works XT from Klaus change just the first measure when converting midi to style. When you select more than 2 chords recognitions the Bass sound false. 

I want to made a style for this and i want that the note played in measures 3 and 4 beeing converted in C chord.
Sorry for my bad english. I hope you undertand what i mean.
Kind regards

[marcodg]

Buy a copy of StyleMagic it will be a piece of cake to transpose to C using Channels Manager... but making styles from MIDI files is NOT easy and will NOT bring very good results.  The styles are made up of MIDI drum loops, short loop phrases and chord patterns. Song files usually do not contain the right kind of loops. But if you use just 1 bar... then it might sound OK.

http://www.midisoft.pl/en/



Joe H

Hi joe
I just forget to mention it, but i already buy style magic for YA. But i have little explain how it works. I tried the youtube video but it s not good explain how i can make this. If you have an advise i would take it for sure. I don't want absolutly to made style from midi. I just want to play a whole phrase (Bass as example on 8-16 measure to make it richer) and transpose the whole bass just on C chord (for style). like this:
1 measure: C1-D1-E1-G0-C2-C1
2 measure: C1-C2-E1-G0-G0-C1
for Chord "C"
3 measure: C1-F1-F0-A1-C1-F1 for Chord "F"
4 measure: D2-G1-B1-D1-G0-G1 for chord "G"
I want to convert the 3 and the 4 measure in chord "C". Is there a way to make this with software ? If yes wich SW shall i use ?
Regards

[mikf]

What you are describing is why style creation is difficult. You have to record riffs and phrases in a single chord that will work with chord changes. It's an art and not easy. Many people assume when they first come to this that an easy smart way to do this must exist and they just need someone to point them to it.  There is another thread currently in a similar vein about creating intros. The bottom line is that style creation is not trivial and people have a hard time grasping that even in this age of multiple software tools, there is no simple solution. This is why very few people do much style creation. 80 % of arranger owners never touch it, 15% may do deep editing of existing styles, and only about 5 % might try fundamental style creation and I bet more than 4% of the 5% give up when they find out how hard it is and how bad their attempts turn out.

Mike

[Pino]

I'm not really sure if I follow what Joe said, did you mean transposing the song to the key of C, maybe I misunderstood you, it's more than just transposing the song, you have to transpose all the bars that are not C, it sounds daunting but can be done quickly after a few sessions.

First I would say that I would not even attempt to make a style from scratch, to make a style from a midi file is do-able, I have been successful with making song styles for the past 12 months, the quickest method would be to find a style on the keyboard that has the feel that you want, then add an intro and a ending cut from a midi file, transpose to C and that's it, intros and ending are just simple midis, I do all the basic work in my sequencer and import to StyleMagic, the only programme I need to use,

If you want to go further and cut the midi to make variations A B C D,  then that is do-able also but takes longer, just making a song style using a Yamaha style and making a new song specific into and ending could be done in 1 hour, cutting a midi to make a full ABCD style would probably take 3 to 4 hours depending on the complexity of the song.


Re, transposing sections - Delete all unwanted tracks, just keep exactly what's needed
You really need to listen to your midi and determine what going where, eg, Var A B C D

eg.  Var A,  -  in your sequencer Transpose the midi to C,  cut all tracks where you think VarA should start and where to finish, delete all other parts of the midi, everything, save this section, save and name it let's say "Misty A', lets say it's 8 bars long, on my sequencer I can see the chord names as I run through the 8 bars, let's say - 4 bars of C and 4 bars of F, now you have to use your markers to mark that 4 bar F section and transpose to C, now the 8 bars is in C, it will not sound good when you play it but the keyboard will control the chords later,

When your done with ABCD then load into StyleMagic, copy and past into 'section manager' ABCD. You can load A into ABCD or A into A&B and B into C&D, I sometimes have A on ABCD and different OTS on each one, just bring in a `tambourine' or a 'hat' on a Mutipad where needed on a chorus or somewhere,
StyleMagic will sort out the Sint and all the midi to style business, you will have to study that yourself, I can only tell you that all the work in StyleMagic should not take more than 10/15minutes, assuming you have done the work in your sequencer.

Hope this is helps you little,

Pino.

[DrakeM]

If you are just wanting to record a Bass line pattern, you can easily use the keyboard's "Style Creator" to do it.

First thing is to make sure the MAIN is 16 Measures (or 8 measures) long. 8 measures is the longest I have ever needed to do.

Then record your BASS pattern in the "PAD" slot of the style, do NOT record in the BASS slot. Remember to always record in the KEY of C only.

Change the PAD voice to the same BASS voice as is in your Right Hand voice.
Record your pattern in the KEY of "C". Save the STYLE.

Now play the Bass pattern you recorded on the keyboard in the KEY you will be playing the song. Is the Bass to LOW or sound too HIGH, if so, change the OCTAVE by using the + and - "UPPER OCTAVE" buttons. Then record your Bass pattern again. Repeat this until you get the Bass Pattern in the correct OCTAVE. You can also just record the Bass Pattern UP or DOWN an Octave on your keyboard.

Once you have it recorded and sounding correct, you can then MOVE the recording from the PAD slot to the BASS slot of your style (use COPY and PASTE).

Regards
Drake

[marcodg]

Thanks to all
I would try all your tipp and see what happen.
Kind regards

[Joe H]

Hi joe
I just forget to mention it, but i already buy style magic for YA. But i have little explain how it works. I tried the youtube video but it s not good explain how i can make this. If you have an advise i would take it for sure. I don't want absolutly to made style from midi. I just want to play a whole phrase (Bass as example on 8-16 measure to make it richer) and transpose the whole bass just on C chord (for style). like this:
1 measure: C1-D1-E1-G0-C2-C1
2 measure: C1-C2-E1-G0-G0-C1
for Chord "C"
3 measure: C1-F1-F0-A1-C1-F1 for Chord "F"
4 measure: D2-G1-B1-D1-G0-G1 for chord "G"
I want to convert the 3 and the 4 measure in chord "C". Is there a way to make this with software ? If yes wich SW shall i use ?
Regards

I'm not clear on what it is you want to do.

You can transpose each channel in Channels Manager (StyleMagic will indicate when you have the channel in C scale).  Otherwise (based on your explanation above) you can enter the multieditor screen and use the Piano Roll to move the specific notes with your mouse pointer. Another way to change notes globally for each style Section is to enter the the Mixing Console of StyleMagic and select the parts you want to edit notes.  There you can (change) increment or decrement each note individually for that part of each Style Section.

Joe H

[mikf]

Its not really about transposing as we normally understand it. I think it's clear that the OP is trying to create a style and discovered that whatever riff or phrase you record has to be in C. I think he believed that he could record the phrase as he would like it to ultimately play then have some piece of software change it into a C phrase that magically becomes what you want when played as a style. Basically the answer is that it doesn't work like that. The only software that would come close to doing that are these programs that purport to convert midi to styles. And mostly they do not work very well.
Mike

[panos]

Took me more than an hour to find the correct settings(by luck of course) in the style creator(NTT-NTR etc) for a riff which has just the notes C-E-G to be listenable to the 5 chord changes.
All I wanted was a simple C chord!!!!  

The riff begins at 0.29 when I press the Main D button(voices Fat Saw Hook+Fat Trance Pad)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73GwtDNXUds

If I don't play the specific 5 chord progression it will sound badly in some chords.
Maybe I should have chosen another channel to record it as Drake said and I would be more lucky (eg the bass or the pad channel). Who knows?   

My respect to the professional stylemakers and to Yamaha for the Assembly function

[DrakeM]

I was gonna ask did you record it in the PAD slot. If you don't you are fighting a useless battle. If you are recording in the pad slot you can use any White key ... but the "F" note.

[panos]

I chose the chord channel Drake.
I wanted a chord so I thought the chord channel is for palying chords 
First 2 chords sounded ok the next 3 chords a.... disaster.
Then I changed the NTT-NTR settings, first and second chord this time a disaster.
This kept going.When I was fixing a chord, another one sounded badly.

At the end when the first 4 out of 5 chords sounded ok, after a lot of head scratching, I had the idea to change the style parts from 4 to 5 and I went to the edit menu, copy-pasted some notes for the 5th part, deleted some others, changed an E4 to E3 and finally the 5th part sounded better.
Or so I think....I am not sure if these were the correct notes in the first place that I was looking for

I wanted to add some notes more to some parts riff but then I thought:
"I can read greek letters, no need to learn how to read chinesse letters too in this life.Life is too short..."

[mikf]

Style creation is not impossible, but definitely not easy as all these posts show. You need to be able to hear in your head how a group of relative notes will sound when the chords are changed. That is relatively straightforward with simple major chords, but what happens when you play a minor chord, a diminished chord, an augmented chord, a sixth, a flattened 5th and on and on. Drake's method might be a work around that works for some simple situations, but it's not a complete solution.
The bottom line is that style creators need to have great musical knowledge, excellent technical knowledge of style creator, and even then will have a lot of trial and error. And that is just to get something that is not awful. To get something that is really good takes great experience of musical arranging on top of th3 other things. This rules out most of us doing anything more than very basic stuff in style creator.
Mike

[Joe H]

Here's a copy of the Padmaker-Midi manual.  It contains info on this topic. What notes you can use for chords and what notes you can for Phrases. These same rules apply to styles as well.

Joe H

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[Joe H]

Took me more than an hour to find the correct settings(by luck of course) in the style creator(NTT-NTR etc) for a riff which has just the notes C-E-G to be listenable to the 5 chord changes.
All I wanted was a simple C chord!!!!  

The riff begins at 0.29 when I press the Main D button(voices Fat Saw Hook+Fat Trance Pad)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73GwtDNXUds...

My respect to the professional stylemakers and to Yamaha for the Assembly function

Hey Panos,

Would you mind sharing that style? (please) I like the sound of those recorded arpeggios.

   

Joe H

[Pino]

Mike, your have to think in a different way
You do not think about minors, aug7s etc when writing a style
You think C - everything
That's the job of the keyboard to note transpose later
The keyboard understands C, it goes from there
If you play a Bm7 the keyboard will note transpose from the C it already knows

To write a simple 4 bar Var A style part, (PC sequencer)

Bass      Bass         bar1 - C.    Bar  3 - G (lower)
CHD1   Guitar       bar1 - C chord and bar 2- 3 - 4
CHD2   Piano      bar1 - C arpeggio c e g e. & All bars
PAD      Strings       bar1 - C hold for 4 bars
Drums   Drums      Copy and paste.

That's a simple style section, do not think about minors or Augmented chords at this point, That's up to the keyboard to note transpose to where you lay your fingers
If you play Fm7 then the keyboard will note transpose from the starting point of C to Fm7 or any other chord you pay,

I don't write styles very often cos we already have 1000s of good Style,
I always edit a style to where I want it, making a style from a midi is the easiest.

Pino

[Pino]

Hi

I am just start to create style and i have programm like Cubase, Style Works Universal and midi2style from Jorgen.
What i want to do is to convert some midi files to styles.

I think the op wants to know how to convert all chords to C in a 8 bar section not create style from scratch.

[panos]

Not at all Joe.I have recorded just one arrpegio as I think it is playing in the song.The rest are from Yamaha.There is also a link in the comments with the styles I have modified for the covers I have uploaded for the past 6 months.

If I had the knowledges for making a "pro" style as Mike said,I would have used this arrangement by Alex Christensen for the style:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSJhKv1ZGIk

I have even asked him in the comments if he has the style to share it from the Genos in the video 

Pino,I don't know...maybe I'm damb sometimes...
I have recorded just the notes C4-E4-G4-C5-E5-G5 for just one measure.I quantized and copied -pasted this measure to the other 3 measures of the style.
With the settings that were allready pre-set at the parameter tab of the chord channel I have deleted:
For chords Eb-Gm-Bb it worked
For chords Fsus4 and F it failed

Ok, I can record a short midi, watch the notes in the score display and fingure out at some point what's wrong,
but it took just a few minutes for my hands to get used to play the main melody which is the interresting part.
Afterwards we may choose to spend many many hours for making the style by using various methods,editing the voices,trying a bunch of effects,equalization etc
But then again if I don't do that, I better go back to play with my old dgx with the fixed limited styles,voices and effects.
No way!!

Thanks for the book Joe!! 


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[mikf]

Mike, your have to think in a different way
You do not think about minors, aug7s etc when writing a style
You think C - everything
That's the job of the keyboard to note transpose later
The keyboard understands C, it goes from there
If you play a Bm7 the keyboard will note transpose from the C it already knows

Pino
Yes, the keyboard carries out the note transposition, but how will your phrase sound when it does so. If it is very simple stuff like the example you give, no problem. But if it's that simple, there is little need to create a style in the first place, you can just edit existing styles.
For a more complex bass riff for example, you have to anticipate what these notes will transpose to, will it still make sense, will it jump an octave etc. Say I have a bass riff that goes CCEbEGGAG. What will that turn into if I play Amin chord, or Gdim chord. Will they sound sensible or awful. What if my chord changes are faster than 1 per bar, how will that sound. Or what about little phrases that last more than a bar. Might sound great held in C, but what happens to that phrase when I change chords faster than 1 per bar. Experienced style creators know what to avoid, what works and when you use professionally made styles you can hear how they make this all work amazingly well.
And a style from scratch is so many parts, all of which have to be programmed and able to fit together and work in a wide variety of tempos, chord sequences. There are 4 style variations, 3 endings, 3 intros, breaks. Its a huge amount of work and experience to do all this well.
Mike

[DrakeM]

There are no minors, dims, 7ths or anything else chord types for a Bass. 

I have spent years trying to figure out how to create custom song styles and as I have stated above how to do it correctly.

I have heard for myself the pattern change when playing a MINOR chord, but perhaps that only occurs with CURTAIN Yamaha styles (I don't know for sure yet). The Cascam (or what ever it is called) may contribute to making this sort of change occur.

All I know is I have found a style in which I can record in the PAD and make a correct sounding riff with no problem and then copy and paste it to another slot in the style and re-voice to any instrument.

If more members would just dabble with this, I think we could unravel a very simply way to create custom riffs, hooks and patterns into our styles. What I have found out and shared so far, has made the process a whole lot easier to crank out new custom styles for myself these days.

What I am looking into (as time permits) is if I copy and paste a part from a Yamaha locked style into an unlocked style, can I then get to the track and edit it. There are projects like this members could work on together and figure it out. 

Regards
Drake

[mikf]

The pattern you hear is driven by the NTT rules and the chord you play. You record in Cm7, and  the bass pattern changes when you play a chord. So if you play a minor chord, or diminished chord or whatever, chord the resulting pattern can vary a bit. This happens in the bass channel just the same as every other channel and the resulting pattern can sound unacceptable with some chord types. This probably gets more prominent with riffs that contain notes that are not strictly part of the Cm7 chord, which is common.  The default rules are different for the different channels and this is why you may get more success in some cases by recording the bass in the pad channel.
I spent  a lot of time on style creator many years ago, and found vey simple things were not difficult. But start dabbling in more complex phrases, and playing songs with complex chord structures, and the degree of difficulty and time spent to make it work moves up very quickly.
Mike   
 

[DrakeM]

You can change out CM7 to several other choices, so you can use the B note or any note as far as I have discovered. I always record my riffs use the "Cmaj" selection in order to use the B note.

[Pino]

The majority of YAMAHA styles if not all, are directly from midi files
I don't think any musician/programer works in any other way
I don't think any programmer is working in song creator.

This maybe a good starter exercise,
Take a listen to  "Easy Ballad" INT B - Durham Town. Int C - The Last Farewell , that's is a simple 'cut and paste' job on your PC sequencer of two different midi files for the intros and endings

Load a good quality midi file
Connect your keyboard to the PC
Play the midi a few times
Now you begin to have ideas on what will go where

Listen to the style 'Easy ballad' Durham Town.
Intro is easy, ending is easy then we have VarA and VarB
Intro 4 bars.  - Ending 4 bars
VarA      bass - guitar strum - piano - drums (pattern length is 2)
VarB          Same, add strings (Pad).  (pattern length is 2)

This is my workflow

1    PC MIDI sequencer connected to my keyboard,
   transpose the midi to C for a start
   delete every track and everything that you do not need
   cut 2 section of 2 bars that you think will work
   now transpose these bars to C if they not in C

2   Now I open StyleMagic
   load you intro/ending/VarA/VarB
   StyleMagic will creat the style for you

3   Style Creator
   all the finishing work and sparkle is done here
   Voices - Levels - Filters - Tuning - FX - EQ etc.

You need to know your way around your Sequencer, StyleMagic or some other style making program and also familiar with the mixing in Style Creator for everything to work and at the same time understand music notation and maybe be a little creative as well, there is a lot of trial and error and the learning curve may be too much for some but we learn little by little.

If we are serious arranger keyboard players/giggers then I think we must understand how things work and be prepared to edit some of them style to exactly what we need.
All my styles for gigging only have one intro and one ending, I can't be doing with making a mistake by pressing the wrong intro, everything has to look as easy as ABC

Can't tell you much more, it's not rocket science
Once you get the just of it then you'll, be on your way.

Pino

[panos]

Drake you can edit the locked Yamaha parts by using Jørgen Sørensen's style unlocker
http://www.jososoft.dk/yamaha/software/stun/index.htm

When you copy and paste a part to another channel all the "informations" now are changing to the second modified channel.
For example,
if you copy the pad channel to the bass channel now the "new" bass channel will have the same NTT-NTR etc of the pad channel.
Before you have done the copy-paste, the default settings of the bass channel, as Mike said, were different.

I agree with you that it would be nice if everybody could use style creator to make new riffs etc. but first, I would rather liked to see  more people to use the edit menu for the preset voices,to use effects,the harmony button etc so they can modify the sounds the way they like.

[Joe H]

I think Yamaha uses special software to create styles.  And there are some rules to using that software.  I don't create styles from scratch, but user Style Creator Assembly and StyleMagic software to modify existing styles to create new ones.  Jan (styles2 psr) creates (records) his styles in Style Creator.

When I look at Yamaha styles, I see that some style Parts use alternate channels (ch1 to ch8) for minor chords. I've experimented with this a little bit with one style by making a phrase Part that would vary with 7th chords, minor chords and major chords. I did this in StyleMagic by using 2 alternate channels (3 channels altogether) and assigning those channels to the same style part. I think the B note is for 7th chords only.

Yamaha could publish a document on how to create styles if it wanted to, but that would dip into their sales. Trouble is... Yamaha can't create all the styles that we want... so here we are having this discussion one more time.

I agree with Drake, if there were several of us who could just focus on style creation, then we could make some progress.  I proposed this 3 or 4 years ago privately to several members here who have specific knowledge.  But how can we do that in a forum like this. We would need to be physically in the same room with a keyboard exchanging ideas and demos on what we did. 

There are many components to creating a good style. It's more than just the notes. Yamaha invests a lot of time and money paying professional musician's to compose their styles. It requires composition skills, music theory, arrangement and mixing skills... not mention understanding how the CASM works to interpret the note data in the OS to produce pro styles like Yamaha sells.

But since having a stroke a year and a half ago...  my priorities have changed. I will continue to modify styles using Style Creator Assembly.  I have asked the author of StyleMagic to add features like Import MIDI Loop and Export/Import Style Part as another way of building styles using his software. My experience with trying to make styles from MIDI song files is... song files lack the correct components (loops) for making styles.  I say this because what I see is styles are comprised of many drum loops and phrase loops (motifs) and chord patterns.  This is why I say one must have considerable musical training and skills to produce pro styles.

As has been stated here and many times in other posts... It's not simple and not so easy!



Joe H

[DrakeM]

Drake you can edit the locked Yamaha parts by using Jørgen Sørensen's style unlocker
http://www.jososoft.dk/yamaha/software/stun/index.htm

Joren's software won't unlock every style that Yamaha has given to us as I understand reading else where. I was wanting to modify a horn riff recently and couldn't get to the PHR1 slot to cut out a couple measures of a 4 measure Main.

What I thought might work was to move the PHR1 of the locked style into another style I had been successful in altering the PHR1 slot. Problem was I FORGOT which style I had successfully been able to alter (I should have written it down and noted it.) So I wound up just recording the horn riff myself into the style part.

I get so warped up working on each custom style and don't take the time to make and keep many notes. I do have some notes on how to do things. I am getting better at it and I will figure out how to get around a locked style too hopefully.

Regards
Drake

[Joe H]

Took me more than an hour to find the correct settings(by luck of course) in the style creator(NTT-NTR etc) for a riff which has just the notes C-E-G to be listenable to the 5 chord changes.
All I wanted was a simple C chord!!!!  

The riff begins at 0.29 when I press the Main D button(voices Fat Saw Hook+Fat Trance Pad)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73GwtDNXUds

If I don't play the specific 5 chord progression it will sound badly in some chords.
Maybe I should have chosen another channel to record it as Drake said and I would be more lucky (eg the bass or the pad channel). Who knows?   

My respect to the professional stylemakers and to Yamaha for the Assembly function

Panos,

You posted the MIDI song file and registration.  In your video it looks like you are playing a style.  I was hoping you would post the style here also.

Thanks,
Joe H

[panos]

I am sorry Joe my mistake
I haven't checked the extension.I have replaced it.

Drake only once happened to my not to to unlock a style part with style unlocker,
so you can try with the style you want.
Take a copy to your usb stick and try it.The procedure with Jorgen's program lasts less than a second.
Then insert the usb to your keyboard again and see if the style parts are now unlocked.
Or upload the style here so I will try to unlock it for you.

The midi program Synthesia can read also the .sty files and show us the notes that Yamaha used for every part individually
Take a look at this post:http://www.psrtutorial.com/forum/index.php/topic,49934.msg391870.html#msg391870