some general questions e433

[mla]

Hi,
I bought e-433 years ago and use it just when need a small keyboard near for some transcriptions.
I know that this is pretty "powereful" tiny keyboard in good hands, but I have very basic knowledge for operating it.
There are tons of utubes, but I guess I can get answers in one post...
I am a sax player, not pianist...

These days I need to do some playbacks... so here are my questions:

1. is it possible to "punch in" chord progressions by bars without actually playing them in auto accompaniment.
Probably not but just asking... may be to enter them in text file and load it from USB...

2. let say I have a tune in Cm (original key). I guess for ease of use I can play and record it into record "bank" in Am in slow tempo and transpose to Cm and adjust the tempo prior to "export"it to PC software.
Correct?

3. pls some links to instructions for recording/saving to the keyboard. Also, can I export recorded playback in MP3 to USB key or only to play it and record in Reaper or Audacity?

Thanks.

[SeaGtGruff]

Welcome to the forums!

(1) The PSR-E models don't have "punch in" or "step" recording like the PSR-S models do, just basic "record as you play." If you want to make a correction or other change in something you've recorded, you must record that entire track all over again-- but you don't need to record all of the tracks again, just the track that you want to change. That's with the on-board song recorder, of course; if you're using an external program, then you can certainly do "punch in" or "step" recording if the external program supports it.

Now, if you want to play along with a Style but want to play with both hands instead of having to use your left hand to control the chord changes in the Style, what you could do is to record a User Song but don't try to play your part of the song, just record yourself controlling the Style using the same section changes, variation changes, and chord changes as you want the song to contain. That might be a little tricky as far as counting bars in your head-- unless you're good at hearing the music in your head-- so another possibility would be to record the Style as well as a simple right-hand part to help you keep yourself straight about which bar you're playing. Then you can delete the right-hand track (which is probably Track 1) but leave the accompaniment track (Track A) alone. The manual should have instructions on how to erase a specific track of a User Song.

Now you can play back the User Song and the keyboard will play back the Style you had selected, complete with all of the section changes, variation changes, and chord changes you'd recorded, leaving you free to play along on the keyboard with both hands, or play along on your sax, or just run around and dance to the music, or whatever!

However, as far as actually controlling the chord changes of a Style in a manner that doesn't require recording everything in advance-- such as by sending chord change information to the keyboard from an external MIDI device or computer-- unfortunately there's no way to control the Style playback that way as can be done on the PSR-S models. What you'd need to do is record the Style to MIDI tracks in your DAW-- complete with the desired section changes, variation changes, and chord changes-- and then create loops in the DAW so you can repeat some desired portion of the recording for as long as you want before letting playback continue to the rest of the recording. If you've got an iPad, you could try using Cubasis to do that, or maybe Yamaha's free Mobile Sequencer app.

(2) You should be able to use the keyboard's Transpose feature to transpose the entire keyboard to whatever key is easiest to play and record in. The song will be recorded in the transposed key, not the key you're actually playing.

(3) The PSR-E433 doesn't have a feature to convert a recorded User Song to an MP3 or WAV audio file, so you'll have to just connect the keyboard's audio out (or PHONES/OUTPUT jack) to the computer's audio in, play back the song, and record the audio on the computer while the keyboard is playing back the song.

[mla]

thank you very much for taking time for the explanation.
So most of the stuff is clear, some I have to read again because of my low level in the topic.
Also will get the doc for e433 and may be some utube.
For the beginning I will record some progression with left hand accomp.

would this recording be on multiple midi tracks or it will be one midi track? (sorry if it sounds like a stupid question

[SeaGtGruff]

That's not a stupid question at all!

When you record a Style to Track A of a User Song, the accompaniment will be recorded using Sy*** and Sequencer-Specific messages, so it won't be recorded on any of the MIDI channels per se.

However, when you play back the User Song, it will be played back using channels 9 through 16, which are the channels used for Style playback.

If you want, you can use the "Save SMF" function in the FILE CONTROL menu to save the User Song as a Standard MIDI File (or SMF) which will be written to the USB flash drive that you've inserted in the keyboard, and when the User Song is converted and saved the accompaniment will be written to channels 9 through 16 of the file.

But if you load the resulting file into a DAW, you can move the events from one channel to another if you wish, although it might be easy to do something wrong and not end up with the results you wanted, such as if the channel messages are changed but the corresponding channel-specific XG Multi-Part Sy*** messages do not get changed. So it would be best to just leave everything on channels 9 through 16 unless you know what you're doing and have a strong need to move the channel messages to different channels.

[mla]

Michael, one more...
when in accompaniment, let say bossa style can I add strings to the chord?
I remember 25 years ago on some rolland I did it with a press of a button.
Should be something here I guess.

[AnupamEnosh]

Michael, one more...
when in accompaniment, let say bossa style can I add strings to the chord?
I remember 25 years ago on some rolland I did it with a press of a button.
Should be something here I guess.

Turn on split function, set the Split voice to strings, that should work AFAIK

[SciNote]

Yeah, that's something I learned about my PSR-E433 not that long ago -- that you can actually combine split keyboard and auto-accompaniment style and play a split voice on top of the style.

When recording audio to make an MP3 or WAV recording of your playing, if your computer does not have high-quality stereo inputs to convert the analog signal of the keyboard's headphone jack to digital data for a DAW, then you'll need a converter.  I've been using a Behringer device that does just that -- it takes an analog audio signal and converts it to data and sends it to a computer by way of a USB port -- and it only cost about $30.  If you check out the original songs I've posted recently in the Songs by Forum members section (links are provided in a separate thread of this part of the forum), everything you hear was done on a PSR-E433 and sent to the computer by way of the Behringer device.

Two very important things about this type of analog-to-digital recording from the keyboard...

1.  If you're getting a background hiss during quiet passages, then turn down the input level of the DAW and turn up the volume of the keyboard (do this gradually to make sure you don't flood/overload the signal).  This helps boost the signal to noise ratio.

2.  Make sure that your computer is set to record STEREO and not MONO.  It does not necessarily automatically detect this from the device you hook up, and believe it or not, I made recordings for about THREE YEARS before I finally discovered that I had the computer's stereo/mono selection set wrong the entire time!  I knew I had trouble getting the recordings to sound good, and I finally discovered why -- that I had been recording in mono -- when I set up everything through a mixer and started adjusting left/right levels and saw how the mixer was interacting with the sound.

[mla]

Thanks to all.
I have Lexicon Lambda interface that I use for sax recordings. So I will record through it from e433 out.

[mla]

> Turn on split function, set the Split voice to strings

how?

I hit Split button (see it on display).  Press voice select 67 (strings).
It works for right hand but nothing changed in accomp (left hand)

[SeaGtGruff]

Press the SPLIT button and hold it down for a moment. That should shortcut you to the Split Voice setting in the Function menu. Another way to do this is to press the FUNCTION button and then use the CATEGORY up and down buttons to go forward or backward through the Function menu settings until you get to the Split Voice (or "S.Voice") setting. Then you can enter the desired Voice number on the numeric keypad, or use the plus and minus buttons on the numeric keypad, or use the CATEGORY up and down buttons, or use the big spin DIAL, to select the particular Voice that you want to use as the Split Voice.

[SciNote]

Also note that it might be beneficial to raise the octave of the split voice by 1 or 2 octaves if you do this.  Otherwise, when you play a chord for the style, the style will sound fine, but the split voice (such as strings) may sound kind of "muddy" due to having multiple notes close together in a chord using a low-pitched sound, and most of the voices used for split voice would have a low pitch on that part of the keyboard without raising the octave.

You can change the octave of the split voice, as well as the volume, reverb level, and chorus level, in a similar manner that Michael described above to change the split voice itself.  These functions (split voice volume, octave, reverb, and chorus) are right near the option to set the split voice in the list of functions.

[mla]

cool! everything is simple when you know
Thanks.