Should megavoices be left alone?

[markchapman1976]

Hi when I buy a pro midi file and if a midi channel has a megavoice, is that the best result that I can get or have you found instances where editing the voice has produced better results than the megavoice? For example sometimes the megavoice bass channels for me sound better often when changed to vintage round SA bass on my PSR 975. I'd be interested to know what you think.

[Ed B]

Hi
Mega voices are designed to add realism to your playing be making fret noise and other qualities such as a slide etc based on different volumes. You can see these in the data list. It is really up to your personal choice as whether you like this realism or not.
Personally I find it a useful feature.
Regards
Ed B

[groovyband.live]

Hi when I buy a pro midi file and if a midi channel has a megavoice, is that the best result that I can get or have you found instances where editing the voice has produced better results than the megavoice? For example sometimes the megavoice bass channels for me sound better often when changed to vintage round SA bass on my PSR 975. I'd be interested to know what you think.

Megavoices have a special mapping (both velocities and note number) that make it impossible to swap them with "normal" voices or other megavoices with different mappings. If you try to change a megavoice with another voice you usually end up with a sound that is not acceptable (wrong dynamic and/or high frequencies "beeps"). The "beeps" come from note numbers >95 that on the original megavoice are mapped to "noises" appropriate for that given voice (i.e: string slide, breath, ....), but that on normal voices are simply notes many octaves higher than normal (= "beeps"). Additionally increasing velocities are not usually mapped to sound with higher/stronger volume/dynamics, but to different sound articulations, that are even sometimes softer than the same note played with a lower velocity.
So the sequenced part using a megavoice does not sound good when played with an ordinary voice that produces stronger volume/dynamics with increasing velocities.

To swap a megavoice with another megavoice, or a normal voice, you should manually convert every single note to a different note (note number/velocity). This is totally impractical to be done by hand, since you usually do not even know what are the right conversion "numbers".

This is a similar problem you face when you try to convert a drumkit part for another drumkit with a different mapping.

With a stock Yamaha firmware you are therefore locked into the choice Yamaha has made for you.

But there are alternative solutions that completely remove these limitations. We produce a software (www.groovyband.live) that converts in real time in a way completely transparent to the user megavoices into other megavoices or normal voices mappings (and hence you have a huge selection of voices to choose from). You simply select the voice you want and let the software play it correctly. This happens in real time: you click/tap the new voice and the style keeps playing seamlessly with the new voice selected. You can try dozens of voices without stopping the music, as effortlessly as touching with your finger on a touch screen (or clicking with a mouse)!!
You can also swap drumkits and the software makes the necessary conversion on the fly (provided the drumkits are reasonably interchangeable = have broadly the same sounds, although differently mapped).

But there are also many other advanced features related to this topic. Here is an excerpt from build 19020 changelog:

• Virtual round robin on all drumkits (enabled by default, can be selectively disabled wherever desired). Groovyband Live! subtly randomly varies the pitch, ADSR envelope and filter cutoff of every stroke of every kit piece every time a note is played (as well as the velocity, see later). No two hits are identical, and the whole drum track sounds livelier, as played by a human (who never repeat himself) and not by a sequencer.
• The velocity of every played note (both melody and drum tracks) can be varied randomly to humanize the execution (intensity freely adjustable). The randomization is smart and takes into account the spatial/temporal position of played notes. Closely played notes are not allowed to be randomized independently, to mimic the fact that, for example, a strummed guitar can be strummed with varying intensity, but all the strings within a given strum (hand movement) are either all played softly or loudly. You cannot play softly a string and loudly the string immediately below it stroked a few milliseconds after the first one!
  
• The noises of mega voices are randomly selected from a pool of similar sounding noises, when available, every time one is played. A looping track never repeats identical, as it is the case in the real world.
• The volume of "noises" in mega voices can be adjusted independently of the track volume. You can therefore (de)emphasize at will this effect, as well as disable it completely.
  
• A mega voice can be substituted with another (similar, i.e.: a guitar with another guitar) mega voice, or with a regular voice. Groovyband Live! knows every articulation mapping and makes the necessary adjustments in real time to select the best match among the articulations and noises available in the destination voice. You can therefore broadly expand the choices available when revoicing the parts to suits your needs.
  
• To further tweak the final result when revoicing parts (or to match your taste), there is a single knob comp/expander control. With this control you can compress or expand the velocity of the notes of a track to match the built-in dynamics of a particular voice (which might be different than the original voice dynamics the track was sequenced for).
  

This is only the tip of the iceberg. The software has tons of advanced features not present in your Yamaha arranger. If you want to know more please follow the link we provided above.

You might also consider to give it a try: there is a free demo available for download.
We also have an online manual and our support team usually answers within a couple of (working) hours to every email.