Why no audio style development

[ekurburski]

PG Music has had real tracks (audio styles) in BIAB for several years and they work great!  Why is it taking so long to come to the arranger world?

[DrakeM]

I think because we the consumers .. don't want them.

As in you can't use them for any thing other than what they are set up for .. ie, A One Shot Wonder.

You can't share any style that uses them with fellow members.

And last they take a lot of (useless) memory up.

For folks wanting to create custom styles using our keyboards, they are a waste.

Thank goodness it appears the SX900 has none of them.

Regards
Drake

[Pino]

I agree with Drake
We need to edit our styles to our liking
That's why I never use the audio styles.

Pino

[Tyros5Mad]

The Genos use AWM stereo samples, which are recorded from real instruments. They sound beautiful.

I was excited about audio styles but they are disappointing, for me anyway.

Regards,
Richard

[pjd]

Yamaha actually has a large number of patents on full audio style technology (i.e., audio for both rhythm tracks and pitched melodic tracks).

Perhaps they aren't quite happy with the audio quality yet? Who knows? Yamaha have clearly invested a fair bit of R&D in this area.

All the best -- pj

[DonM]

I'm hoping they develop more of them.  Ketron has had them for many years and they are a tiny company compared to Yamaha.  They are more expensive to make, especially when you use real guitars, but you are hearing real instruments.
Yamaha will find a way to make them better in the long run, I hope.  The primary problem with audio GUITAR styles, is that recordings must be made for EVERY chord change, and it is extremely time-consuming and expensive.   That's the area where Ketron struggled for so long, and still do to an extent.  Audio styles with only the drums (the rest of the instruments traditional midi) are much easier, but still need excellent drummers and technicians to do them. 
My favorite styles on the S970 are some of the audio styles. 

[Robert van Weersch]

Another problem is that samples can only be stretched to a relatively narrow bandwidth of bpm without changing the pitch. And vice versa.
A MIDI-based track does not have this problem.

[DrakeM]

The Guitar, Strings and Horn Mega style parts are also USELESS for creating your own styles.

The machine is called an "Arranger" and having Mega sounds only makes it a TOY to just sit in front of and play it AS IS.

Many times I have run into a problem with the Mega voices as you CAN NOT change out the voice for another similar voice, as in changing from a Nylon guitar voice to a Clean guitar voice. The picking pattern is the one I need but the voice is wrong and since I can not change the voice, I have to look for another BUT generally find what I need in one of the PRE MEGA styles. If you can find the Pattern in an older style, you may change the voice to ANY voice and I do mean any, including a MEGA voices.

Regards
Drake

[DrakeM]

I have another example regarding the Audio drums from last week.

I found a style that I turned into a custom song style for the Johnny Cash tune "One Piece at a Time. If the style had used Audio drums I would not have been able to delete the Crashing cymbal heard at the end of the Auto fill in. That loud cymbal crash ruined the style but because I could remove it (from a regular drummer pattern), I was able to use that fill in. The drummer is pretty plain and simple backing for that song.

Yamaha put up YouTube videos for the Genos keyboard claiming Songwriters could use the arranger to craft full tracks using the Genos. When in fact the more Audio drums and Mega voices that are added to the keyboard the LESS you are able to "create".

[Enildo]

I am totally in favor of audio styles. For both drums and instruments such as guitars, accordions, ukuleles. They make all the difference. Here in Brazil we are making our own audio guitars using loops. It takes a lot of work but the final work is very rewarding. Here we are mainly using for electric guitars and acoustic guitars. After mounting the loops on Expansion Manager you can share to PPF, CPF, PPI and CPI as normal. For pianos, bass and wind instruments I find it unnecessary, at least for now. It's very different that you play a style with a real guitar (audio) and a guitar made on the keyboard keys, without comparison. The issue of size is no problem these days, when we already work with Terabytes, the biggest obstacle is in the companies that make the keyboards, of increasing the memory size or letting us expand memory for samples of our keyboards. .

Enildo

[Jay B.]

One of the main reasons I bought an arranger was the ability to quickly create MIDI songs, using styles, for various purposes and then be able to edit them later. Imagine my surprise when I find out I can't quick record using audio styles - no drum track is recorded. I understand that the drums are actually an audio file in an Audio Style, but I believe Yamaha should have made provision for quick recording a chord track or something to capture use of audio styles. Maybe step recording will work (haven't tried it yet), but that's not how I wanted to use it in my workflow.

I should add that I think the Audio Styles sound great. Unfortunately, I don't seem to be able to use them in the ways that I want.

[Pino]

Enildo
Sounds like you are a very experienced player.
I am fascinated by your excitement and enthusiasm for music and life.
I would really like to hear your music
Where can I find some of your songs.

Best regards
Pino

[DrakeM]

Let me also point out that the MEGA voices can NOT be used by the us the CUSTOMER. Only Yamaha has the ability to record anything with them. We the Customer can only use the SWEET, LIVE, S.A. and COOL type of voices to record into a style.

These voice sound very nice and very real and belong in a keyboard for a novice user and not in a keyboard that Yamaha says it built for a Songwriter (style creator) Arranger. They are Eye Candy only and totally useless for creation of custom styles.

Regards
Drake

[rodrigo.b]

I Think the problem with the midi styles is that Yamaha don't give us a lot of drum kits to choose from, and also for some regional styles they don't record the appropriate percussion instruments. For example they use the same percussion instruments voices to program a salsa style and a merengue style. I know that some of you may be thinking: "Ok, but both styles are latin genres, so what's the problem?" Well the problem is that the merengue uses some different percussion instruments than the salsa like guira or tambora, so that's the reason why the Yamaha style doesn't sound authentic and doesn't sound realistic.

[ekurburski]

Once again, I started the thread referencing Band-In_A-Box.  PG Music has figured out how to do this so its workable and is fairly easy to use.  With a huge # of real tracks available I can almost always find a suitable one to use.  They have also provided instruction on how to create your own live tracks.  The drawback is you can't play them in real time like we play our arrangers.  Heck, I'll even go further and ask for ability to us BIAB real tracks on the kb.

[Tyros5Mad]

I am also a fan of BIAB/RealBand but I go the other way --> Genos to BIAB/RB
There are tens of thousands of styles for Yamaha arrangers and you can always find one to suit a certain song.

After I make a backing track on the Genos and record the vocals I then record  the midi file to Realband from the Genos.
I then split the tracks by channel and import the vocals. Now I can play with the TC Helicon vocal harmoniser in Realband  and add effects and panning to the individual channels to mix the final song to my liking.

It is true though that BIAB has no problem with using audio samples.

Regards,
Richard

[Enildo]

Enildo
Sounds like you are a very experienced player.
I am fascinated by your excitement and enthusiasm for music and life.
I would really like to hear your music
Where can I find some of your songs.

Best regards
Pino

Hi Pin, thanks for mentioning me.
I don't play as well as you might think, but I try to squeeze out rock juice when it comes to using keyboard features.
I speak very little English but if you want to know a little more about this humble musician, I'll be waiting for you.

Hug,
Enildo

[Enildo]

Let me also point out that the MEGA voices can NOT be used by the us the CUSTOMER. Only Yamaha has the ability to record anything with them. We the Customer can only use the SWEET, LIVE, S.A. and COOL type of voices to record into a style.

These voice sound very nice and very real and belong in a keyboard for a novice user and not in a keyboard that Yamaha says it built for a Songwriter (style creator) Arranger. They are Eye Candy only and totally useless for creation of custom styles.

Regards
Drake

Hello Drake!
I follow your work, here on the forum and on youtube, and you're a great musician and singer.

But let me disagree with you when it comes to Mega Voices. To use Mega Voices you can do it in two ways:
1st: Select Mega voice and go to the "Touch off Level" function and modify the values to your liking using the Mega voice layer you want to use, before turn off the "touch" button. You can then make touch modifications in the style editor.
2nd: Record the track with a normal voice, then switch to a mega voice, now make Touch edits (1 - 127) to the layer you want in the keyboard style editor.

Note: For Mega Voices, octave to the highest octaves of the keyboard (C6 to B6 - C7 - B7), you will find several characteristic nuances of the selected instrument.

You'll have a lot more work for sure, but you'll have a more real trail in your style, and this can be done by any of us.

Enildo

[hans1966]

Wow Enildo, I didn't know that a Mega voice could be edited. thanks for the info. Hans

[DrakeM]

Hi Enildo

I agree and I do use your #2 description for recording my own parts but I do not go back and edit the recording. Problem with the MEGA voices (for me) are the ones YAMAHA has recorded in our styles. You can not for example  .. change a nylon guitar voice to a twelve string guitar and have it sound correct (every time). It is totally hit or miss and generally a miss, I find.

Just this afternoon I was working on a Ricky Nelson song style and needed a simple alternating up and down strum pattern. I found it in one of my S950 styles that used a MEGA guitar voice BUT it was using a Steel string Guitar and I needed a softer sounding voice and changed it to the Nylon guitar voice and it did not play correctly. I continued to search and went to my older batch of Yamaha styles and found the pattern again and was able to change it to using the Nylon guitar voice. The reason I could change it to the Nylon guitar (or and of the other guitars) was because it was not recorded to the style as a MEGA voice by Yamaha.

Regards
Drake

[Pino]

Enildo, Thanks for your reply
And thanks for sharing your technical knowledge with us here.
Regards
Pino

[Pino]

Hi Drake,
it's very frustrating at times when trying to change a guitar part in a style, we can see many guitars but not able to use then without having the dreaded whistles and bangs.

Are you saying that if one uses an older version of the style from a previous keyboard then maybe there is a chance that the guitars are inter-changeable without the problems. - I will give it a go.

Pino

[EileenL]

This happens when Mega voices have been used for the style parts mainly the guitars. With older keyboard styles they did not have Mega voices.

[DrakeM]

This happens when Mega voices have been used for the style parts mainly the guitars. With older keyboard styles they did not have Mega voices.

Hi Eileen,

This isn't an issue on just the older keyboards, this happens with all the keyboards. You can go to your own keyboard and try changing out the different MEGA guitars, some will sound TOO soft, the guitar phrase will have missing parts. The volume will very within the picking pattern sounding all wrong with a different guitar voice. They are not all inter-changeable even on the TOTL keyboards.

The more MEGA voices Yamaha uses in their Onboard styles, the LESS freedom you have for creating your own personal custom styles. Maybe that is Yamaha's long term game plan, once you purchase their $5000+ keyboard and you get board with the 500+ styles that came with it, they figure you will fork over more money to purchase their addon packs in a couple years.

Regards
Drake

[Jay B.]

As a follow up to my post above, the audio styles will not work with chord step recording, either. I now am rethinking my purchase of my PSR-S970 last year as this limitation reduces the effectiveness of the keyboard for quickly recording Midi songs using styles and then editing. The best sounding styles on the keyboard are not available for use.

Maybe you all knew this, maybe I should have known, but now I am thinking about selling it and looking at the SX900 or Genos.

Jay B.

[EileenL]

Audio Styles no longer come as part of the new keyboards Genos or SX900. They now use revo drums which are much better and you can record them in midi.

[Toril S]

Audio styles are useless for me. Awsy with them!

[beykock]

Wished I could remove these audio styles from my T5.

I have never used them.

Impossible dream, I guess.😧

Babette

[Toril S]

Sometimes you can find the same style in a prs. format on a different keyboard.

[Amwilburn]

Yes, audio styles sound great but are of limited use (can't record on a PSR or CVP internally, you need an external audio recording device, can't edit the drums, limited tempo range). As for Mega voices, you *can* create with them, but you're right that you can't simply swap out the sound on a style; you also can't usually play Megavoices "live" due to stacked samples separated by velocity. Which is why they've now "hidden" the Megavoices (they used to sit in the sample folder with the regular voices), but if you set your keyboard velocity to fixed, and scale through the fixed velocity until you find the sample layer you're looking for, record everything on that, and *then* vary the velocity for some expression (but staying within the desired sample layer), you *can* use Megavoices for programming. I have... it's a bit esoteric, but doable.

But you're right, it would be really nice if they split up the layer samples the same way so that you could easily substitute another Megavoice instrument; essentially that's how Super Articulation came to be.

I don't think they'll be focusing on audio styles anymore, alas... I assume that's why they they gave users the ability to make their own via Audio Phraser