Yamaha or Korg chord/song sequencers

[Pino]

I saw a posting on SynthZone comparing the Korg chord/song sequencer to Yamaha and saying how much superior the Korg sequencer is, an arranger keyboard is a chord based player, surely it wouldn't take much effort to make something that us player's would enjoy using.

Why hasn't Yamaha upgraded the sequencer or offered an app that can be used to edit our quick recorded songs, looks like if we have a mistake in 1,000s of notes we have to try to use the not so friendly 'punch in/ punch out', event editor or start again from scratch, all for the sake of changing a chord or a couple of notes,

Yamaha must have sold 1,000s of arranger keyboards, 
what's the thinking with them,

Not important for their profits,
Not important to sell keyboards,
Haven't enough staff/programmers on the project
Can't be bothered.

Pino

[ckobu]

Each keyboard has its advantages and disadvantages. On Yamaha, the Chord Sequencer is bad but the Chord Looper can be used to make a song.

https://youtu.be/-BljSgJEB6w

[overover]

Hi Pino,

there are several PC programs for this porupose (creating MIDI songs by just entering Chords). Doing this on a PC is, in my opinion, much more convenient than on a small keyboard display:

Music Maker by Richard L.
https://sites.google.com/view/midi-maker/midi-maker
https://yamaha-music-board.freeforums.net/board/13/midi-maker-discussions

Producer by Peter Wierzba
http://www.wierzba.homepage.t-online.de/producer/producerfeatures.htm

JJazzLab by J. Lelasseux
https://www.jjazzlab.com/en/
https://jjazzlab.freeforums.net/


Best regards,
Chris

[ckobu]

If external software is required, then the Chord Tracker application should also be available.
https://youtu.be/92aYTdA7tp8

[DerekA]

Why hasn't Yamaha...

what's the thinking with them,

Not important for their profits,
Not important to sell keyboards,
Haven't enough staff/programmers on the project
Can't be bothered.

I would guess it's about prioritization. Lots of people have things they want that they think are more important than what you want. Yamaha has to make choices of where it uses its (limited) resources.

[DrakeM]

Actually you don't need it.

Get yourself Audacity (it is free) and make not a MIDI backing track but a WAV (MP3) backing track. That is what the recording studios do in real life these days with this batch of today singers.

You just replay the screwed up section of the song correctly. Then it is very easy to ZOOM "IN" on a your mistake and "cut and paste" in your corrected section. 

Use this same technique if you are just trying to create a sit and play recording of yourself. 

Yea, don't pull your hair out, when you can use TODAY'S technology and make it simple.

[mikf]

I guess we all have our own perspective on these things. I dont find the onboard punch in/out very difficult. My only complaint about the onboard sequencer is that it has no way to do a final mix. I spoke with Yamaha and they agreed, that is something that would be useful, but doesn't exist.
I tried to use Audacity to mix my midi and never got anywhere with it. I thought it was terrible to use.
Mike

[Pino]

Yes, Drake you are correct,, I quite often join songs together to make a medley and the 'fade in/fade out' works really nice between songs, I'm a big fan of 'audacity' plus I have 2 or 3 other apps on my iPad Pro like 'Ferrite'.

I've just spent a few hours today on the midi side of the keyboard, just come to the conclusion that turning the tempo down a little when recording does the trick for me as opposed to making lists and entering chords in step record, just takes too long.

Pino

[Pino]

Mikf

The 'punch in/punch out' works but on a few occasions it's been trial and error.

Not sure if you could do a final mix in audacity without having each track on a separate wav track, once we record to audio on the keyboard then that's probably the end of mixing,

This is the topic of this post,
Yamaha own 'steinberg' so why not make some app for Yamaha  arranger keyboards so we can transfer our midi recording to edit and complete a final mix outside of the keyboards.

There are so many excellent midi/daw sequencers around today but not found one yet that can edit and play a Yamaha midi song without spending days on it.

Pino

[mikf]

Pino
I was trying to do the mix simply by playing the midi int the audacity audio reorder, while adjusting the mixer on the keyboard in real time. Its a bit tricky, but I have done that in the past quite succesfully. But a couple of things have changed, Audacity has become a lot more complex, and I changed to a MacBook and a CVP. Somehow the new combination seems to screw everything up and I couldn't make it work. I think the trouble is that the MacBook has no separate sound input, the headphone socket is supposed to identify a Mike and automatically change from output to input. But the CVP is not mike, so it does not work.
Mike

[DrakeM]

Yes, Drake you are correct,, I quite often join songs together to make a medley and the 'fade in/fade out' works really nice between songs, I'm a big fan of 'audacity' plus I have 2 or 3 other apps on my iPad Pro like 'Ferrite'.

I wasn't telling you to fade in and out. I am saying you can splice at any point where the mistake is in your song and patch it with another piece that is correct from a second take of that part of the song done correctly. So, I guess, I am really asking do you know how to do that sort of thing? And do you know how to do it correctly so that there is not a "POP" sound indicating that a patch was done in the song?

Regards
Drake

[Pino]

Drake.
I have been using Audacity for many years and consider it to be a good and simple app to work with, you could do the same as you pointed out, cut and paste, in many other apps from Cubase to Pro Tools on the PC or GarageBand to Ferrite on the iPad and many, many more.

I've never tried to do as you pointed out, cut a bad piece out and paste a good piece in as my second option is punch-in/punch-out.
Your method is quick and easy to do and I'll give it a go sometime.

I was just pointing out that it's a good app for joining songs together for making a medley of songs for playing over or for presentation, for the benefit of other members that may be reading this post.

Pino