Less repetitive, long-pattern Yamaha styles

[bpsafran]

I play a Tyros5 and have noticed that most styles, even commercial song styles - have patterns that are 2 or 4 bars long. This becomes stale very quickly. I came across these videos (URLs are below) about the styles on Lowrey organs that "evolve" in time and change appropriately to the music, since the patterns used are very long. See the discussion in the videos about the styles. Why can't we have such styles in our Yamaha keyboards either from Yamaha or commercially? Is there anyone selling such long-pattern styles?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2B0prS24B4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw-UBKHY4J0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2g8TUM_p6o

[pieterpan]

Hi,

If you are making your own styles you can make Intro, Endings and main parts as long as you want them to be. This can't be done for the Fills and Breaks, Yamaha sticks to the one measure Fill and Breaks - why I have no idea. Mostly I make longer Fills and Breaks using Intro's.

Regards <> Piet

[mikf]

There have been similar posts in the past about why Yamaha stick with shorter patterns. Apart from the   sheer amount of additional work to make long patterns styles may be more generally useful and cover a wider range of songs when accompaniment patterns are relatively short. After all most popular songs hold chord changes for agar or less.
Mike

[bpsafran]

If the pattern remains the same, it does not matter much that there is a chord change; it is still repetitive. If you see the videos links I posted you will hear how the much-disparaged Lowrey organs keep changing.  The basic drums-bass-strum is often the same, but all the other parts of the "band" change the fills and riffs.

Regards

[Gleston]

I don't know if you agree with me, but some kind of AI software inside the keyboards could do this job .

If you see the K.A.R.M.A. software in Korg top line keyboard ( Kronos)  you will understand what I'm meaning. ( I do not have any connection with Korg - just using it as an example) . See something on You tube.

You prepare few things and begin to play a melody, and the style change everytime you play.  You can even create your  own style, etc.

This software resource could be change to adapt to Arranger Keyboards.

[panos]

I think we can also press some buttons too while we are playing to avoid the repetitiveness.
That's the reason that row of buttons is just above the keybed.
So after playing 4 bars the background track will change by pushing a style,a registration or a pad button.
The more melodic parts you add to a factory style the less usable will be for playing many songs.
You may hear flutes, trumpets, violins playing  a little rif that you don't want to hear.

Luckily, everyone that can and has the time to learn and use the keyboard functions that are available and have already payed for them, he could adjust the background music in a relatively better way if he/she believes that there are things that should be added to a style.

I believe that when I am sounding not good and repetitive while I am playing it is not the composer fault that has written many repetitive melody lines nor the keyboard's fault for providing me a 4 bar style but my fault.
I wish I had the skills of that keyboard player.
Nobody would care about how the style sounds anyway 

[mikf]

I think the videos clearly demonstrate how song specific a style gets if the style is very elaborate. OK if you want to not only play that song, but play it in that particular arrangement. It's like karaoke for keyboard. In all honesty he is an ok player - not exceptional- but I hated everything he played, all sounded hackneyed 1960s working men's club. The musical equivalent of those paint by numbers oil masterpieces we used to get for Christmas.
If I am going to play 'My Way" I want to play it my way, not Lowrey's way.
Mike

[Pino]

This is the art of playing an arranger keyboard.

You have to mix and match your style variation to make it interesting, using the 'fill' is the key, if the fill is well recorded with some instruments then that can be a good bridge + turning some style parts off and on does give more variation.
I recorded 8 bars here to give an example.
https://app.box.com/s/i4ejqcqx3wcd6mrw4d9d462vpcsl7mzp

There are 3 options to playing
1   Universal Style - will play many songs
2   Song Style - song only - more detail for specific song
3   Midi file. - just play the melody over the midi

Sounds to me that you are looking for a counter melody which you may get from a midi file.


Pino

[bpsafran]

Thanks for all the replies and strong opinions about using the various style sections and multipads etc. What I feel is still missing in the Yamaha styles are countermelodies that fill in your own playing. The styles are mostly rhythmic with some short "phrase" riffs, but theses are mostly "stabs" and shorter than a countermelody phrase would be. I know that we can program the multipads to do this, but give the amount of time to create good styles and multipads, it would be nice if Yamaha or commercial style producers could give this some thought, even if they styles are somewhat song specific.

Sam

[DerekA]

Yes, that is a good idea, to create sets of "song specific multipads" that contain recognisable riffs from particular songs. That's the best of both worlds, i.e. flexible styles boosted with song-specific phrases.

[mikf]

I suspect that if they get too like the original Yamaha may face copyright issues. They don't even use the real names.
Mike

[Luluc]

Its a shame that in the Genos we still get styles with 1-bar or 2-bars patterns  ! That is strange for a 'professional arranger keyboard !

This has been already discussed in another topic, so we also hope that Yamaha people do read this forum and take it in account to release new styles with 4-bar patterns at minimum.

     Luluc

[danand]

If you try to create a "generic" style (i.e. a style to play many-many-many different songs) you will understand why Yamaha stick for the last 40 years to small size patterns.
When you create this type of "generic" styles you must keep it simple.
It is a completely different discussion a "song style" in  order to play a specific song and a completely different discussion the creation of a "generic style".

Furthermore many internal styles are not 1 bar patterns. Most of them are 4 bars. If you listen carefully most current styles are longer that 1 bar.

Also on many styles (not all of them but on many styles) the type of chord you play trigger a slightly different variation of the pattern. So YES you have many variations.

Until AI become "intelligent" and cheap to follow our performance like a human band, we have to get comfortable with the tools we already have in hand and use them the best way possible.
If your performance is bad you don't need  "intelligent styles" to help you, you need to study more and improve your performance.

[blackpool]

Maybe not perfect, but a simple solution is to use a variety of styles from the same genre, which sit/match well and save these in a reg bank often-time including intro 2 as a variation/fill or as a transition from one to the other. i do this a lot with Latin styles, especially when playing a dance medley in the same tempo. Of course as mentioned earlier, style parts can be removed from each as you wish.
Wading through style files i often find intro 2 to be a good dual use as a nice variation and link for this purpose.

Another thing I do is to have break/fill assigned to pedal, notice when held in some styles ( not all of course! ) it can provide several bars, as long or short as you wish, of a really nice variation and is a hidden underused gem. It is obviously easier to do this by foot than manually hence I use a pedal for this function.

Keith   

[mikf]

The style is not the totality of what you play. If your arrangement or the lead playing is not interesting then a repetitive style is more noticeable. If your overall playing is interesting and you make judicious use of style pattern variations and fills, people don't notice things like the number of bars in a style.
If you really want something specific and very varied then making a style based midi with some multi tracks and then playing two handed live additional tracks is easier and better than trying to make a complex style. Take a listen and look at some of dalekwars submissions to see how brilliant this can be on an arranger in the hands of a very talented musician.
Mike

[motekmusic]

Hi

Interesting topic as trying to get the most out of onboard styles is always fascinating.
The previous 3 posters,,mikf, keith and danand  supplied lots of advice on how to "stretch your style budget"
There are 3 intros, 4 variations plus the variation button, plus the break button for each style and 3 endings  to play around
with.  Plus yamaha provides multipads,, different rhythms, plus you can fire, hire, replace any musician in the style channels.
There is also the 3 finger trick,, depressing 3 consecutive keys gives just the percussion parts and when you use the 3 finger
trick and play around with the variations, you will get even more mileage.
There are  many posts here also that are very helpful . 
Just my 2 shekels.
Have fun.


cheers
elaine

[danand]

Last night I have some free time and I check the provided videos from the original post.
As far a I can understand the organ in question is Rialto EY400A

First of all let's start with the detail that the price tag is at +/- 7000 GPB
Then I check the specifications and it looks that they also have "generic" styles (1-4 repetitive bars) and the styles on the demo are actually "song styles" programmed specifically for certain songs (and probably useless for other songs...). So what the demonstrate (the AI orchestra following the player) is actually a per-programmed style for a specific song. Try to play another song and you get an annoying "AI orchestra" playing something totally strange which doesn't fit at all your performance. Maybe it works on songs with 4 bars music phrases but not all songs follow this pattern.

So this organ is for some rich people who need something to play the "standards" on their spacious living-room, but it is not a keyboard for the rest of us.
Even the styles list is extremely limited and focused only on the "standards"
No styles for dance music, no modern versions of ballads or pop or rock styles, nothing... only the "standards"
You can't expand this organ. No new styles, no new sounds.

If you are living for example in middle east and you want ethnic styles and instrument voices of your can't have an expansion pack like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsgdYXiPlC0

Do you want fat EDM leads for your performances like this expansion pack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGjQyP31rTE no way to add something like this in you organ.

Do you plan to take your  organ for a gig in the local club?, better to call a moving company to carry the 285 lbs beast!

So we can't compare two totally different items: a powerful portable expandable keyboard like Genos created to cover every possible music style affordable to everyone and the "beast" which is accessible only from very rich people and is created to offer only the "standards"

[Graham UK]

I remember a friend had one of early Yammy arrangers (Can't Remember Model) that when you stopped playing melody, the keyboard would improvise around the chord being played.

[Toril S]

Yes, I had that feature on my PSR-47! They called it Solo Styleplay. Very cool. Miss it on the newer keyboards!

[travlin-easy]

The PSR 5700 also had that feature - it was really neat.

As for styles being repetitive, nearly all songs are somewhat repetitive as well. Styles, however, are not the only components of a song. The vast majority of songs have lyrics, a lead line, interludes, transitions, and a host of other components that make a song great, or just mediocre. Much of this can be expressed by the musician and singer(s) during the performance of the song. If you are relying on just the style to do all these things, you need to get back to the basics and explore all the things you can do with an arranger keyboard and those wonderful features available at the touch of a key, or your fingertip on a button.

Good luck,

Gary

[mikf]

So we can't compare two totally different items: a powerful portable expandable keyboard like Genos created to cover every possible music style affordable to everyone and the "beast" which is accessible only from very rich people and is created to offer only the "standards"

The thread was not trying to compare instruments but about longer pattern styles and their pros and cons.   The Genos and this organ are very different instruments with different markets, but I would imagine a musician could use the organ for a wide range of music, not just the type of songs or styles demonstrated on this video.
As for only aimed at 'rich' people, it may be more expensive than The Genos, but no more than a good CVP or decent acoustic piano, and millions of ordinary families have these.
Mike

[andyg]

Thanks for all the replies and strong opinions about using the various style sections and multipads etc. What I feel is still missing in the Yamaha styles are countermelodies that fill in your own playing. The styles are mostly rhythmic with some short "phrase" riffs, but theses are mostly "stabs" and shorter than a countermelody phrase would be. I know that we can program the multipads to do this, but give the amount of time to create good styles and multipads, it would be nice if Yamaha or commercial style producers could give this some thought, even if they styles are somewhat song specific.

Sam

Assuming that you know the musical theory behind counter melodies and also how style programming is done, you should be aware that to get a smooth counter melody line while the harmony is constantly changing is going to be a heck of a challenge. It will want to jump around as you change chord and so the more clever you try to be with the counter melody, the more you lock the style into one particular chord progression - with the result that the style becomes more song specific.

As for the Lowrey, one of my students has one of the last to come off the line. It has a great sound and is full of song specific styles but if you don't want to play those songs, you find that there are not that many truly generic styles to choose from. And some of the styles seem not to like complex chord progressions.

I always teach people that part of the keyboard player's art is making the instrument sound real, whether that's appropriate right hand technique to match the instrument, or really working the style section (as per the many suggestions above) to get the best from it.

That said, I'm on record (here, on other forums and at Yamaha HQ in person) as stating that I'd like to see a radical change in the way that the style section works, with 4 or 8 bar patterns, variations with random or semi-random sub-variations, and some degree of humanisationin the timing of the patterns. However, knowing how styles work in a Yamaha, that just won't happen - unless Yamaha ditched everything and went over to a non-MIDI based system.