Pro Style Music Expansion Packs

[HarmonyCore41]

Hello Everyone,

I am asking if anyone tried the expansion packs from this company. I am so interested to buy their POP Essentials Pack 1 that includes 70 styles (with intros, endings, variations, OTS,..etc) and 74 POP voices. They also offer additional pack called Premium style Pack for the current owners of the POP Essentials Pack at no additional cost. I am currently working on the default Yamaha playlist that I downloaded that gives me a lot of songs to keep me busy. However, I don't care much about Ballroom, Jazz, and other genres that disappeared from my head at the moment. I only care about Pop/Rock and Movie/Cinematic genres. I watched the video of the POP Essential Pack and the styles are very well programmed. The voices also tweaked pretty good.

I am on PSR SX900 here!

Appreciate your thoughts sharing and some suggestions!

Thanks a lot guys

[porterma]

Hi HarmonyCore41,
I don't know how helpful I might be.
But I did purchase the Pop Essentials Pack 1 for my Genos quite awhile ago.
To be honest, I really haven't given them much of a try.
I was impressed with the YouTube demonstrations and enthusiastically made the purchase but I guess just the overwhelming amount of styles and options that come with the Genos in terms of making music have consumed me. Especially with the upgrades that have happened and sets of new styles made available with those upgrades.
Probably the biggest stumbling block for my was that there were a lot of song styles that I did not normally use or wasn't familiar with.
I still mean to get to these styles and voices - it just hasn't really happened as yet.
I will say that my initial look at these styles and voices, that are stored on my keyboard, did not blow me away as much as I had hoped.
But I have to say that I haven't given them a fair chance as yet.
If you do decide to purchase them I would be curious as to your impressions as I will be if you get others responding to this topic.

Mark

[Al Ram]

I have not used styles or product from this company.

But thanks to your post i checked a few and they seem pretty good.   I might order a couple of inexpensive ones for testing . . . . . i noticed that the styles include the melody/voice usually played with right hand. . . . i wonder if that can be silenced so i can play the right-hand melody myself or sing . . . . anyone knows ?

Thanks

[tbaroghel]

I watched the video demos of these packages and, in all honesty, to me they look way overpriced:

1- Just because we (keyboard owners) have often invested a (significant/large/obscene ... pick your adjective) amount of money in our instrument, it does not mean that we are rich to the point of accepting whatever price ... Besides, I might have missed it, but I did not see a detailed list of voices and styles included, which does not help

2 - I did not hear anything in these demos that would make me want these styles/sounds to the point of paying hard earned money: nothing was so different (to my ears at least) from the preset styles and voices we get with the SX900, or from the wealth of resources we get from PSR Tutorial (either free or through the reasonable price asked)

3 - Expansion packs from Yamaha for the SX900 are now for free!

Now don't get me wrong: I do appreciate that there is a 3rd party market for additional styles/voice for my instrument (the very reason I returned my Korg EK-50 and bought the SX900) and I did buy a few song-styles from Style-24 or Key-Tab, because they did bring something different, attractive AND at a reasonable price.

This is, of course, only my opinion: others might think different - and rightfully appreciate PSM packages for reasons I am not able to see and hear, and I will gladly read different opinions and, why not, change my own - on evidence-based replies.

Regards from Paris,

Thierry

[DrakeM]

I downloaded the "Free Demo" version with 20 styles. It's called PREMIUM style packs for PSM-POP Essential pack 1 awhile ago.

The site says you need the $100 Premium Voice pack for the styles to works correctly. What I basically found was the DRUMMER are not heard without the voice pack. That is an easy fix. The DRUMMER doesn't change keys and you can "Copy and Paste" into the style any drum pattern as long as it is the same number of Measures from one of your 500+ styles you already have on your keyboard.

I use styles for their various Patterns that might be contained in each style. So far I have never used anything from these 20 styles yet.  I have other packs of styles I go through first when constructing my custom song styles.   

Regards
Drake

[HarmonyCore41]

Hi HarmonyCore41,
I don't know how helpful I might be.
But I did purchase the Pop Essentials Pack 1 for my Genos quite awhile ago.
To be honest, I really haven't given them much of a try.
I was impressed with the YouTube demonstrations and enthusiastically made the purchase but I guess just the overwhelming amount of styles and options that come with the Genos in terms of making music have consumed me. Especially with the upgrades that have happened and sets of new styles made available with those upgrades.
Probably the biggest stumbling block for my was that there were a lot of song styles that I did not normally use or wasn't familiar with.
I still mean to get to these styles and voices - it just hasn't really happened as yet.
I will say that my initial look at these styles and voices, that are stored on my keyboard, did not blow me away as much as I had hoped.
But I have to say that I haven't given them a fair chance as yet.
If you do decide to purchase them I would be curious as to your impressions as I will be if you get others responding to this topic.

Mark

I hear you in this! The human nature logically rejects the overwhelming number of choices and selections. As a cinematic trailer composer and performer, I find the gazillions of selections create writer block and can't decide from where do you begin and into where are you going. Besides my SX900, I also have countless number of sample libraries in my Cubase and insane number of presets, sound design choices, unlimited possibilities for synth sounds, ...etc. Genos and SX900 stuff are literally 1/10000000 of these sound and effect libraries. However, you have to start from somewhere to kill the confusion and avoid being lost. There are genres in SX900 that I am really not interested in so I simply dumb them. Pop and cinematic genres are my thing. There are people (like Pro Style Music) who are very professional in creating styles and voices way better than the factory stuff. I also found couple of mistakes in Yamaha playlist such as a wrong style and voices for "My Heart will go on" and couple others I don't remember at the moment. But the Pop Essentials styles are very well crafted. I hope you can go back to your Genos and take a full control over it. You will have fun! Thanks for your response.

[HarmonyCore41]

I watched the video demos of these packages and, in all honesty, to me they look way overpriced:

1- Just because we (keyboard owners) have often invested a (significant/large/obscene ... pick your adjective) amount of money in our instrument, it does not mean that we are rich to the point of accepting whatever price ... Besides, I might have missed it, but I did not see a detailed list of voices and styles included, which does not help

2 - I did not hear anything in these demos that would make me want these styles/sounds to the point of paying hard earned money: nothing was so different (to my ears at least) from the preset styles and voices we get with the SX900, or from the wealth of resources we get from PSR Tutorial (either free or through the reasonable price asked)

3 - Expansion packs from Yamaha for the SX900 are now for free!

Now don't get me wrong: I do appreciate that there is a 3rd party market for additional styles/voice for my instrument (the very reason I returned my Korg EK-50 and bought the SX900) and I did buy a few song-styles from Style-24 or Key-Tab, because they did bring something different, attractive AND at a reasonable price.

This is, of course, only my opinion: others might think different - and rightfully appreciate PSM packages for reasons I am not able to see and hear, and I will gladly read different opinions and, why not, change my own - on evidence-based replies.

Regards from Paris,

Thierry

Of course, your opinion is highly appreciated and everyone is free to do whatever he/she please. Fair Enough

EDIT: And you're actually right! 112 bucks is overpriced. I see 70 bucks will be a great price. But to be honest, style creation is really a different type of skill and needs huge time to be at least good at it. I remember I spent time to program Comfortably Numb style by Pink Floyd and I pulled my teeth several times haha. I mean these guys put an effort in this.

[gabrielschuck]

Hi!
I've listened to the Pop essential demos several times. I confess that the first time I was quite excited, but after listening to demos of other packs of theirs I decided that it wouldn't be worth it.
For me, in terms of styles they are really well programmed, but in terms of voices I didn't find anything very surprising.
I didn't like the mix of acoustic drum kits with electric ones in some styles, which leads me to conclude that their strength is really in the dance / trance packs. So I ended up buying the 4 available.
The "best of 80's" styles pack is just amazing!
Today I use several packs on my keyboard, many of them obtained for free from Yamaha, along with the G keys plus and the 4 dance ones from prostylemusic and a few more that I created and I'm very satisfied, apart from the converted styles from other keyboards I got right here.
Together, I have a setup of voices and styles that are enough to play anything.

As for the price: Everything that is really good ends up being expensive. I think this rule is very valid.
There was intense work to create the packs, carefully choose and sample the voices, and program the styles with those voices. And in this case, when it comes to a company, several people can be involved in this workforce and they need to be rewarded for that.
The same thing happens when designing a keyboard to go to market.
How many engineers, programmers and specialist teams were involved in the process?
People don't usually stop to imagine all that happens behind a product.
I understand that often the conditions to acquire something are not the best, but we need to value the work of others so that ours is also valued.
And depending on the situation, you can always try to negotiate.
Here in Brazil, for example, the dollar value is very high, so there were times when I asked for a discount coupon code and they understood very well, but they didn't stop earning for their work. Both sides won.
And the money used to buy these packs comes from my own works, which is already kind of hard to get from people who don't take the music profession so seriously.
Sorry for the huge post.
Regards

[dragonkeys]

Hello!

Why don't you take a look at the packs from the guys at PlaySounds.

It is said that there are Yamaha designers and programmers on the team, I have bought their products, they are very good and affordable.

Here is your website.
https://playsoundsusa.wixsite.com/playsounds-store

Michael

[mezzoman]

Do you know that the company converted the free package to Yamaha's factory sounds?
Here is the link to the page:
https://prostylemusic.net/product/premium-style-packs-for-psm-pop-essential-pack-1/
And here is the link to the styles:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtJqjt-U105AsnCv8qYo5luCFSSh?e=Jx6cYK
Have a nice day!