Chords in accompiment or split mode

[Mick47]

Gday
Recently resurrected my E433
Been using ordinary 88 key keyboard in piano mode.
On the piano I mainly use a shuffle to play chords.Play root,full chord,root and finally full chord every 4 beats.
Have been doing this in accompaniment  mode or more likely in SPLIT and it's not really doing the trick.Seems to mess around with my SPLIT settings and just doesn't work well.
Have noticed a lot of players on You Tube for instance just holding chords the 4 beats or whatever.This only applies if I'm not just in a piano style of course.
Any thoughts.

[mikf]

Little puzzled because the 433 is a 61 key instrument so the mention of ordinary 88 key piano is confusing. I am not sure what fingering modes are available on the 433 but for piano playing many keyboards have AI full keyboard mode. This allows the accompaniment to be driven by all notes being played. In those cases where not enough notes are played simultaneously to fully identify a chord, smart algorithms will make a guess based on notes played and previous chord. This works pretty well 95% of the time, and maybe this is what you have seen used on utube.
But if this mode is not available and you are using a standard split/lh chord drive, then splitting chords into single notes like a root and chord might not work effectively. Typically in these cases you have to play and hold the chord and allow the style to play root/chord accompaniment.
But I am guessing here because I have never played an e series keyboard.
And you often can't tell the whole story from a utube video because people making these videos may not always play entirely 'live' with styles. They might use accompaniment midis, multi recording or whatever.
Mike

[Mick47]

Yeah I was on an 88 key donner keyboard using only piano mode. I decided to get back on my E433 because I have never really worked out how to make the most of this keyboard..SciNote has cleaed a lot up for me.
I was using  a 'shuffle' on the left hand on the piano.
On a keyboard like the E433 I'm using SPLIT  or STYLE arrangements  .
Just wondering what most forum members use when playing chords in these modes .Do you use the one finger thingo or hold down full chords?
Ta Mick

[Mick47]

It's probably a little out there this post.
It's up to my ear to decide what sounds best.
Will work it out.

[SciNote]

The PSR-E433's auto accompaniment does not have selectable modes.  Instead, it senses the notes that you're playing in the auto-accompaniment part of the keyboard (which is the part left of the split point, whether the actual split mode is engaged or not), and determines what to do.  These are the basic conditions and what they do...

1.  If you just play a single note, you'll get the major chord of the note you're playing

2.  If you play a note and the black key closest to that note, BELOW that note, you'll get the minor chord of the high note.  Examples:  If you play a C and the Bb right below the C, you'll get a C minor chord.  If you play a B and the Bb right below that B, you'll get a B minor chord.  In both cases, the Bb is the closest black key BELOW the note of the base/root chord that you want

3.  If you play a note and the white key closest to that note, BELOW that note, you'll get the 7th of the high note.  Examples:  If you play a C, and the B right below that note, you'll get a C7.  If you play an Eb, and the D right below that note, you'll get an Eb7

4.  If you play a note, and then both the closest black key AND the closest white key -- together, along with the top note -- BELOW the original note, you'll get the minor 7th of the high note.  Examples:  If you play a G, the F# right below that G, and the F right below that G, you'll get a G minor 7.  If you play a Db and the C right below that Db, and the Bb right below that Db, you'll get a Db minor 7.

Those examples above are the "easy-play" chords recognized by the system.  Note that when choosing what notes to play below the base/root chord note to get minor, 7th, or minor 7th, you are not looking at the interval between the notes you're playing.  You're simply playing the closest black and/or white keys below the base/root note that you're playing.  For example, If you play a D, and the Db right below it, you are playing two notes a semi-tone apart, and you'll get a minor chord -- D minor.  But if you want a Db minor, you have to play the Db and the Bb right below it, because the Bb is the closest black key below a Db, yet those notes are a minor 3rd apart!

Beyond that, if you play regular chords that the keyboard recognizes, then you will get a backing accompaniment with the chord you're playing, as long as it is a chord type that the keyboard recognizes.  There are quite a few types it recognizes when you are actually fingering an actual chord.  I don't know them all, but in addition to the basic major, minor, 7th, and minor 7th, I believe it can recognize sus2, sus4, 7sus4, diminished, diminished 7th, and maybe even others like 6th and minor 7b5.  It even recognizes "5th" chords, like C5, which is just a root and fifth -- for example, C5 is made up of the notes C and G.

So, as you can see, if you do what you described above -- playing root, then playing a whole chord, playing root, playing a whole chord, and so on, you'll get some odd results if you are wanting anything other than a major chord background.  This is because every time you just hit the single root note, you'll get the major chord for the note you play.  But then when you play the actual chord, you'll get whatever chord you're playing.  For example, if you play C note, C minor chord, C note, C minor chord, and so on, you be alternating between a C major chord background when you hit just the C note, and a C minor chord background when you play the actual C minor chord.  Unless this alternating major/minor chord sequence is what the song you're playing calls for, this is likely not what you want and it won't sound right.

So, you either have to alter your playing style when using auto accompaniment to just play actual chords (or the easy-play chords I first described), without any left hand bass line or counterpoint melodies, or you have to just not use the auto-accompaniment functions, except for the drums, if you do want to play notes, bass lines, and/or counterpoint melodies.  Again, this is because playing single notes with your left hand -- when the auto-accompaniment is switched on -- will generate a different major chord with each note that you play, which is not likely to harmonize well with the right-hand melody you are playing.

There's more!

Normally, with auto-accompaniment, when you play an easy-play chord or an actual chord that the keyboard recognizes, it fills in a bass line based on the root note of the chord you're playing.  However, there is a kind of cool, and I believe undocumented, feature of the auto-accompaniment that allows you to get certain chords with an automatic bass note that is not the root note of the chord.  You get this by playing certain intervals with your left hand in the auto-accompaniment part of the keyboard.  For example, if you play a G and the C above it (a perfect 4th), you'll get a C major chord with a G bass.  I think that if you play an E with the C above it (a minor 6th), you'll get a C major chord with an E bass.  And I believe that if you play an Eb with the C above it (a major 6th), you'll get a C minor chord with an Eb bass.  I'm not sure of all of the combinations, and you'd just have to experiment with it to see what you get.

And finally, one other interesting thing is that the split voice can actually be used with the auto accompaniment mode!  If you have both the auto-accompaniment and the split voice turned on, then whenever you play a chord with your left hand in the auto-accompaniment/split part of the keyboard, you'll get the auto-accompaniment of the chord you're playing, but you'll also be playing the notes of the chord with the split voice, as well.  As an example of how this can be used, you can set the split voice to, say, a piano sound -- and you'd likely want that sound to be in a higher octave (such as +2) if you're going to be playing chords with it.  And now, when you start the style and play a chord with your left hand, as the keyboard fills in the auto-accompaniment like normal, you can repeatedly keep striking the same chord, and you'll hear the piano sound every time you hit the chord!  Now, like I said above, you still cannot use this feature to play bass lines or counterpoint melodies, because the keyboard will still recognize each new single note you play as a new major chord.  But it does allow you to play a chord in rhythm to go along with the keyboard's auto-accompaniment to add a little bit of your own flair to the preprogrammed background style's auto-accompaniment.

I guess one more thing I should add is that, with auto-accompaniment switched on, if you play a cluster of notes that the keyboard does not recognize as either an easy-play chord or a regular chord, it will stop the auto-accompaniment from playing, except for the drums and the bass, and the bass note seems to be chosen by the lowest note of the cluster of notes you play.  I will also say that, as I was just now experimenting with this, I was getting some surprising chords by playing clusters that I thought would not be recognized, like four white keys all in a row, next to each other.  Again, you can experiment and see what you can come up with.

[mikf]

Mick
Scinote is very knowledgeable on the e series and has given you excellent detailed information.
Reading your follow ups, I understand better what you were doing, and can now see the fundamental problem is that you are not altering your piano technique to play the arranger. On a solo piano you have to fashion the accompaniment by yourself, playing bass and chords and to some extent doing it in a way that also produces the rhythm.
But that is not necessary or even desirable on an arranger. The style does that for you and all you have to do is play a chord in your lh and and a melody in your rh. You select a style to produce the kind of accompaniment you want, you dont have to play it, and as you found out, it can cause problems if you try.
The more advanced arrangers do have accompaniment modes that offer more flexibility to piano players, but Scinote pointed out they don't exist on the e series - something I did not know until now.   
The easy play single finger chord system is ok, but intended to help the learner. As Scinote has pointed out mixing and matching it in the same bar with full chords can cause issues, so if you can play full chords, then play them. You can hold the chord until the need to change, or on most arrangers you can set it up so that you play a chord, and it holds itself until you play a different chord. Not sure if that is a function on the e series or not. If it is then use it.
Mike

[BogdanH]

Kudos to SciNote for the explanation of how to play accompaniment chords on PSR-E keyboard (Single Finger mode on PSR-S).
Too bad such posts get lost in forum over the time, because in few weeks the same question will probably arise.

Bogdan

[andyg]

Kudos to SciNote for the explanation of how to play accompaniment chords on PSR-E keyboard (Single Finger mode on PSR-S).
Too bad such posts get lost in forum over the time, because in few weeks the same question will probably arise.

Bogdan

Can Admin or Moderators make Scinote's post a 'sticky' so it stays visible?

[mikf]

Or possibly it can be re-formatted as an article so it is always accessible and can be used as a reference in an up to date post without it being buried in an outdated thread. That might be better.
Mike

[Mick47]

SciNote does it again..amazing knowledge..thanks to you also Mike.
I can now see why my playing with  the accompiment on sounded pretty crappy. The poor keyboard was trying to make sense of my piano only rhythms.
I will just have learn to just hold the chords..also appreciate the idea of hitting the chord as a repetitive beat in a piano split.
Agree SciNote's explanation could be made accessible.

Thanks again.

[mikf]

Mick
Piano players who play frequently in small bands, jazz trios or similar, where they have a bass player and drummer, will already use this heavily chorded technique in playing, so its an easy transition.
Its not necessary to hold the same chord for a complete bar, although many, especially novice or intermediate players will do that, and with a good style that will sound ok. But most of these arrangers can cope with quick and subtle chord changes, so changing to 6ths, flattened fifths, maj 7ths etc during a bar is all fine, but you do have to finger the chord to let the keyboard identify it.
Mike   

[Mick47]

Thanks Mike.
Now wondering if I should learn the easy play system. Have had to push my split point up a fair way to accommodate 4 finger chords that I usually use.I am just short of middle C..Split point 56?
If you don't mind me asking what do you or others use?

[mikf]

People use different split points to suit their own playing, but the B below middle C is common. That lets you use Cmaj7, a very common chord when playing arrangers.
Some people set their split point lower.  I normally use B below middle C when using a split, but I have an 88 key instrument, and often have no split point when I play it more like a piano, even when using accompaniment.
If you can already play 4 finger chords, then I don't advise you mess with the easy play chords. It is intended as a way to get beginners started, and you would be learning an inferior system for no good reason.
Some keyboards have set up choices where you can use fingered or easy play chords interchangeably. And if you want to play a keyboard more like a piano, but have accompaniment, then you need one that lets you choose different fingering modes.
Mike

[Mick47]

Thanks Mike...seems my split point is quite common. Didn't want to stop using full chords. Appreciate yor advice.
Ta

[SciNote]

Once again, thank you very much for the positive feedback, and I'm glad I could help.  Mike put into words very well what I was alluding to in my post, and that is how playing a piano-style bass and chord pattern with your left hand when auto-accompaniment is on will cause it to really freak out as it interprets each bass note as a major chord.

I wholeheartedly agree with not using the easy play chords if you know how to actually finger the chords.  Why learn a whole new fingering system that isn't really musically correct if you already know the real chords?  And by "not musically correct", I mean that the easy play chords often require playing notes that are not a part of the real chord.  For example, to play a C minor chord with the easy play system, you play a C and the Bb below it, but a real C minor chord does not have a Bb in it.  Plus, the easy play function only limits you to those four basic chord types -- major, minor, 7th, and minor 7th.  The exception would be those undocumented intervals that can get you a bass note other than the root note.  And at least those are based on the real chords.  For example, a C chord with a G bass can be achieved by playing C and the G below it (in auto-accompaniment mode), and a C chord actually contains the notes C and G.

The great thing about a keyboard like this is the flexibility.  If you want full auto-accompaniment, you can turn it on and get a full background by just playing a chord.  But if you want to play it like a piano, you can turn off the auto-accompaniment, but still keep the drum rhythm if you want, and either have a single sound, like piano, for the whole keyboard, or use split mode and play a different tone with your left hand, which is what I typically do.

[Mick47]

Thanks SciNote.
Won't be stopping the full chords. Was a little concerned about using up the full two first octaves (almost)before a split point.
The flexibility of raising or lowering octave tones in SPLIT MAIN and DUAL solves that of course.
Ta