Genos 2 Finally Arrived !!!! ;)

[Harmony Core]

Hello Friends,

I'm a full time media music composer from Egypt and I've been writing music for trailers, ads, tv promos and short film documentaries for 7 years now. But I recently decided to treat myself this year and get an arranger keyboard so I invested in this breathtaking yammy keyboard. So, I'm willing to conquer this steep learning curve and learn everything I can from you guys. I'm not gonna perform in gigs or anything, I just bought it for my own indoors fun and jamming along with myself.

Now, a bit of my performance experience. I can play piano comfortably with my left hand is the walking bass and right hand is melody/solos so I'm pretty familiar with how to play a piano in genera. With an arranger, the concept is not very far but instead the left hand is the chord (not walking bass) and the right hand is still the melody/solos. Fantastic ! Finally, I played decently on a yammy psr E-353 10 years ago so this concept is not totally new to me.

My question now to you my dear friends, what advices/methods/ways/tips/tricks would you give me to become a better arranger performer? I believe with the genos 2 playlist I just downloaded I can learn each song in this playlist and practice by playing it. For example, I choose a song from a playlist that loads its own registry memory buttons then I go to Chordify website to learn the chord progression of the song then start to perform it. This workflow worked for me so far for a couple of songs but is there anything else you wanna add to enhance my performance workflow? Is there anything I'm missing in this workflow you wanna tell me about?

Sorry for the lengthy post 
Looking forward to your takes on this.

BTW, I'm a very fast learner so feel free to walk me from the very fundamentals to the advanced tricks. I AM IN !

Many thanks

[JohnS (Ugawoga)]

Hi

If you are a good player you can quickly record songs On Genos 2 with the Style backing bands or freestyle play. After you can add tracks full play in the sequencer
You can then export the midi into Cubase 14 and edit . dissolve the drum tracks to separate parts for mixing.
You can combine vst 3  with Genos 2. Sky is the limit
The only thing with recording styles is that they can leave note partials all over the place when you look in a daw's piano roll.
It is due to 100th's of a second out changing chords which leaves these nasty little partials.
These note partials can muddy a track especially if you have pro intentions for recording music.
In Cubase  you have a FUNCTION that you select a length of a note by extending or decreasing a black bar line with a mouse and circle up each style track and delete all in one go.
Best to quantize after on style track only to tighten up the spaces left. Sometimes you may have to adjust the odd one or two yourself as space may be a little larger. If you do not do this your ears will tell you.     After, Play as you do for that human touch. Also pads are great for filling out a song .
So many thing that the Genos can do but it is no good as a controller.

All the Best
John

There are loads of things that the Genos offers. Great for bending a sax using articulatons with a footpedal and fills.

[Harmony Core]

Hey, many thanks for your awesome detailed take

Well, I'm on Cubase 13 as I activated my copy before the grace period because I wanted also to get Absolute 6    No big deal!

I'm sure I can do tons of stuff with the Genos in terms of production/recording combined with my vst's, as you said sky is the limit. I'm also baffled by the style creator because I sometimes see it more fun than recording an entire song. I once created a not-so-bad Hotel California and Always With Me, Always With You styles in Tyros 5 that was owned by one of my friends back in 2015. I never bought a professional advanced arranger in my life so yeah I have tons to learn 

But when you jam along and perform, do you build your own repertoire in the form of playlist, study and practice each song, memorize them then play them? Dayum! It seems I can't ask the question properly because this beast is confusing me haha! I guess I'll read the manual and figure out what workflow will look like.

Cheers, many thank 

[DrakeM]

Congratulations on getting your new G2 keyboard

For more HOW TO information, there is a lot to learn for our forums PSRTutorial site found here:

https://psrtutorial.com/lessons/index.html

The screen is a bit different on the G2 keyboard but the process is still the very same.

Drake
 

[mikf]

Learning to read chord symbols on the fly and use lead sheets is a good idea, especially quality leadsheets, which are usually much better than chordify. Also good if you can learn to pick up most chords by ear, so you don't have to consult anything.
Mike

[aprilla]

Look into Registrations.
The Playlist item is just a pointer to a registration file, like an index you build for different purposes. So the real building blocks are your registrations.
If you make registration(s) for a piece you are working on you can continue to make adjustments to sounds, styles effects, then save them, make more changes, save them.... save as v01, v02 or with better names for IDing. You can sequence the registrations so work things up in parts. They'll load text or lyrics too if you use them, or notes. When done you can remove any unwanted registrations.

Registrations do a lot, they are worth investigating, and the various options available in Split & Fingering will be worth trying too.

I'm pretty restricted to using sheet music, I don't recommend it. Try to play be ear, by chords, if you can at all. I'm not sorry to be able to read music, but I am sorry to feel so 'unable' without it so am working to correct it. I'm enjoying The Keys Coach on YouTube for tips and tricks.

[Harmony Core]

Congratulations on getting your new G2 keyboard

For more HOW TO information, there is a lot to learn for our forums PSRTutorial site found here:

https://psrtutorial.com/lessons/index.html

The screen is a bit different on the G2 keyboard but the process is still the very same.

Drake
 

Thank you so much my good sir, that link is a gem. I actually didn't know that Psr Tutorial also provides education resources as I thought it was only a forum facility. Defo will give it a long read in addition to the manual 

[Harmony Core]

Learning to read chord symbols on the fly and use lead sheets is a good idea, especially quality leadsheets, which are usually much better than chordify. Also good if you can learn to pick up most chords by ear, so you don't have to consult anything.
Mike

Many thanks Mike Yes, I can read chords on the fly but I'm not good at sheet sight reading. I mostly use sheet music to transcribe a specific score but not for real time playing unfortunately. My overall music theory is good enough to let me write my own music or perform in a live setting. No, I don't have pitch perfect so I'll never be able to pick up chords by ear without seeing the chord progression written on paper or screen. But I have another way to detect the chords being played by ears by simply knowing the song's key, the scale being played and the chords associated with the scale degrees.

[Harmony Core]

Look into Registrations.
The Playlist item is just a pointer to a registration file, like an index you build for different purposes. So the real building blocks are your registrations.
If you make registration(s) for a piece you are working on you can continue to make adjustments to sounds, styles effects, then save them, make more changes, save them.... save as v01, v02 or with better names for IDing. You can sequence the registrations so work things up in parts. They'll load text or lyrics too if you use them, or notes. When done you can remove any unwanted registrations.

Registrations do a lot, they are worth investigating, and the various options available in Split & Fingering will be worth trying too.

Totally agree! after watching a couple of vids about reg. memory, it's absolutely the very heart and soul of this arranger. These 10 buttons are the warehouse storages that store every setting possible, from style, style variations, voices, tempo, effects, you name it, in the form of user-friendly checkboxes during the save. Heck! you can actually be a bit creative with these registrations and save different styles to different buttons to demo or showcase the same melody on each style for instance. I mean, look, I'm starting to love this thing already     

Many thanks for chiming in and sharing your insights 

[mikf]

You definitely don't need perfect pitch to pick out chords. Most ear players do not have perfect pitch, and honestly it's more of a nice party trick than useful for playing.
You only need decent relative pitch, - which most of us have or can hone - experience, practice and some chord pattern knowledge. All of these things work together to let you pick out most chords. Start with simple 4 chord stuff, then go a bit more complicated step by step.
Most songs use very common repeating patterns and what I call 'departures'. You soon learn to identify the obvious patterns - like 1,6,4,5..., or 1,2,5,1....while departures are the chords that don't commonly fit the pattern. You can often just remember the 'departures, while playing most other chords almost without thinking from pattern knowledge.
And if you don't already know it, definitely learn the chord numbering system. It makes patterns more obvious and key independent.

[Harmony Core]

Many thanks all for your awesome replies and insights, deeply appreciate it. I'm spending some time with the manual which I find very easy to follow and watching videos as well.

One last question before calling it a day.

Why did Yamaha reduce the internal storage in Genos 2 to 15GB and why no flash memory stick came with it? I remember Genos 1 had 58GB of storage and it also came with a beautiful transparent glassy flash memory stick. Is there anything that I don't know about this Yamaha move? Is there any announcement or news that Yamaha made about this topic?

Many thanks

[Stijn]

I learned a lot from the videos on Keyboardamerica and I loved the way Mike Mixon explained everything.
He sadly enough passed away a couple of years ago, but his videos are still available.

See https://www.youtube.com/@Keyboardamericacom/videos

Stijn

[Harmony Core]

My very first recorded performance on Genos 2    Sloppy but workable 

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A very big fan of that soprano sax