what can you do with midis when playing live ?

[Al Ram]

Hello Friends.

I have seen many posts where people indicate they use and play midis on keyboards. 

I have never use midis and I am intrigued as to what you can do with midis and Genos when playing live.

At this point, i am not at the level of asking how but the more basic question of what . . . .

I play using styles, mostly for singing live. Chords with left hand and melody with right hand for intros and solos.  Many times i use the factory intros.   I use registrations quite a bit.

I have downloaded a couple of songs/midis and loaded into Genos 'as is'. The midis play and sound somewhat nice (robotic is the best way to describe)  but i do not know what i would do with them when playing live.   The midis on Genos are not obeying any chords, i was not able to change tempo or key, voice, etc. or synch with styles.

So, i am lost and intrigued.    I would be interested if they can be used in a live situation in synch with a style maybe

So, what do you do with midis, are they used just like backing tracks for singing ?  how do you manipulate the midis for changing tempo, key, etc

I looked at the lessons on the forum but was not able to answer my basic question.

At this point a brief description of usage of midis would be helpful.

thanks in advance. 

[beykock]

Some giggers are using midi files to make singing a lot easier during their performance.

Your 16 built-in track keyboard sequencer offers you the possibilty to cancel ( off ) tracks you do not want to play.
This sequencer can do a lot more. See your keyboard manual.
Also track recording can be done.

You can change voices of each track or delete tracks you do not like and save all these changes and make a new midi file.

Volume, pan, effects, tempo etc. of all individual tracks can be changed and saved.

Track modification is a piece of cake.
We call it " editing ".

See all free midi pc programs available on the psrtutorial website.

Hope this information helps you out.



Babette

[mikf]

I believe people who say they use midis use them like a backing track. So they are playing or singing along with it not driving it. They might edit the track to suit themselves, or even make it themselves at home, but at the end of the day its a backing track. If it is well made it could be less robotic than a style, but in live playing they are not playing it, but maybe playing along with it. Not sure that matters, because many entertainers, use backing tracks, and audiences don't care if they are good.
Mike

[panos]

In a midi there are allready chords(which will play the way they were written to play until the song is over) and melody.

You cannot have fill ins or change the chords while playing a midi
but you can still mute or delete parts of the midi's melody and play the melody with your hands only at the parts of the song's you want to play.

Think how people sing in karaoke.
We have all the orchestra playing and just "mute" or "delete"  the human voice so we can sing.
(Not exactly like that but in a manner of speaking  )

So in a midi we can delete e.g the piano part and play the piano by ourselves using whatever voices we like and change voices while we play etc

[SeaGtGruff]

Don't forget the most important use of playing MIDI files on a keyboard— putting the keyboard into "player piano" mode so your audience can keep dancing or nodding their heads while you go grab a beverage or make a visit to the "little keyboard player's room."

[Normanfernandez]

Don't forget the most important use of playing MIDI files on a keyboard— putting the keyboard into "player piano" mode so your audience can keep dancing or nodding their heads while you go grab a beverage or make a visit to the "little keyboard player's room."

Player piano mode
How's that possible?

[panos]

Michael means to press the song play button and let the keyboard play by itself the midi songs you have chosen

[Al Ram]

thanks to all for your responses.  It is very appreciated.

My summary is that . . .
1) I would be able to use midis to create backing tracks for singing
2) I would need a piece of software to manipulate midis to my liking

From other research, it looks like there is also software to convert midis to styles.  (ie. Styleworks)

All of these seems beyond my current abilities and needs.   It looks like the way i play/sing does not really require midis for me and/or the benefit for me would be small. 

This thread was very valuable to me because my conclusion is: I should not invest time and money pursuing midis.  So, it saves me that effort.

I want to clarify that this conclusion is only for myself, there are probably a lot of other people that can benefit from using midis and they probably have the expertise and use them very well. 

thank you all.

[panos]

If you are not familiar with the on board Song Creator and the Mixing Concole you will probably need a program for pc to manipulate the midis.
Better be one program from the psr tutorial site which uses Yamaha's keyboards voices.
Not need to pay anything.
They are free to download and use from Michael Bedesem & Jørgen Sørensen.

http://psrtutorial.com/MB/mixMaster.html
http://psrtutorial.com/MB/midiplayer.html
http://www.jososoft.dk/yamaha/software/revmidi/index.htm

There are thousands of Midi's also free on the internet to download.
Some are professional,some are really good,some are not so good and some are really bad.
Use an ad blocker on your browser before you search.
Go to Google and search the song you want.
e.g.: eye of the tiger midi
Downolad the midi or the midi's to choose which you like.

The midi's have the file extension of .mid
The dot after the file name tells you what you have downloaded.

If you cannot see the dot then right click on the file,go to properties and see what kind of file or program this is.
If it is an mp3 it should be "Eye of the Tiger.mp3"
If it is a sheetmusic then it should be "Eye of the Tiger.pdf"
If it is a style it should be "Eye of the Tiger.sty"
etc

If you want you can still record a midi by yourself on your keyboard the way you like it
and let your midi's play on your break(or play along with them).

Best midi's of course are from Yamaha musicsoft which are already using the best voices for each model so you don't have to equalize or revoice anything at all.
(Except if you want to make them sound the way you like better).

I personally use midi's to learn how to play the songs.
So I don't have to equalize or revoice anything most of the times.
I just mind about the melody lines and the chords they are using.
(Let's say like a  sheet music with audio  )

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[Al Ram]

thank you all for your comments and Pano thanks a lot for your detailed explanations.

I downloaded some programs that you mentioned and also found and downloaded the midi2style program.    This is a great program, easy to use - if you know what you are doing.

I read the program instructions and managed to take the attached midi into the midi2style program.  I selected GENOS in settings and then selected bar 3 to 17 and assigned to intro A.  Then selected bars 20 + another five and assigned to Main A.   Assigned some voices the best way i could, muted channel 6 (melody line) and saved as a sty file.   The resulting style only has one intro A and one Main A. Which is exactly what i wanted.  So far so good.

My idea was to use the intro from the midi converted to a new style.  Save that in Registration 1 and then in REgistration 2 save a factory Genos style similar to the midi.  Once played the R1 as intro i will take over with R2 and voila.

The idea works but my results were bad. The style i created sounded terrible in the keyboard.   It is not a program issue, i am sure the program is great in capable hands.  It is just my ignorance.   

I went back to try and correct the midi/style but really do not have the experience or knowledge to correct what i did wrong because i do not even know what it is that i did wrong.

I also managed to play the original midi as is on the keyboard and sing along with it on top of my own registration.   Which is not bad it actually sounded real good. Almost like the original track.  I liked it.   However, this is like singing with a backing track or mp3, which is not what i want.   You have to be very accurate, you miss a bar when singing and then it is evident that you are not really playing.   

Anyway so much for that.    It was good exploring this and I bet that capable people are doing a great use of midis when playing live.  My idea was worth exploring, maybe i will study this midi stuff more. 

I appreciate the advise and comments. 

Have a great day.

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[mikf]

There have not been a lot of positive reports for these midi to style conversion programs, so don't think it is you. And if you think about it it is not surprising. A style is a repeating single chord loop and relies on a lot of judgement to make sense of an accompaniment that then responds to chord changes. If you have tried creating styles from scratch you know how hard this is, so I would think designing software to do this starting from a full score with chord changes is very difficult. At best I would expect it to produce a starting point that takes a lot of human intervention to perfect.
Mike

[Al Ram]

Mike
thanks a lot for your comments.

The idea of mide to style is a great idea.   Hopefully within a couple of years a program will be out there that can take a midi and create a style with little or no human intervention.   I hear that Korg keyboards can do something like that (take a midi and create a style).

Anyway, it is good exploring these possibilities.   

Have a great day.

[panos]

Al,
the reason I have joined the PSR Tutorial forum a year ago,was to learn what that Style Creator thing on my keyboard is.
Little steps with errors at the time is better than no steps at all.
That is my approach  

If it is just the sound of the style that is bad but the chords while you press them sound correct,
then you have to use the mixing console,revoice and equalize the parts of the style ON the keyboard.

If the chords of a part sound wrong (eg you press C and it plays something like Cm7) then you got to go  deeper and search those NTT and NTR stuff and what is happening in there.
Look at a recent Pjd's post with links to tutorials from Jorgen,Michael etc.

Remember that you can still use the midi2style program just  to extract one or two parts that you want from a midi and for the rest parts you can use the Assembly fuction which it is a lot easier while you don't have to find out how chords work,they are already playing as they should.   

[SeaGtGruff]

There have not been a lot of positive reports for these midi to style conversion programs, so don't think it is you. And if you think about it it is not surprising. A style is a repeating single chord loop and relies on a lot of judgement to make sense of an accompaniment that then responds to chord changes. If you have tried creating styles from scratch you know how hard this is, so I would think designing software to do this starting from a full score with chord changes is very difficult. At best I would expect it to produce a starting point that takes a lot of human intervention to perfect.

Exactly, but I think another possible consideration is that a professionally-produced style file-- especially one produced by Yamaha-- is designed from the ground up to be a style, and hence to respond to the different chord changes appropriately, as well as being designed to make full use of Yamaha's voices and effects.

On the other hand, if you try to take a MIDI song and turn it into a style then it was designed from the ground up to be a song with fixed, predetermined chord changes, so to make a proper style out of it you must take the notes of each chord and transpose them to the corresponding notes of a CMajor7 chord. Plus, the voices are probably either GM or GM2 voices, or possibly XG or GS voices, so you must replace them with the best-available Yamaha voices and either add or edit the "automation lane" messages which control the effects-related and voice-related parameters.

It is definitely not a "1, 2, 3" operation-- more like "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, ..."

[Al Ram]

Michael/SeaGtGruff

Those are important considerations. I totally agree . . . .

"It is definitely not a "1, 2, 3" operation-- more like "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, ..."

Creating a style from a midi seems to be an iterative process where the first product is probably not the end product. It is an n+1 operation until you get the desired results.   

I am impressed by people who can do this . . . . .

thanks and have a great day.

[DonM]

Mike
thanks a lot for your comments.

The idea of mide to style is a great idea.   Hopefully within a couple of years a program will be out there that can take a midi and create a style with little or no human intervention.   I hear that Korg keyboards can do something like that (take a midi and create a style).

Anyway, it is good exploring these possibilities.   

Have a great day.

Yes, Korg, starting with PA4X, has a built-in midi to style converter.  It works very well with many midi files, not so well with others, but it only takes about 10 seconds to convert.  Then they can be edited, voices changed, volumes, tempos changed, as needed.
Most modern arrangers also have "markers" which allow you to repeat certain parts of the midi file as needed.  You insert these markers, say, at the start of a verse, and/or the start of the chorus, and when you touch a button the playback goes back to that point and smoothly resumes.  This feature is good if you have people get up towards the end of a song and you want to extend it.
Not sure if Yamaha has this feature, but Roland, Korg and Ketron do, so I'm assuming it is on Yamaha, although I am "between Yamahas" right now. 
Another great feature on Roland is that when you are using midi files with lyrics, or .kar files, it automatically displays the chords, both as they occur and the measure before they occur.  Very useful if you want to play along with the midi file.
Ketron allows you to play a style WITH the midi file, using fills, breaks, etc.
I personally seldom use midi files, so most of this doesn't matter to me, but the point is that it is possible to have quite a lot of useful features with midi files; it just depends on which features the manufacturer wants to incorporate in the operating system. 
Since this is a Yamaha forum, I hope at least some of this applies!

[Al Ram]

Yes, Korg, starting with PA4X, has a built-in midi to style converter.  It works very well with many midi files, not so well with others, but it only takes about 10 seconds to convert.  Then they can be edited, voices changed, volumes, tempos changed, as needed.
Most modern arrangers also have "markers" which allow you to repeat certain parts of the midi file as needed.  You insert these markers, say, at the start of a verse, and/or the start of the chorus, and when you touch a button the playback goes back to that point and smoothly resumes.  This feature is good if you have people get up towards the end of a song and you want to extend it.
Not sure if Yamaha has this feature, but Roland, Korg and Ketron do, so I'm assuming it is on Yamaha, although I am "between Yamahas" right now. 
Another great feature on Roland is that when you are using midi files with lyrics, or .kar files, it automatically displays the chords, both as they occur and the measure before they occur.  Very useful if you want to play along with the midi file.
Ketron allows you to play a style WITH the midi file, using fills, breaks, etc.
I personally seldom use midi files, so most of this doesn't matter to me, but the point is that it is possible to have quite a lot of useful features with midi files; it just depends on which features the manufacturer wants to incorporate in the operating system. 
Since this is a Yamaha forum, I hope at least some of this applies!

Don
thanks a lot for taking the time.

Wow, I am tempted to buy a Korg just because of that feature (midi to style) it sounds fast and easy. !!!!!

I was exploring the use of midi trying to improve my performance for my audiences.  However, it seems that although midis can be very useful, they seem to be a lot of work in preparation and knowledge beyond my current skills.    So, i rather use my time playing rather than researching this.     However, i found that i can sing along the midi on the keyboard, and 'fake' that i am playing the keyboard but that it is not for me.

Thanks a lot, hope you have a great day.