DGX-670 Style Creator

[Cristopher_B]

Hi,

I think one of the most interesting new features of the DGX-670 is the Style Creator. I still find it a bit laborious to create a style from scratch, but I think it must be an awesome feature for someone who already got the hang of it. Has anyone played with it and created any new styles with it?

[quasar]

Hi Cristopher_B

I did a few songs with it, it´s a little hard at the beginning but you will get familiar with the workflow as you go forward with the song.

What I do is the following steps:

1. I hear the song many, many times until I have a whole mental scheme of it. Because you will discover firstly a musical picture in B&W, then another textures, your ear will discover the bass, the drums, the melody itself. For this task I recommend you to listen to the song but in Karaoke form, only instrumental, then prepare a paper filling out what instruments you need to cover the song.

2. What do I put first? Depending on the song, there are easy songs with no difficult parts in terms of instruments. For example there are songs with drums with no complicated or straight percussion, one or two electric guitar, the synth part, a predictable bass playing. In this case I start with the drums and little by little the song takes body.
I say a difficult song is the one that has a  percussion with many  details, like cymbals played on off beats or random bells playing with any order. There are some bass lines that are difficult and has to be set to Fixed Bypass, in other way they won´t work. There are songs with beautiful harmonies, but a little difficult to build them.

3. Depending on the song, not all the songs are in C, there are songs with modulations, that ends with the modulation and sometimes return to the main verse, there are songs that needs the bass in the Style, or songs that need an special intro part played like a small midi song before the main song starts, there are songs with two or many different tempos.
I prefer to put the song together in its original key, setting the source key correctly in the Style Creator.

Once it is done, you have to mix it, leveling the volume part of each instrument. The DGX 670 has a Style Creator that has to be improved, there are some voids in it like such as the absence of an arpeggiator, the step editor feature, a bigger touch screen. With all this features added the DGX would be a pretty serious instrument. The touch of the keys are good to me, it´s similar to the P 125, and 88 keys are a paradise when they are needed.

Regards
Carlos

[pjd]

Hi Cristopher --

The DGX-670 Style Creator is similar to the Style Creator in older S-series arrangers. If you navigate over to the S-series section(s) of the Forum, you should find a number of threads about style creation.

The DGX-670 Style Creator user interface is cosmetically different than the S-series, but the capabilities are the same or at least very similar.

I recommend starting with Style Assembly. This feature lets you copy-paste phrases (sections) from existing styles. It's a good way to get into style creation because -- as most folks discover -- style creation is a deep topic. There's a musical side to making a style as well as the technical side (i.e., how to use Style Creator itself).

Hope this helps -- pj

[Cristopher_B]

Hi guys,

Sorry for the delay in reply, I thought it'd notify me when where someone posted a reply. Thank you both for your answers.

If any of you could share any of your own styles here, that would be great. I would be very interested to load it on my DGX and play around with it. I did experiment with a Rock style of my own, Main A, B, C, D and Ending, no Intro yet. If anyone is interested I can share it here.

[quasar]

You can download the bonus playlist from yamaha website. There are tons of songs you can play

https://usa.yamaha.com/products/musical_instruments/pianos/p_series/dgx-670/downloads.html#product-tabs

Regards
Carlos

[Cristopher_B]

Thanks, but I didn't mean a playlist, but original styles created by ourselves. I thought it would be interesting to share and experiment, but I see there's not much interest.

[pjd]

Hi Cristopher --

Folks are interested in style creation, but they quickly discover that style creation is labor- and time-intensive. Aside from style assembly, there is a fairly steep learning curve.

That said, here are links to two of my own style collections:

http://sandsoftwaresound.net/motif-styles-for-your-arranger/
http://sandsoftwaresound.net/free-djx-ii-styles-version-2/

I translated patterns from Yamaha's Motif series synthesizers and from the old DJX-II keyboard. They are free. (Can't beat the price. :-) )

If you would like to know more about the production process, please read:

http://sandsoftwaresound.net/mox-perf-to-psr-style-part-1/
http://sandsoftwaresound.net/mox-perf-to-psr-style-part-2/
http://sandsoftwaresound.net/mox-perf-to-psr-style-part-3/
http://sandsoftwaresound.net/mining-the-yamaha-djx-ii/

Hope this helps -- pj

[Cristopher_B]

Hi pjd,

Thank you for sharing! I will check out your collections.

I would like to share a Rock style I've made using my DGX-670. If anyone wants to try it, please load it in your DGX and let me know how it sounds. If you want to modify / improve it, please feel free, but do post your version here

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xjaflmpj6rkyahp/RockBeat1.S837.sty?dl=0

[quasar]

Hi Cristopher, I´ve just finished Billie Jean, it´s in B minor, you have to start at measure 11

This is the style:

https://app.box.com/s/bb9aou4134mcjxd0cr5thxkw7pzejxub

The registration:

https://app.box.com/s/guz2uy1nxhyu8fln8cb6rpmm1vq03mwg

And the song:

https://app.box.com/s/kdkbenaa1vvzi4d54n1adtokdvbfotw1


Hope you like it

Regards
Carlos

[Cristopher_B]

Hi quasar,

Thanks for sharing! It sounds good! How long did it take you?

Just a little feedback: to make it sound closer to the original track, I would add some off-beat percussion. And I see your style file has no Fill IN sections, maybe worth adding some?

Cristopher

[Cristopher_B]

I've made my own version of Billie Jean (well, just the intro) using the style creator. I've added the off-beat shaker and I've used a different sound for the bass. To my ears, it sounds a bit closer to the original song. You guys let me know.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/de9jubp08cm1sam/BillieJean.mp3?dl=0

[quasar]

Hi Christopher,

I did it in my free time. Around a week, during the overnight.

Yes, you can add the arrangements you consider, you are free to have your own rendition just as I had it

FYI, I didn´t have the lead sheet to make the song

All I did was to find out the bpm of the song and the original key

Afterwards, everything was listening to it several times until I had the final product

Some parts are a little difficult to play because you don´t have three hands. In order to improve the playing, I set up the pedal

to control the Main Parts

It´s not an instrumental cover, it´s only my own interpretation

This song is very sticky to the ear, it has a fabolous bass line and the story behind this is creepy... 

Your intro part sounds pretty good!!!, congratulations

Regards
Carlos

[Cristopher_B]

Hi quasar,

Nice! If you ever make a new style, I'd appreciate it if you shared it with us here. I think it would be fun if we use this thread as our little "Style Workshop".

Thank you for your participation