Genos2 Styles and Megavoices

[rattley]

Greetings!

Yesterday I copied all the onboard styles of Genos2 to a USB stick.  Now I can better examine them on the comfort of a PC.  And examine them I did. I was very surprised to see so many megavoices in a single style.  I chose a brand new Genos2 style to examine. Country Circles.  I can hear Johnny Cash playing Ring of Fire!!! I love this style.

R2  Ambient JazzBrushExtended
Bass   Megavoice   RBillyBassFinger Open
C1  Megavoice   D&WarmFolkTwin 1
C2  Piano  U1Upright
Pad  Megavoice PopWhoLegato
Ph1  Megavoice  50sVintagePick
Ph2  Megavoice  Trumpet

Is anything unusual here?  5 out of 8 voices are megavoices??  That surprised me. Especially in a brand new style. Then when I looked at several other styles they use lots of megavoices too.  In all the style construction videos, by several different people, I have yet to see a megavoice used.  I was always under the impression that megavoices should not be played directly. I thought they were used more like effects, being controlled by MIDI perhaps. I understand that 1 megavoice can produce several different sounds based on velocity settings.  When they were first introduced they really gave a fuller richer sound because of their capability to each make more than 1 sound.  I expected to see more exclusive Genos2 panel voices in these styles. Why didn't I? 

Why now would I chose so many megavoices when there are so many more excellent voices available?  If I only used these non-megavoice instruments how could my created styles sound anything like an onboard style?  Maybe I'm way off on my megavoice understandings.

On a different note the 70s Dutch Rock style uses both ambient drums AND revo drums.  I was very pleased to see Yamaha kept those Revo drums. To bad you have to dig deep to find them in the Legacy folder. I wish they were in the same menu as the new ambient drums. Don't get me wrong.......I love the new drums, but I love the revo stuff too. Not all my older songs have benefitted if I change them to ambient.  I look forward to hearing other thoughts about all of this.  -charley

[DerekA]

I think the megavoices were actually created specially for styles, since the style author can control the velocities to get the right articulations at the right places. This is an advanced technique so online tutorials don't really cover it.

[nonchai]

on a related note - its going to be very interesting to see how things evolve with future Yamaha arrangers once MIDI 2.0 has bedded down.

Why?

Because what Megavoices do is allow easy ( arguably DAW-friendly? ) switching of articulations within a style part. What MEGAVOICES do - as I understand it - is design their AWM Megavoice instruments  so the MIDI VELOCITY RANGE ( 0-127 ) gets divided up into sections for different articulations. So for example for a violin - vel 0-32 might be for pianissimo, 33-64 for forte, 64-76 for legato etc etc

so resolution in terms of dynamics or volume level gets traded in for more than a single articulation.

BUT - in MIDI 2.0. every MIDI note-on comes with extra metadata to specify articulation etc- so future styles that support and have been created using MIDI 2.0 standards could use use sound sets from ANY appropriate MIDI 2.0 compatible sound source.

SO in a way- MEGAVOICES were addressing the limitations of MIDI 1.0 - and now aren't really needed.

see here!

https://youtu.be/UYcCynrFrMo?si=Ts7roIMxXw020w_u

and here

https://youtu.be/NRHqP-Gw6t4?si=1iuiN4_-5xoELdmq

[BogdanH]

hi nonchai,
Thank you for pointing out on some of the differences that come with MIDI 2.0.
I'm always for the progress, but I don't expect that MIDI 2.0 will be implemented in arrangers anytime soon -and even then, it will be implemented in (ultra-expensive) TOTL instruments first.

Bogdan