Tempo matching a band

[Lee Batchelor]

Hi team,

I have an interesting question. I play in a trio, made up of myself, a bass player, and drummer. Obviously, I never use the Style section of the Genos - sort of. Let me explain.

For some songs, I have managed to use a Multipad or parts from the Style section as an add-on to our mix. The trick was to play back a single instrument from the Style's accompaniment section to act as melodic "click track" for our drummer. Examples were tambourine, guitar chord strums, banjo strums, string sweeps - anything that had a discernable meter. So, the Genos established the tempo. It had limited success because the drummer had to sing, listen to the extra metered instrument from the Genos, and filter all that through the ambient noise of the room while maintaining his meter against the accuracy of the Genos. When it did work, the results were great. There was a virtual guitarist or string section playing that no one saw. Sadly, for the better part it didn't work, due to the reasons mentioned. I could send a click track to the drummer through headphones, but that would ruin his playing experience.

I was thinking that if I could have the Genos parts match my playing tempo "on the fly", then it might work. It would be like using Free Styles. The Styles would follow me instead of the other way around. The extra voice tempos would match my playing speed as a I matched the drummer's slight tempo variations. Do you think it's possible to do this or is it something I should request on Genos 5 ?! Thanks.

[Fred Smith]

I don't think you can do this with a style for multipad, but you should be able to do it with a midi file.

Go to Song Setting>Guide>Type to set the midi to follow your playing.

Cheers,
Fred

[Lee Batchelor]

Never thought of that. Thanks, Fred!

[Amwilburn]

Yes, you can (sort of) do this on a freeplay style, as long as you don't use the fill-ins (free play isn't *really* tempoless; it just doesn't have a discernable beat, but fill ins often make it very clear where the end of a measure is)

Alternatively, if you removed the drums from a style (just turn them off), and you set a pedal to tap tempo and tapped along to your drummer's beat throughout (or as needed... for the most part you'd be in time after a few beats, but then start drifting and then you'd need to tap 4 beats again)

But yeah, if you tap "four on the floor" with your foot anyway, you might as well set the pedal to tap tempo, and then your accompaniment will more or less follow the drummer.

But don't quickly tap 8 or 16 beats on fill ins!!! You have to stay in a quarter note groove, or it doesn't really work!

Mark

[Lee Batchelor]

Thanks, Mark! I will give that a try. This could be a huge avenue for those who use the Genos in a live musical setting (less than 1% according to recent thoughts on the subject). If I can leverage yours or Fred's idea, I'll certainly post back to reveal how it's done. The live players may have a whole new avenue that even the Yamaha design team never thought of. News at 11:00 !