PSRE453 Quick Midi Question

[kali291]

Hi All
I posted a few months ago with questions about styles for hymns  I am now further on in my search and have abandoned the idea of using styles to accompany hymn melodies. I have found that using a unique backing track for each hymn and muting the melody track is definitely the way to go. I can create acceptable backing tracks using either Band In A Box or Ludwig3 software and saving them as midi files and subsequently loading on my 453 as a song on a usb drive and playing the melody over it.
My question is this When I save a midi file I am presented with 4 options I can save as GM or GM2 or XG or GS. I know that this refers to the midi voices, but which should I use to get the best results on a 453?
Any advice would be appreciated  Thanks  Ron

[pjd]

Hi --

I would recommend XG. The PSR-E4xx are XG Lite compatible, where XG Lite is a subset of full XG.

I had pretty good success playing XG MIDI files back on a PSR-E443. GM should playback, too.

GM2 and GS are not really compatible with E4xx although you will hear something.  A GM2 MIDI file will probably fall back to GM. GS may fall back to GM, but GS files usually contain extra Sy*** and controller messages. YMMV.

Hope this helps  -- pj

[SeaGtGruff]

I concur 100% with PJ-- use the XG option.

My only additional comment is that once you've saved the backing track to a MIDI file, you might want to use a utility such as Jorgen Sorensen's MIDI Revoicer or Song Revoicer (I forget the exact name) to change the XG voice selections to better-sounding PSR-E453 panel voice selections-- you can use the voice list in the PSR-E453/PSR-EW400 Data List to see what panel voices are available.

However, do be aware that Yamaha adds 1 to the Program Change numbers-- inside the MIDI events they are numbered 0 to 127, but Yamaha numbers them 1 to 128. So when you look up a voice in the Data List to get its MSB, LSB, and PC# values, you'll need to subtract 1 from the listed PC# value before you enter it into the Revoicer utility.

[kali291]

Thank you . You have been very helpful
Ron