Buying NON official Expansion Packs big RISK....be careful

[manuel]

Hello Friends

I am Manuel Dorantes and I am part of the team that develop the "Mexican-Latino-American" Expansion packs at Yamaha Corporation of America as an external consultant, I have been part of these team for almost 8-9 years now. So you have an idea, it takes us about 6 to 8 months to make an expansion pack, planing it, research, gathering song references, sort data, check if we need sampling or programing sounds, make styles, make Multipads, Make Registrations, Make OTS, etc....lots of details.

I was also doing Demos and Clinics with the expansion packs such as: Banda Mexicana, Mariachi-Norteño, Cumbia Latina y mas, Salsa, Fiesta Caliente and soon the Fiesta Caliente 2, for the PSR S, and now PSR SX and Genos...

I began to receive user questions like(since the early days of the PSR S970,etc), they told me, my keyboard froze or an unexpected window pop out and froze....and after I ask few questions, I found out that this users purchased and installed "expansion packs" made by people that has NO IDEA of the protocols, details, etc.
MANY times this "experts" Use OUR packs and literally butcher them so they "claim" to "improve" them deleting important data and adding only God knows....and the result is.....Freeze.....

Let me put it this way, if you go and buy a brand new Computer and then someone sells you none official "Software" a.k.a Virus, and you install it, what do you thing is going to happen??

I was instructed not to spend a fraction of a second of my time to try to resolve problems that someone else made that is NOT from an official source. I get correspondence from PSR S/PSRSX/Genos users from Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Ecuador, USA, Mexico, etc....there are many "Pirates" out there. By the way, this also applies to the other brands, because this people are really prolific. You are not just risking your instrument malfunction, but the waste of money and have to live a BAD experience.

The claim that they say that they can "Add" Revo Drums to a PSR SX or other....is not possible, since is a technology that consist on layering Multi-samples for EACH drum of a Drum set (up to 27 different snares alone in ONE single drum set, besides the other toms, cymbals,etc.) and that would take an incredible amount of data.

So, Please, be careful what you buy and from who you get it from.....whatsoever, there are good reputable third parties that do sell Excellent sounds and Styles....some are so good that you find a few are in sale at the Yamahamusicsoft.com

Regards...

Manuel

[Roland]

Hello Manuel,

Good topic and I am in full support of that !!! There are in fact VERY FEW folks that have the required tools to program proper Styles. Sampling is a bit different because there are more tool options available for that. But here too, there are only a few sources that do a really good job at it.

And both, creating a correct Style and Sampling take a huge amount of time and effort. Yamaha makes it easy to re-voice Styles and change sounds (from proper sources). So there is so much you can already do with them - I really see no point in jumping the "hack bandwagon".

Good post Manuel !

Cheers, Roland

[Joe H]

Manuel,

Thank you for the post and education on the process required to produce a professional expansion pack.  Very few people on this forum understand what it takes to produce an expansion pack. I hope this changes their opinion about fair pricing and to watch out for third party developers.

Your post gets my 5 smiles rating. Thanks so much!

            

Joe H

[Ed B]

Thank you Manuel for the information.
Regards
Ed B

[rodrigo.b]

Hi, excuse me, what can I do if don't find what I want on the musicsoft site? I know you do a very good work but please as I told you on the past, you, Yamaha can't do every single style or voice that we can imagine and you don't, so please give us the possibility to create MegaVoices or Super Articulation voices. Because at least for me is really frustrating because not only that I can't create the sounds that I want or the sounds that I need on my keyboard but also I can't buy the sounds on musicsoft because it doesn't have the sounds that I want. I love my PSR S keyboard, and really I love Yamaha keyboards but told you as your costumer I feel tied, so please listen to me.

[manuel]

Rodrigo

Now, we are working on the possibility of training how to use the software that we use in Yamaha (Stylist) to make the styles....more on this topic in a very few weeks, I will keep all the friends at the Forum in the loop with this development.....

In a way, to me seems like you may want to explore sound creation in different way, I would suggest to take a look at the Yamaha MODX....but, it is a very different instrument, this is NOT an arranger, like and arranger is NOT a synthesizer.
I will use a raw analogy...to sort of compare them in a very very General spectrum.

In an arranger keyboard the sounds are like a soup in a can that is almost ready to eat, you can warm it, possible add more stuff and then eat it...
In a Synthesizer you make the entire soup from scratch....I know is way over simplified, but you get the idea. Each keyboard has a very different objective in use.

I mention this, because keep in mind that the sounds that are used in an arranger are sort of acoustic, some electronic, and the ethnic sounds that are not included in the pallet, that is when the Expansion packs come in to complement it.

And if you are more like the experimental musician like Tomita, Vangelis, Jean Michael Jarre, etc...you are more candidate for a different keyboard like the Montage, Moog, etc....

You actually can import sounds using the Yamaha Expansion Manager, is not easy, but I know several people that have managed. You need to know that the MegaVoices have been created NOT to play them as in a regular sound on the keys, they are designed with many different samples at different velocity numbers that could have as an example, a steel guitar, would have different sounds within, like muted, different timbres, besides perhaps fret noises, slides, etc....that is why is not possible to play with them. They are designed to be use mostly in style and midi production only.
One question that I would like to ask you, what kind of music/genres do you play?
or what is what sounds you would like to play?

[Joe H]

... Now, we are working on the possibility of training how to use the software that we use in Yamaha (Stylist) to make the styles....more on this topic in a very few weeks, I will keep all the friends at the Forum in the loop with this development.....

Will Stylist becomes a commercial MIDI program that we can buy?



Joe H

[rodrigo.b]

Rodrigo

Now, we are working on the possibility of training how to use the software that we use in Yamaha (Stylist) to make the styles....more on this topic in a very few weeks, I will keep all the friends at the Forum in the loop with this development.....

In a way, to me seems like you may want to explore sound creation in different way, I would suggest to take a look at the Yamaha MODX....but, it is a very different instrument, this is NOT an arranger, like and arranger is NOT a synthesizer.
I will use a raw analogy...to sort of compare them in a very very General spectrum.

In an arranger keyboard the sounds are like a soup in a can that is almost ready to eat, you can warm it, possible add more stuff and then eat it...
In a Synthesizer you make the entire soup from scratch....I know is way over simplified, but you get the idea. Each keyboard has a very different objective in use.

I mention this, because keep in mind that the sounds that are used in an arranger are sort of acoustic, some electronic, and the ethnic sounds that are not included in the pallet, that is when the Expansion packs come in to complement it.

And if you are more like the experimental musician like Tomita, Vangelis, Jean Michael Jarre, etc...you are more candidate for a different keyboard like the Montage, Moog, etc....

You actually can import sounds using the Yamaha Expansion Manager, is not easy, but I know several people that have managed. You need to know that the MegaVoices have been created NOT to play them as in a regular sound on the keys, they are designed with many different samples at different velocity numbers that could have as an example, a steel guitar, would have different sounds within, like muted, different timbres, besides perhaps fret noises, slides, etc....that is why is not possible to play with them. They are designed to be use mostly in style and midi production only.
One question that I would like to ask you, what kind of music/genres do you play?
or what is what sounds you would like to play?

Hi, I play a lot of genres, but I specially want something like Miki Gonzalez or some Latin pop stuff (Diego Torres, Carlos Vives, Yamana). I see that you also speak Spanish, so I'm going to talk you in Spanish to explain me better:

Buenas, aprecio que se haya dado el tiempo para contestarme, el problema con el modx o el montage es que como usted dijo son sintetizadores, y yo al igual que muchos, necesitamos esa posibilidad, en un arranger porque es el tiene los estilos de autoacompañamiento. Para mi no tendría sentido crear un sonido Super Articulation de trompeta Latina o de zampoña peruana por ejemplo o uno Megavoice de guitarra criolla en un montage porque no lo podría usar en los estilos de mi PSR S970. Yo se que Megavoice no se usa para tocar, justamente lo que deseo es tener otros sonidos de guitarras para que me acompañen en los estilos o otros sonidos de metales, unos que si suenen latinos. Ya que usted mencionó a otras marcas, le comentó que el Korg pa2x que salió en 2005 (si no me equivoco) ya contaba con la posibilidad de crear sonidos que pudieran ser programados de la misma forma en la que se programaron los de fábrica, lo que permite por lo tanto que si se puedan usar en los estilos de fabrica. No se si ahora me entiende, espero haberme explicado bien y nuevamente gracias por su tiempo

[fine]

Will Stylist becomes a commercial MIDI program that we can buy?



Joe H

I have the exact same question.

[LaHawk]

I only hope that the Yamaha Expansion Manager software becomes a little easier to use, and maybe include a notice that some files you are trying to add are not authorized by Yamaha and could damage your keyboard. Thanks for the post Manny.

[Joe H]

... are not authorized by Yamaha...

I get your meaning.  The correct way of saying this... styles are constructed or formatted correctly.

Joe H

[BogdanH]

Except gossip, I never heard confirmation that someone would actually damage keyboard by loading/executing style.
-just sharing my thoughts 

Bogdan

[Joe H]

Except gossip, I never heard confirmation that someone would actually damage keyboard by loading/executing style.
-just sharing my thoughts 
Bogdan

Not "damage"... but there have been cases of "malfunction" of the keyboard by styles edited incorrectly by an individual.

Joe H

[panos]

Well,I am just thinking how a computer works.

Try to open a pc video game and choose the higher quality level of graphics on your computer.
Then try to play the game.
Maybe it will play(very badly with constant "freeze" of the screen etc),
maybe you have a crash after a few minutes,
maybe it won't play at all.
And certainly you will hear the sound of the non ssd hard drive and the fans of the computer trying to respond to the higher level of demands and if you touch your pc after a while you can feel that you can boil some eggs upon it. 

If you do that for a long period you will probably need to replace some components like a new graphic card,a new motherboard etc.

Of course the big majority of us don't play video games so we may not have such kind of experiences.
But we certainly play an arranger keyboard.
An arranger keyboard has to respond not to play video games but to play styles.
hm....

Maybe "Stylist" was also used to create some of the..."new" technologies for the psr's?
Maybe Yamaha could have taken some actions to prevent such kind of malfunctions of their products because users may blame the "bad" hardware materials of the PSR S series but not blame the unauthorized software material they have used.
And that is not good for the "Yamaha" brand name.

At least now Manuel,an official Yamaha's style developer, is informing us about such kind of problems.

[Joe H]

When we edit a style in StyleMagic and "Validate" the style before saving... the program corrects any errors in the style so it won't malfunction on the keyboard.

Joe H

[3dc]

Except gossip, I never heard confirmation that someone would actually damage keyboard by loading/executing style.
-just sharing my thoughts 

Bogdan

Any OS that stores and opens files can be hacked - Yamaha OS included. The file type is not really important. Its a common sense therefore not to "experiment" with files that you are not absolutely 100% sure of their origin. As a computer guy I am constantly amazed to see what stuff people put on their computers they are paying bills with without any concern at all for consequences....well until its late. And the first time is the worst time. 

Blaming Yamaha when things suddenly don't work anymore is wrong. Sure they give you an option to add or transfer files but not just any files you find on internet. The advice from Manuel is golden. Better safe then sorry. Stay away from fishy files.

My two cents anyway...     

[Joe H]

The arranger is not a PC. If a style file or Multi Pad file is corrupted, chances are it won't load.  Yamaha has gone to great extent to prevent malfunction of the arranger keyboard.

Joe H

[beakybird]

I think the OP is misleading. I own the style pack in question with the "Revo" drums. The drums in this pack sound pretty good, and they map the same as the Genos Revo drums, so you don't hear weird whistles and other unintended percussion in the mix.
The "Ghenos" style pack has some mediocre instruments. It has a few that are unusable because of sampling errors. There are spelling mistakes and typographical inconsistencies in voice names that are very annoying. But the drums are good. There's a resonator guitar that is fantastic that I use every show.
My problem with the Yamaha style packs for the PSR is that all of them are for ethnic music. None of them are for genres - R&B, Country, Rock n Roll, Big Band, etc. Yamaha is never going to sell a PSR pack that attempts to provide preset voices from the Genos or Tyros 5. At least the "Ghenos" pack is a good step in the right direction.

[rikkisbears]

Hi,
I thought Manuel's post was warning us against unauthorised expansion paks which usually include "sounds", I thought maybe it was the loading of the sounds that was the problem?

On a rare occasion if a style was faulty, my psrs950 wouldn't load it , used to come up with an invalid message.

As Manuel mentioned about the mega voices, of course they can't be used for regular melody playing. It's in one of the manuals ( maybe data list ) as to what velocity the notes  have to be played to trigger the various sounds in a mega voice. Ie plucks, fret noise, whatever. One reason why a style that uses a mega voice doesn't really convert that well to another format.

One of the last styles I converted across to a Korg,  the high squeaky sounds used for the plucks etc were easy enough to remove, but then I noticed the velocity of the rest of the notes were a on a static 5 velocity  ( or something like that) a normal style track isn't played at a set velocity and certainly not such a low velocity.

Anyway, if I decide to do any styles for my sx, I'll be staying away from mega voices, unless it's a copy paste of a style track in style assembly, at least I know that track will have been recorded correctly.

[rcpilot]

You CAN create your own original voices from scratch for the SX-900. You need to use Yamaha YEM program on the computer to do it. You will need a set of sound samples (different types are supported including sound font). This is a very tedious job and for most not practical. I have done it on a Kurzweil K2600 a few years ago. I spend...wow many days creating my own piano sound. I used 3 samples from each of the 88 keys (recorded at differerent velocities)....I got the samples from a friend...but I did all the programming. The results were good. It was however not worth the time IMHO.

However you can do quite a bit of editing in the SX-900 on the EXISTING sounds, its fun and you can do a lot!...but if the sample they used is not good or what you want, you, of course can not fix that without different samples.

Lee