Topic: Listening to Styles

[adrianed]

Hi folks,
I have put together a large A to Z list of song styles but just looking at them on computer doesn’t tell us how they sound, many are a similar amount of K/bytes size
Can I play them somehow before putting them on the Keyboard Hdd to test how they sound
Can the keyboard be connected to the computer for this job of editing and listening
Any ideas would be helpful
Adrian

[mikf]

Adrian, you certainly have to play them on the arranger to hear how they sound, and drive them by playing some chords ……so there really is no way round that. For me, the fastest way is to download a batch on to a usb memory and do that.  Even if you could connect your computer, you would still be transferring the files to the keyboard and would that really be any less work than just using a usb memory stick to do the file transfer?
Mike

[KurtAgain]

You can connect your keyboard to your PC via USB. And on a Windows PC you have to install Yamaha's USB-MIDI-Driver.

Now you can use one of these programs to listen to a style: MixMaster, MidiPlayer or MIDI and Style Player. You can find the download links here: https://psrtutorial.com/util/index.html

But you only get a first impression of the style. To get the full impression, you have to do it the way Mike describes it.

[adrianed]

Thanks Mike,
That’s the way it will have to be then, play them on the keyboard from the usb and use the keyboard to delete the worst ones, there are about 6000 of them
Thanks again,
Adrian

[adrianed]

Thankyou KurtAgain,
I shall have to bite the bullet and spend many hours editing them on the keyboard, I was just hoping for a quicker method
Adrian

[Toril S]

I do this all the time. It has become a habit😀🎹 There will be hundreds of mediocre ones, but sometimes you hit on a real gem, and your day is saved!

[overover]

Hi Adrian,

You can use the PC (Windows) program >>> PSR Style Database by Peter Wierzba to manage all your styles on the PC. You can use this program to display many internal style details (up to 20 columns at the same time). You can also use it to quickly identify style duplicates, and the program also shows if a style file contains internal errors.

I have set up the "PSR Style Database" so that when you double-click the style in question is played in the >>> vanBasco Player. You can only hear the basic programming here (mostly in the C major 7 chord), but this is enough for me. By the way, to generate MIDI sound on the computer, I use >>> VirtualMIDISynth in conjunction with an XG-compatible SoundFont (.sf2). This is completely sufficient for me to briefly play and view styles on the PC. Of course, further editing must then be done directly on the keyboard.


Best regards,
Chris

[adrianed]

Thankyou Chris,
I will set this up and give it a go, just removing a few of the unfinished styles or close copies would be handy so there are less to try when I am setting up registrations.
I was a bit stupid recently altering the place where styles are stored so I have lost the styles on many perhaps hundreds of my registrations,
I already knew not to do this but a temporary laps has cost me a lot of work
Adrian

[mikf]

Adrian
Another question to ask yourself is if such a huge collection of styles is really beneficial. You end up spending all your time searching and managing styles. And from some of your previous posts I don’t think you are the kind of person who is playing particularly complex songs. So what is the benefit of so many styles? Quite frankly, I find there are not too many middle of the road songs you can’t  play quite well just using the on board styles.
Mike

[adrianed]

Mike, so far I have not played any songs on the PSR Tutorial site so no one knows what I play to make that assessment
The reason I have so many styles is because many of them are missing from my list and I am unpredictable in what I might need next for registrations,
I am at present sorting them out and dumping duplicates and unfinished ones.
Adrian

[mikf]

I think I recalled that you referred to the kind of music you liked to play in an earlier post.
When you look at posts over the years, nearly everyone - including me- starts out as style hoarders and collectors, then eventually realizes that it isn’t all that fruitful or necessary. These huge style collections always contain a pretty high proportion of bad styles, duplicates and styles that get renamed with minimal change from the original, maybe as little as the tempo. After a while I just stopped even trying to find gems in the haystack.
Mike

[adrianed]

Mike, perhaps I gave you the wrong impression of the music I like and play, I am interested in everything and attempt everything
I have several instruments and play all of them but when I come to this website I am a Tyros player
Most music is simple it just that us mortals are stupid, music is very repetitive
If I play simple music so does everyone else including yourself
I have been with this website many years and never before read anyone try to belittle another player, most encourage other players, we are all at different levels of learning and have the same capabilities
Adrian

[DrakeM]

@ Mike

I agree with you Adrianed about Mike and his piano playing and singing skills, I have yet to hear them demonstrated here.

That is either a track produced or actual live recording. Just take his comment with a grain of salt. 

Drake

[mikf]

Adrian
I think you completely misunderstood my comment. It had nothing to do with playing skills. By complex music I was referring to music which needs very special styles, maybe due to complex unusual beats, or time signature changes, unusual structure etc.
I certainly wasn’t in any way demeaning your playing, which you correctly pointed out I have never heard. I was simply sharing the sentiment I have seen posted on here many times, that big style collections often end up being more trouble than they are worth. From what what you mention on your post my guess is that you play the generally same kind of music I do, and most others on here do. I think we all go through the same evolution, we gather styles like crazy, then ultimately find we can play everything we want to with relatively few styles.
Mike

[BogdanH]

Been then, done that (bough a T-shirt)... Collecting styles is extremely tempting for many arranger owners and when we see a post "here you can download my very special styles" then it's hard to resist: what if there are some really good ones? There's a basic thinking, that one just can't have too many styles (we never know when we may need some of them).

And so we start comparing them, delete a few and then we sort them (using whatever method), so we can find them easier later. This process repeats every time we see "here's a link for download..." and every time we do that, we get less and less styles worth having.

However, the time that we spend for that increases every time! -because we need to compare new stuff with existing (growing) collection. Not to mention, that after a while we usually realize that our sorting method wasn't really that good and so we need to reorganize everything from bottom up.
And finally, it happens very often that when we need a style for a song that we wish to learn, we won't find it in our collection.
What a waste of time... It's just my personal experience.

Bogdan

[KurtAgain]

In German there is a phrase that can perhaps be translated as “unfortunate choice of words” (German: Unglückliche Formulierung). What is meant is that someone says or writes something that may have a second meaning that the person did not consider or intend. I think that's what happened here.

[Nova227]

One of the best approaches to auditioning styles that I have found is JJazz Lab . It is  a free program for win/mac.

I make the usb connection with my lab top so Jjazz uses my sx900 sound cards. You create a template on the chord sheet with your progression of choice.

You can set it to play  intro 1,2,3 then  variation 1,2,3,4 etc. or select the part you want to audition.

The program  is designed for and recognizes the  style format used by  Yamaha , Roland, Ketron  etc. The program calls styles Rhythms  that can confuse you when starting.

[rattley]

Greetings!!

Whew!!!    Glad to know that someday I am going to outgrow my style collecting fever!!!   LOL!!      -charley

[mikf]

There are a few areas where the ‘right’ style is important. If you are playing gigs it’s important to have both speed of set up and consistent quality, no surprises. So a very well organized style, registration set up is almost vital. And access to a wide range of styles, and modified styles. Or if you want to play a bunch of pretty accurate cover versions. And then there are some types of pretty complex or very modern electronic music where the run of the mill styles would never work. However, you can never find those in the big style collections anyway.
But for just playing at home, there are not too many songs of the type most of us play, that you can’t play adequately with the on board styles. So logic says adding thousands more styles just isn’t worth the trouble. But logic is never going to stop us doing it. 
Mike

BTW - in response to Drake’s earlier comment, I can confirm that I have posted many recordings here over the years.
 

[adrianed]

All this started because I was looking for a way to REDUCE my styles collection by taking out all but the best ones.
Adrian

[BogdanH]

hi Adrian,
I completely agree with you... that's something that just happens in forums... sometimes we just can't keep our mouth shut 

Greetings,
Bogdan