Dear community,
I'll try to continue with the list of possible improvements of the instrument in the areas I've encountered.
Since I'm not a professional musician I don't really spend too much time with the instrument (I wish I had more time for it
)
I'm probably using around 40-50% of what this machine has inside (or maybe even less),
so I can talk only about the features I actually use.
Don't get me wrong, I do think that Genos is great (after all I've preferred it over other brands) and really like the product
so I'm sharing this list of possible improvements because sharing stuff like this can only benefit if Yamaha's representatives will
come over this list and will borrow some ideas from here.
I know that in the world of software development companies that stand behind the product maintain "official" bug tracking systems where the users can
submit found bugs, suggest/ask for enhancements, then people vote for the most "important" fixes/features they're interested in,
there are discussions around the features, the representatives of the company that actually develops the product provide feedback, participate in
these discussions - an entirely different reality.
I might be too "spoiled" and apparently, this is not what's happening in the world of keyboards (and I can only dream about this come true)
And I see that this place is probably the only way to share my thoughts as a regular user.
So again, I'll suggest possible improvements some of them can probably be done in the update,
others will require re-considering the style format
but nothing really ground-breaking - everything can be done at the level of the synthesizer itself I hope.
I also didn't really mention integration with the PC (including DAW and expansions)
because IMHO it's really a more professional thing
and I feel that I'm not really qualified enough to talk about these aspects of the instrument.
I might be missing some points - in this case, I would love to know that the items I'm talking about are really a non-issue and
there are easy solutions for that.
Anyways, here is a list of 15 additional suggestions.
- Humanization in style creator
Sometimes when we use a "step record" function the outcome sounds too robotic.
It could be great if there was a "humanization" - something that can be applied only on one track
and randomly change the time of the note and the note length.
This could be implemented as a 'screen' in the style creator
with a parameter of max offset length (the more allowed offset is
the more skew from the original fully quantized part)
- Style Creator Guitar mode -
Since it's known that the part can be divided into up to 3 zones and for each of the zones we can assign NTR/NTT, RTR parameters
It could be great to make this expressed in the style creator. Otherwise its kind of tricky to use various noises available in guitars
- Ostinato support
This is an interesting use case and I imagine the implementation might be somewhat "advanced".
Sometimes the melodic parts can remain the same despite the chord change.
One "straightforward" example from the modern music
is Dua Lipa's Physical song where right from the beginning there is a "synthesizer" part
that doesn't change whereas the chords progression goes like Am, F, C, G
(well it changes slightly for the G part, but you know what I mean).
I could use Root Fixed/Bypass probably to write it "as is" but this would mean
that the part is "coupled to":
- Chord progression (with other chords it probably will sound weird)
- A particular scale
At this point, I might be missing something
but I've tried to make it and couldn't find a good way to do so (If it's possible with the current style creator - please
let me know and I'll remove this item).
Now the purpose as I see it is to make this part at least playable in different scales, and since it's supposed to be a "song style"
probably it's kind of ok to make it bound to the particular chord progression.
So the implementation of this feature would get as an input the "Ostinato" part and the desired chord progression
and would "transform" the Root Fixed/Bypass NTR/NTT to something that doesn't depend on the scale.
Something like DJ styles but for one particular part.
An alternative is specifying right at the beginning of the part that this is how it's "meant to be played" when the first chord of the variation is Am. Then if the player will choose to play the variation in a different scale, the style engine would read this "label" calculate the difference and transpose all the notes in accordance with this kind of shift.
- Style creator - save custom drum kits.
This feature can be a really good addition to the idea of creating custom drum kit sets.
Ok, I'm an amateur, but I assume that people who usually create the styles of the same genre have their preferred sound of kicks,
snares, toms, etc. So giving an ability to save the custom drum kit that they prepare once would be really nice.
I know it's possible to make an expansion sound of a drum kit, but I'm talking about the custom voices that can be done
in the instrument itself.
- Style creator - trigger parts by velocity threshold
The feature is simple:
If I play forte in the left hand, the style engine could turn on some additional parts. Maybe tutti or additional hi-hat if Yamaha will
take it to another level and will allow this feature on drum kit per specific note and not just per the whole variation.
Probably people will have to get used to it, but in some situations, it can be handy
- Style creator
Style assembly - copy at the level of bars and not the whole parts.
Allow copying say bars 3,4 from somewhere into the current style
Also, allow specifying target bars to copy to. Like "I would like to copy into bars 1-2 of the current variation that in general
has a length of 4 bars"
- Style creator copy/clear bars for all tracks at once.
Here is an example that illustrates this use case.
Let's say I have a variation of 8 bars, and I decide to shorten the variation by preserving bars 5-8 and erasing bars 1-4 altogether.
So currently I have to do something like this:
- Clear Bars 1 - 4 for each track
- Copy Bars 5 - 8 --> 1 - 4 for each track
- Shorten the variation length
Now this "for each track" thing is kind of annoying and allowing to make this kind of operations on the whole variation
at once could make our lives a little bit better
- Style creator - introduce chord variations in the style.
I know that pretty much all competitor platforms allowed this modification. In "KO**" I know such a feature exists for ages and
it allows 6 chord variations right as a part of the style. In Yamaha, it's also kind of possible by using channels 1-8 but
in this case, the synthesizer doesn't allow any control on this. And since many professional styles (those done by Yamaha themselves)
utilize this capability, we also would like to take advantage of this technique.
Well, many people will say that style format is something that can't be easily changed -
I understand that, but on the other hand
SFF2 (AFAIK the last modification in style format) was introduced in Tyros 3 release in 2008 and now we're in 2021 -
so maybe its time to move forward 
- Style Creator - track transpose (octave shift).
Imagine that we record a track with different notes, usually in one octave
C0, C0, E0, E0, G0 G0, A0, A0
Now When I hear the track with this function I could move all the notes at once one octave up/down.
For example, I could "apply" the function and the whole part would look like
C1, C1, E1, E1, G1 G1, A1, A1
Currently, I have to do it one-by-one for each note in the Step Edit window
- Mixing - track transpose (octave shift)
Just like the previous item but allowing it outside style creator, in the mixer.
I know that we can shift octaves for right-hand parts,
why not allow that for style parts (excluding drums/percussions of course)
- Mixing - allow access to mixing individual keys in drum kits right from the mixer without the need to enter the style creator
I think this feature can be handy for 3 different reasons
1. Can be convenient during the live play sessions
2. When We create a style and audition it - we have to do it outside the style creator, only because it's more convenient.
I watched a great tutorial by Manoj on youtube where he suggests auditioning within style creator, and I realize that
its the best we can do now, but then again, I assume that most of the people who create styles really know how to play
different types of chord, and just pressing the right notes to audition the chord would be much easier for them.
3. Conceptually it can be viewed as a part of a mixing process.
- Better visibility of multi-pads.
To put it simply - How can I see which sound is used when the particular multi-pad bank is selected?
- An ability to easily assign an effect to the multi-pad. I know that we could utilize a variation effect for multi-pads.
But since Genos has enough processing power to handle 28 insert effects simultaneously, it could be great if
one of those insert effects could be assigned to multi-pads right through the mixer.
- Favorites - introduce folders
This one is really small but convenient.
The "favorites" feature introduced in Genos and SX700/900 series AFAIK is really nice - I use it a lot when I want to create a style and
I pick voices that might be a good fit for different tracks, then I chose one inside the style creator.
Now, if we have more than one project to work on simultaneously, it could be great to allow custom folders in Favourites view.
Pretty much like it was done in all the browsers. In other words, the structure of favorites can be hierarchical rather than flat.
- Allow simple and fast access to the USB flash memory from both PC and Genos.
Currently, in order to copy from the PC to the keyboard I'm aware of the following ways:
- Use Yamaha Downloader software - well this one is pretty outdated and its UI is really awkward + is so slow
- Use USB Storage Mode - this mode, in general, is great but it requires turning on / off the instrument
so it's not really useful if I want to copy back and forth files during the work
- Unplug the USB from the synthesizer and plug it into a PC, copy my stuff, then put it back into the synthesizer.
This works of course, but I think (and hope) Yamaha can do better than the manual solution
- Somewhat creative solution: Use a USB hub that allows access to the same USB drive from 2 computers. Pretty much like a KVM switch -
with one click of the button PC gets the access to USB, then when we press it again - Genos gains access, etc.
Like This item for example (https://www.ebay.com/i/203047836203) (Disclaimer - I'm not affiliated with this company or something,
I've just bought this device and it works for me, probably there are other similar products that will also do the job just fine)
I might be missing something, but AFAIK, there is no way to grant access to a USB device plugged into Genos from PC so that
PC will "recognize" Genos without a need to restart the instrument in "USB storage mode".
Thanks and regards,
Mark
