Hello fellow Yammers... maybe some of you will recognize my nickname from the old
Roland Arrangers Group, started as an e-mail list in the early nineties and active for more than 10 years. The group was created by
Bob Richie, Marsha Summers, Jim Blackman and other early pioneers, to exchange views, questions and hints among owners of Roland arranger keyboards. Roland's manuals were often unclear and incomplete, and the collaboration among members proved itself essential, mainly as each new model reached the shelves. For several years the group supported owners of E70, E86, E96, G800, G1000 and VA7 keyboards. I consecutively owned each of these models except for the VA7, and served as a FAQ/TnT (Tips&Tricks) Editor for the group for several years, until the site that hosted our content was deactivated.
By that time, we were getting disappointed about the shortcomings of Roland's models as compared to Yamaha's, and the group kind of faded away as more and more participants moved on to the competition. The last messages were exchanged in 2006. Anyhow, I recall with pride and nostalgy our collaborative struggle and names like
Bob Rockwell, Tom G., Luc Janssens, Serge Stodolnik, Mike Cover, Luke O'Malley, Silvano Marucco, Okan Altug, Frank Bertram, Vallury Prabakhar, Marie Alicata, Marcel Pertus, Hugh Barwell, Willem Schaaij, Jure Klancar, Kim Winther, Fran Carango and many others. I know that quite a few of them are no longer among us. On the other hand, I once in a while came across some of them in Yammy groups, after having myself made the move and started as a Yammer with a PSR-640, then a PSR-2100, then a PSR-3000 (still a favorite).
Recently I was able to get a
PSR-SX900 and guess it has a good chance of being my final acquisition. I gigged a lot for almost 30 years, but now I'm considering mostly studio work, although keeping the 3000 for church services and elderly home singalongs I still perform.
The SX900 is quite a step from its predecessors, and
a complaint I have is about how Yamaha reorganized the Styles. "Ballad", "Country" and "Swing&Jazz" are gone, and the related styles were scattered between "Pop and Rock", "Dance" and "Jazz" categories. The latter includes Pops and Ballads. Moreover, as Yamaha' creativity traditionally has it, many 16-beat and 6/8 style names bear no hint about their time signature. Also, like in previous models, under "Ballroom", "Movie&Show", "Entertainer" and "World" we find styles belonging to all categories. It's quite a challenge to find the most suitable style for a song, at least before an extensive experience with the particular keyboard model is achieved. The 3000 has "just" 240 internal styles. The SX900 has 525.
I eventually took over the task of classifying each of the SX900 styles under one of 12 categories:
- Free (no noticeable beats)
- 3B (Waltzes)
- 8B (Ballads, softer Pop)
- 12B (6/8 by convention, but 12/8 in fact)
- 16B (Ballads, slower Pop)
- Dance (mostly with Bass Drum on every beat)
- Lat (all colors of Latin except Brazilian)
- Mch (Marches)
- MPB (Brazilian popular music - Bossa, Samba etc.)
- MRB (Brazilian regional music - our "country" styles)
- PRk (Pop and Rock, faster styles)
- SJz (Swing and Jazz)
The job took me several days, but the resulting list proved quite useful to expedite finding a style for a given song, either a new one or one played on a previous keyboard. The default tempo of each style, which I recorded along with its assigned category, helps in further narrowing down the choices. I will be happy to share this list, as an Excel spreadsheet, with anyone interested.
Cheers -- José
P.S.: About me... I'm 70, graduated in Electronic Engineering, worked my whole professional career at INPE (Brazilian National Institute for Space Research), and retired in 2005. Gigged as a second job since 1990.