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Saving Your Favorite Instruments in a Style

If you happen to have a style file from an older PSR or from another keyboard, you may want to tune that style so it works just as you want it to on your PSR or Tyros. In the Balance Control and Mixing Console lessons, we explained how to adjust the balance of the sounds coming from the style accompaniment tracks. We also showed how to change the instrument used in any track. In the Variation Tuning lesson, we even explained how to adjust volume balance and instruments independently in each of the variations that accompany a style. But to really tune this style for your keyboard, you will also want to take advantage of the OTS feature that lets you create your very own one-touch settings to accompany the style. We will show you how to do that in this lesson.

Changing One Touch Settings

Four OTS ButtonsIf you are working with a preset style that already has one-touch settings, the job of creating OTS is a bit easier than if you are starting with a style from another keyboard where there are no OTS available at all. The following section will give you some hints on how to create your own. But the current OTS may be fine except for a one or two instruments you want to change. Let's assume you select OTS1 for some style and start playing. The RIGHT1 voices is normally ON, but the RIGHT2 and LEFT voices may or may not be ON. If you have been reading these lessons from the beginning, you know how to change the RIGHT1 voice to something else, how to turn RIGHT2 and LEFT voices ON or OFF and how to set them to what you want. Go ahead and do that.

You now have the style playing with the voices you want. To store these voices into the OTS1 button, press the [MEMORY] button located to the right of the 8 registration buttons and then press the OTS1 button. This stores your setting into OTS1.

To SAVE that setting, you need to save the entire style. If you were working with a style from the USER area (or FLOPPY or CARD or HD or USB), just save the style back to where it was stored. When you load it again, it will have your altered OTS setting in button 1. If you were working with a PRESET style, you can not save it to the preset area, you have to save a copy of that style to the USER area or to one of the other storage areas.

This simple method of saving the style, will take care of changes in the OTS. But it will not handle changes to the default tempo or any adjustments to the accompaniment voices or volumes. For those changes, you need to go into digital recording to save your style as explained in the previous lessons. There are also some considerations you should be aware of about what is actually being stored in OTS memory. These are discussed below.

Method 1: Creating OTS by Using Existing OTS

Suppose you are working with a country rock style from another keyboard and it does not have any OTS saved with the style but you want to add one-touch settings. Your keyboard undoubtedly already has its own Country Rock style with four OTS just right for the country rock you are working with. So, the simplest plan would be to take those OTSs associated with the internal Country Rock style and copy them to the new country rock style you are tuning. What you need to do is load the internal Country Rock style, store each of the four OTS setups someplace, then load the new style you are working on, and copy the stored OTS setups into the OTS memory locations for the new file. Sounds easy enough, but you have to follow a set of very specific steps to accomplish this.

Storing the Internal OTS

You are going to store the internal OTS into your registration memory area. It is best to start with a BLANK registration memory. That is exactly what your registration memory buttons have when you turn on your PSR-2000. But if you have loaded up any registration file, they are no longer empty. Keyboards after the PSR-2000 remembered the last registration file and they start up with it still in place. You could simply overwrite what is there, but if you aren't careful you might wind up saving the file under it's original name and thus mess up your original registration file. Be safe. Just start with a empty file. Be sure to review our registration lessons, where you will learn all about registration files and how to create an empty registration file if you need one.

Once your EMPTY registration file is loaded, load the internal style from which you want to copy the OTS. Now, if you press OTS1, the style starts playing and you can see the voices that are used for the left and right-hand voices. You can, in turn, press OTS2, OTS3, OTS4 and the PSR setup will change accordingly as you go from one OTS to another. OK, let's save those four OTS setups in the first four registration memory locations. Press OTS1 to call up the first setting. Now, press the [MEMORY] button and then press the first Registration button (I'll call it R1 although it is only labeled "1" on your keyboard.) You have now stored the first OTS in [R1]. But have you? What exactly got stored when you pressed that [MEMORY] + [R1] combination? Before continuing with these steps, we need to pause and examine this question in some detail.

What Is Stored In Registration Memory Contents?

Press that [MEMORY] button again, but don't press anything else. Just examine the REGISTRATION MEMORY CONTENTS screen shown below.

Memory Contents Screen

For OTS, it instructs you to now press the relevant OTS button. However, for Registration Memory, you are requested to mark the group(s) that will be memorized to the Registration Memory button you select. You can select what will be stored in the registration memory; but you cannot select what is stored in the OTS. And, when you store settings to the registration memory location, only parameters for the groups selected in the GROUP SELECT box at the bottom of the screen will be stored. In the illustration shown here, the STYLE, VOICE, MULTIPAD, HARMONY, TEMPO, PEDAL, TRANSPOSE, and SCALE would be stored. The registration lessons provide more detail about what is stored in each of these groups or you can refer to Parameter chart in the Data List manual for your keyboard. But for the moment, let me just assert that for this exercise, all we really need to store are the VOICE, MULTIPAD, and HARMONY settings. That's because the OTS stores all the voice-related parameters (and that includes the left-hand voice as well as all the right-hand voices) as well as the Harmony/Echo settings and the multipad settings and that's it.

In the registration VOICE group, only the left-hand voice parameters are saved. The settings for the LEFT voice are saved in the STYLE group. We want to apply these voice settings to a different style, so we won't save the STYLE and will have to, therefore, save the left-hand voice setting separately

Back to Saving the Four OTS

OK, now you know what groups to check before saving to registration memory. Make sure you have VOICE, HARMONY and MULTI PAD checked in the GROUP SELECT box. These settings will remain that way until you explicitly change them. Press [EXIT] to leave the REGISTRATION MEMORY CONTENTS screen and return to the MAIN screen.

Well, let's copy all four OTS settings form the internal style to the first four registration memory buttons.

  1. Press [OTS1] to load the first set of OTS voices; press the [Memory] button, then the [R1] button.
  2. Now, press [OTS2], followed by [Memory] [R2].
  3. Press [OTS3]; then [Memory] [R3].
  4. Press [OTS4], then {Memory] [R4].

At this point, the four OTS settings from the internal style are stored in the first four registration memory locations.

Now load the style for which you want to create OTS. Set the left-hand voice to be whatever you want for this style. Now, Press the [DIRECT ACCESS] button followed by [FREEZE]. This will bring up the FREEZE GROUP SETTING. Make sure that STYLE is checked. As you now move to different registration buttons, the currently loaded style will not change. This is the new style and we don't want it to change anyway, but the current left-hand voice, which you just set, is part of that style and it will not change either.

Double check that the [FREEZE] light is ON indicating that the freeze option is turned on . If the light is not ON, just press [FREEZE] again. Pressing that button repeatedly turns the option on then off then on etc.

Now you are ready to copy the the right-hand voice settings from the registration memory area to the OTS memory area. Just reverse the process you used earlier. Press [R1] to bring up the first registration memory setting. Now press [Memory] followed by [OTS1] to save this setting in the first OTS button. As soon as you save a new setting to an OTS button, you will get a warning message from the PSR:

OTS has been changed. To keep the change, save current style. Otherwise OTS data will be lost when a different style is selected. Save now? (OTS data is contained in the style file.)

Your options are YES ([F] button), or NO ([G] button). For the moment, choose NO. You can put off saving the file until you get all four OTS memory buttons set.

Now set the remaining three buttons:

Now, you can select YES to save this style or respond NO and then, back at the MAIN page, save the STYLE as you would normally save a style. When you do, you are presented with the normal STYLE file screen and it is showing the USER area. You can save this file you are working on, with its new OTS, to the USER area or whatever area you want to save it to. However, you do have to save the style file. When you saved those settings to the OTS memory buttons, they were saved in what might be viewed as your performance clipboard. Things come and go there all the time. If you loaded a new style, as the warning suggested, all the OTS would be wiped out and replaced by those from the new style. To save your own OTS with the style you are working on, you need to save the style file itself because the OTS is saved as an integral part of the style file.

Note that this is GOOD not BAD. When you are making your own style files, perhaps to go along with a particular song, you can also make your own OTS and everything is saved internally in that style file. When you load the style, you get your tuned style plus the particular solo instruments you want to use when playing that style.

If you'd like to put some OTS in another style file, load the BLANK registration file again. You will be warned that the current registration file has changed and asked if you want to save it. Don't save it. That would only overwrite your BLANK file and replace it with one that has things stored in it. Just say NO and discard your "working" registration file and load the BLANK file again to start the whole process over.

Method 2: Make Your Own OTS

In our discussion of Favorite Voice Registrations, we explained how you could make a registration file with 8 of your favorite instruments and have that file available no matter what style is loaded. Well, you could certainly use that file to get started. Let me illustrate by using my favorite registrations file. Review the lesson referenced above to see how to make your own favorite voices file.

I load that registration file, which is designed so that the voices with it can be used with any style loaded. The first registration button happens to have a NylonGuitar as the Main Voice and a GrandPiano as the Left Voice. Strings are used as the Right2 voice, but they are not initially turned on. (This example was from my favorite voices on the PSR-2000. As it turns out, my set of "favorite" voices seemed to change with each successive Yamaha keyboard. Since registration files are keyboard dependent, this registration had to be created anew for each new keyboard.)

Next, I load a new style to which I want to add one touch settings. In reality, if this is a style converted from another keyboard, some time may have already been taken in adjusting the accompaniment volume settings, and perhaps accompaniment instruments as well. Once that is all adjusted, DIGITAL RECORDING - STYLE CREATOR is used to save these settings into the style. The lesson on the MIXING CONSOLE explains how to do that kind of style tuning. So, here, I will assume the accompaniment part of the style and the tempo is, more or less, the way you want it and now you want to add OTS.

With the style loaded, I can start the style and try out any of the voice setups saved in my favorite voice registration file. Suppose I decide the first one is reasonably close for this style. When playing through the four variations, I am likely to have the same left hand voice and the same Multi Pad file selected. So, in testing out the sound in Main variation A, I find an appropriate left hand voice and an appropriate Multi Pad file. I also adjust the volumes of the left hand voice, the multi pad, the style, and the right and left voices. With all this set, I can then save the setting in the first OTS memory location by simply pressing [Memory] plus [OTS1]. I might also at this point, save the style with this single OTS setting. The advantage of saving now is that by pressing [OTS1], it will automatically turn on accompaniment and Sync Start, which is convenient for further testing.

One trick I have found useful at this point is to save that very same setting that I used for OTS1, into OTS2, OTS3, and OTS4. Why save the same thing? Well, I am going to change the RIGHT1 voice and perhaps the RIGHT2 voice as well as voice effects. But I am not necessarily going to change the LEFT hand or the multipad setting. So by saving the basic setup to each of the 4 OTS buttons, as I modify the settings for buttons 2 through 4 as I see fit, I do not have to worry about whether I have the wrong multi pad in one of the variations or whether the left voice volume suddenly drops when I go from one variation to another.

Everyone will select their own favorite instruments to go with whatever style they are working with. But one thing you might consider is checking out the Intro to the style. What instruments are playing there? What instruments are used in the accompaniment? You may want to select some solo instruments that match the instruments already in the band, so to speak. If the introduction seems to feature a SopranoSax, maybe you may want the first solo instrument to be a SopranoSax so it seems the song naturally flows from the introduction into the song. Or, if not in the first OTS, you might use that SopranoSax as the main voice in one of the other OTS setups.

If the accompaniment features a GrandPiano in the various style variations, you might not want to use a GrandPiano in your Left voice, since that might be too many pianos. Perhaps you can use a NylonGuitar. Maybe Strings would be appropriate. If the accompaniment is primarily guitars, then a piano or an electric piano in the left voice could be a good complement to the voices used in the accompaniment.

Keep the OTS Link in mind when you are building your own OTS. With OTS Link ON, moving from style variation A to B to C to D will automatically also switch from OTS1 to OTS2 to OTS3 to OTS4. Since style variations usually build in intensity and/or complexity as you move from A to D, you would want to design your OTS similarly. OTS1 might feature a solo trumpet, which is replaced with a clarinet in OTS2, and then in OTS3, you bring back the trumpet this time accompanied by a brass section, and in OTS4, you have the clarinet and a woodwind ensemble with Harmony Echo turned on. You get the idea.

Favorite Voices Once More

If you are not concerned with the Left voice, which is saved in the style parameters, but only the right-hand voices, you could save those to the Registration Memory and NOT save the STYLE. So what does that mean? It means that no matter what style you load, you could activate any of the registration buttons, and therefore, the RIGHT1 and RIGHT2 (and perhaps RIGHT3 if you have a Tyros) voices saved in that registration button would be loaded without impacting the currently loaded style. No need to FREEZE anything.

The main difference between setting up your favorite voices in a registration file this way and the method described in the Registration Lesson, which used a dummy BLANK.STY, is that the left hand voice does not get saved. But that may be fine for some people and so this is another way to make your own tailored registration files with your favorite voices, taken directly from the internal styles of the PSR.


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This page updated on February 15, 2024 .