Some of us are trying to mine our old beat boxes (like the Yamaha QY70) for styles and phrases. I tried transferring a QY70 “style” to an S950.

“8Detroit” is an 8-beat QY70 style. A QY70 style has only six sections: Main A, Main B, Fill In AB, Fill In BA, Intro, Ending. There is no break section. The fill-ins are called “AB” and “BA” because they are intended to be transitions from Main A to Main B and from Main B to Main A.

I determined the section lengths through the QY70 phrase editor. Here are the QY70 section lengths:

     Section     Length
     ----------  ------
     Main A      2 bars
     Main B      4 bars
     Intro       2 bars
     Fill In AB  1 bar
     Fill In BA  1 bar
     Ending      6 bars

Here is the process that I used to create a PSR compatible style called “8DetroitStyle.sty”.

1. Create a QY70 song in the QY pattern track. Use Cmaj7 throughout. The song has the following structure/sections:

     Measure   SMF   Section     MIDI Marker
     -------  -----  -------     -----------
       1:2     2:3   Main A      Main A
       3:6     4:7   Main B      Main B
       7:8     8:9   Intro       Intro A
        9      10    Fill In AB  Fill In AA
       10      11    Fill In BA  Fill In BB
      11:16   12:17  Ending      Ending A

The first column is the section location in the pattern track. The second column is the section location in the generated SMF file.

2. Copy the QY70 song to an empty song. Use the QY70 “Expand Backing” job to expand the pattern track to MIDI events in tracks 9-16.

3. Use the QY70 Data Filer program to transfer and translate the QY70 song to an SMF file on a PC. Enable the option to insert XG initialization data at the beginning of the SMF file.

4. Open the SMF file in Sonar. Insert MIDI markers at the locations specified above. Save the SMF file as MIDI type 0.

5. Rename the MIDI file with the “.STY” extension.

6. Use Jorgen Sorensen’s Style Fixer program to check the file and to insert a default CASM into the MIDI file.

7. Transfer the style file to a USB drive and test the file on the PSR.