Tag Archives: Tyros

Smooth It Over

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Here’s a Yamaha PSR-S950 style for funky jazzers — SmoothItOver.

As some of you know, many of the Motif/MOX arpeggios are based on what once were PSR/Tyros arranger keyboard styles. SmoothItOver is a little payback going the other way.

The MOX has about a dozen or so jazzy/funky Performances that are fun to jam to. One of my favorites is called “Smooth It Over.” A MOX/Motif Performance is a four instrument mini-mix where each instrument can be driven by a different arpeggio (musical phrase). Arpeggios are triggered by hitting one or more notes on the keyboard. Many of the arpeggios respond to and follow chords. A musician can lay down a song or groove by switching through groups of arpeggios and playing along.

The SmoothItOver performance on the MOX splits the keyboard into a lower and an upper part. (Sound familiar?) The lower part of the keyboard triggers drum and bass arpeggios as well as directly sounding the notes played, using a mellow electric piano voice. The upper part of the keyboard is for melody and is configured with a growl tenor sax. The drum and bass arpeggios are taken from the 70sDiscoFunk and GospelFunk styles.

The PSR/Tyros SmoothItOver style rips off, errr, builds on the equivalent sections from the 70sDiscoFunk and GospelFunk styles. I added OTS buttons with the FunkGtr 16Bt3 Multi Pad bank. Be sure to throw in the Multi Pad guitars when playing. (These Multi Pads follow the left hand chords.) It really kicks the PSR/Tyros style up a notch over the MOX version. The ability to switch melody voices on-the-fly through OTS is another advantage over the MOX.

The INTROs and ENDINGs are little lame since this style is built for jamming and practice, not covers. Try it with a minor blues (e.g., Dm7, Gm7, Am7) and switch between sections frequently to vary the groove. Drop a little guitar via the Multi Pad buttons. Have fun!

Don’t let anyone kick sand in your face at the beach just because you play “an arranger.”

BTW, I know someone will ask, “Why not transfer phrase data, etc. from the MOX to the PSR?” Two good reasons:

  • The MOX/Motif instruments are programmed much differently than similar PSR/Tyros instruments. The bass in Smooth It Over, for example, lays out the sound elements in different MIDI velocity and note ranges.
  • The note transposition rules and tables are hidden on the MOX.

It’s much easier to start out with the native style data on the PSR than to re-map the MOX phrase data to PSR instruments and recreate all of the note transposition programming.

Here’s an arpeggio-to-style section correspondence table:

    Type  ARP#  Style section
    ----  ----  ---------------------
    Drum  ARP1  MB_Gospel Funk
    Drum  ARP2  MA_Gospel Funk
    Drum  ARP3  MB_Gospel Funk
    Drum  ARP4  FA_Gospel Funk
    Drum  ARP5  FB_Gospel Funk
    Drum  ARP6  BA_Gospel Funk

    Bass  ARP1  FA_70sDiscoFunk _XS
    Bass  ARP2  FB_70sDiscoFunk _XS
    Bass  ARP3  MB_Gospel Funk _XS
    Bass  ARP4  MB_Gospel Funk _XS
    Bass  ARP5  FA_70sDiscoFunk _XS
    Bass  ARP6  BA_Gospel Funk

Transferring QY70 style to PSR

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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.

60sSuperGroup mash-up

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In my last post, I started the process of converting the PSR-S950 audio style “60sSuperGroup” to all MIDI. I like the 60sSuperGroup audio style, but the really strong back-beat in MAIN A makes it hard to use that section on anything other than the Beatles song “Ticket To Ride.” In order to make this style more generally useful, I’m replacing the audio rhythm tracks with appropriate MIDI tracks. Last time, I had worked on the MAIN and FILL IN sections and now it’s time to attack the INTROs and ENDINGs.

Here’s my process.

  • Find a style which is similar to 60sSuperGroup. 60sVintageRock is a good alternative because it is your basic Mark II rock and roll.
  • Load 60sVintageRock into Style Creator.
  • For each section, copy the non-rhythm parts from 60sSuperGroup into the new style.
  • Change the section lengths to match the source style 60sSuperGroup.
  • Save the new style as 60sFabFour.
  • Listen to each new section critically.
  • If a section doesn’t work musically, copy a section from a different candidate style.
  • Edit DSP effects to match 60sSuperGroup.
  • Save a bunch of intermediate copies along the way in case you need to back up to an earlier version.

Overall, the MAIN and FILL IN sections from 60sVintageRock were a good match and sounded pretty good. The one measure INTROs were OK, too. The longer INTROs and ENDINGs were more of a problem. So, I identified a few alternative candidate styles and built a table of INTRO/ENDING section lengths to find and try alternatives. Here’s the table:

           Target:
         60sFabFour  60sVintageRock  60sPopRock  VintageGtrPop
         ----------  --------------  ----------  -------------
INTRO 1      1             1              1            2
INTRO 2      2             4              5            4
INTRO 3      5             9              4            9
INTRO 4      1             1              1            1
ENDING 1     3             3              3            2
ENDING 2     4             4              3            3
ENDING 3     5             6              7            5
ENDING 4     1             1              1            1

I tried to use alternatives that were the same section lengths as 60sSuperGroup and the new style 60sFabFour.

ENDING 2 was the most difficult to nail. I tried different alternatives and then needed to shorten the section length to get rid of some beats that ran on — kind of like Ringo didn’t know when to stop. Here are the final source styles for the INTROs and ENDINGs: 

           Target:
         60sFabFour  Source style
         ----------  --------------
INTRO 1      1       60sVintageRock
INTRO 2      2       VintageGtrPop
INTRO 3      5       60sPopRock
INTRO 4      1       60sVintageRock
ENDING 1     3       60sVintageRock
ENDING 2     4       60sPopRock
ENDING 3     5       VintageGtrPop
ENDING 4     1       60sVintageRock

A lot of luck and trial and error is involved here. Luckily, the alternatives fit pretty well.

DSP1 is configured as a SYSTEM variation effect for both 60sSuperGroup and 60sVintageRock. However, the parameters are different. The guitars are sent to the SYSTEM effect in order to get a VOX AC30 amp “chime”. The final effect parameters are taken from 60sSuperGroup:

Category: REAL DIST
Effect: ST AMP VT

COMP SW          ON
COMP SUSTAIN     0.4
COMP LEVEL       6.0
DIST TYPE        Crunch
DIST DRIVE       7.8
DIST EQ          Mid Boost
DIST TONE        7.0 
DIST PRESENCE    6.0
DIST OUTPUT      24

This uses a Real Distortion effect and you will need to change this when porting the style to an older model keyboard. I did not change the OTS settings in the new style since I was happy with the OTS settings from 60sVintageRock.

I put a copy of the 60sFabFour style on the Music Gallery page.