I'm not sure about Yamaha having any patent on providing direct access "fill in" buttons - my old Korg i3 & i30HDD both had two such buttons (although, to be fair, I beleive Yamaha have a financial stake in Korg). I seem to think that other brands have more than one such button also.

Whilst I may have identified a possible solution, it still means that the instrument is harder work than it should be, straight out of the box.



The dynamic changes available on the VA range are not what I mean.

The VA still only has the ability to respond to chord changes with one of 3 versions of a particular style division, namely Major, Minor and Seventh. There is also no real user control over which version is triggered when a more complex chord is played. Whilst the instrument will recognise many more chord types than this, it will still only respond with one of the three pattern types, because that's all it has.

Again, older i-series Korg instruments (and maybe the current ones also) were far superior in this respect. They had six chord driven versions of each of the four main style variations , four chord versions for each of the two Fill In variations and similar facilities for intros and endings (I forget how many).

For any style, you could then map which chord driven pattern would sound for each of 32 recognised chord types. The resulting patterns played could be drastically different from chord to chord, if you wanted, or could be more subtle - such as just changing the bass line to be more musically appropriate for a certain chord types beyond simple majors, minors and sevenths. You could even, say, programme a style so that you could trigger a complete one (or half) bar break which you could call up by playing a certain chord type at the same time as hitting one of the fill buttons. The same button would otherwise then produce a normal fill, when used with any other chord type except the one you had chosen to trigger the break.

The VA has nothing remotely like this. From the manual, it looks like the G70 doen't either.



I bought, and still own, the VA76 for one reason only. It does an excellent job when used as a deluxe midifile player for backing tracks combined with a full, two handed, live part setup for each song. My older Korgs would not do this, otherwise I would still have them. I tolerate it's overall very average sound quality, and many other failings, to get this one convenience.

I use the VA in midifile player mode combined with a Digitech VHM5 vocal harmoniser. The end result is rather like a higher quality Discover5.

My description of the VA as "abysmal" relates to it's behaviour when used as a true arranger keyboard - i.e. in "style play" mode.

I would class it as unusable in this mode for any sort of live work, because it is so impossible to control the styles properly, whereas I found the older Korg i3, in particular, to be oustanding in this respect. Even getting the VA to reliably trigger a half-bar break at the correct time is not easy. Also, having to hit the "Fill In" button twice to stop it from shifting to a new variation is just plain stupid.

Even that lot would not be so bad if the buttons triggered reliably. The buttons often fail to trigger if you give just give them a quick tap. Then, if you press them more firmly, they sometimes stick down. This is a characteristic of every VA model I have played, not just my own instrument.

Whilst the use of the FC7 footpedals gives more control, it is still inadequate overall.

This lack of easy and instant "one click" control over the various style divisions even makes the VA a poor tool for roughing out a sequenced song, for later detailed editing. Although I was well aware of the instrument's many limitations when I bought it, this aspect proved more disappointing over time than even my intial low expectations led me to anticipate.

Whilst the G70 looks a lot better than the VA in many respects, I am disappointed with the relative lack of control over the style divisions. I still think they have made a simple job difficult here, for no good reason.

To conclude, I am satisfied that the VA does the particular job I bought it for. I just wouldn't use one as an arranger keyboard!

[This message has been edited by MikeTV (edited 12-18-2004).]

You are wrong about the stylecontrol in the
Roland. You can make a choise.

About the stylecontrol you should take a
better look at your VA, when you really have
one.What you are saying is not true MikeTV.

Which bit of what I am saying do you think is wrong?

Mike,
here is where you are incorrect:



I own a G1000 and know what the manual is talking about, as this is the standard Roland practice.

Roland does recognize all (or most) chords, and plays them correctly. What you are misinterpreting in the manual is the fact that for the three chord types (major, minor, seventh) you can actually record completely different versions with totally different style tracks - in effect for every style, Roland records three times the number of tracks. Then, depending on the chord you play, one of the three appropriate style versions is conjugated into your chord. Since you may well be using the chords from all three families in a song, you should try and keep the three versions similar. Nonetheless, the ability is there. I am sure that VA76 manual describes this feature as well. In fact, I think that Roland does a pretty darn good job of playing styles - sorry if that is not your experience.

If you search for this, you will find that Yamaha uses a much simpler scheme: for each style you record only one version, in a Cmajor 7th chord. Then the instrument uses some logic to determine the actual chord played, and conjugates the style to drop the 7th note if the chord played is not a 7th, and substitute a minor 3rd for major 3rd if you are playing a minor chord. Even this simplified scheme works pretty well, although, admittedly, there is not much varition between the way the major and minor are played.

While I understand your concern that the user has little control over the actual style parts played, the alternative would be to get an instrument with an arpeggiator, and program different style tracks for each of the dozens (60+?) key combinations corresponding to various chords. This would be prohibitively time-consuming to me, but if you have time on your hands and think that the result will be better than playing a style, that is the alternative.

Regards

Hi Alex

We are singing from the same hymnsheet here.

I think your description of the Roland's translation of chords into style parts is absolutely accurate and describes what is happening very clearly. Certainly better than I managed!

As you correctly say :
"...in effect for every style, Roland records three times the number of tracks."
....and then it "interprets" one of these three to fit whatever chord you are playing.

The VA is essentially the same as the G1000 in this respect, so you are confirming my own understanding exactly.

The old Korg i-series essentially does exactly the same thing, but has up to six times the number of alternative tracks (or patterns, parts, or "mini-sequences") for each main variation in a style. In other words, exactly the same principle as the Roland, but double the number of possible parts.

So you could, for example, have a Korg style which only happened to contain the three typical "standard" arranger patterns - major, minor, seventh - in which case the Korg would then behave essentially the same way as the Roland does in it's response to particular chords.

However, the Korg allowed you to go beyond this, in that you could then, say, have a fourth alternative pattern in a style so that it ONLY sounded when you played certain specific chord types - say only for a diminished chord - and you could make that pattern as different as you wanted from the "normal" three patterns that would be used for all the other chords.

These extra pattern versions could even be a different number of bars, or even a different time signature if you really wanted (jazz, anyone?).

Same applied to the fifth and sixth patterns. Of course you didn't have to use all the six pattern, and indeed some of Korg's own factory styles don't.

In the same way, the the two "fill-in" sections of each style could have up to four distinct patterns available - not just the three "standard" patterns.

Any pattern for any division of a style could be from one to 32 bars long, thus making it possible to programme very much more musically complex styles than most other arrangers allow.

The final refinement was for the user to be able to say which of these chord driven patterns was mapped to which type of chord, for 32 specified chord types. This was possible for each style, rather than being a global setting.

The instrument then not only "morphed" the notes in the pattern when a particular chord was played, so that they fit well musically (like all arrangers do, to a greater or lesser extent), but also used particular pattern that the user had dictated as the basis for the "morphing" - not just whatever had been programmed as the factory default.

Of course, much of the time, styles tend to be fairly straightforward in structure, whatever the make or model of arranger involved. What I was trying to point out was that the old Korgs did at least possess this extra facility for those times when you needed it.

There were a fair number of times when I found that it made the difference between being able to stay in "arranger" mode for a particular song that had some distinctive musical element, rather than be forced to use some level of sequencing to make the song sound "right".

Where I felt Korg had got this so "right" was that you could get such a huge amount of musical variation from the the styles in these instruments straight out of the box, without having to jump through hoops, or make too many musical compromises.

Essentially, I found that the Korgs worked with you, musically, and felt very natural to use live. In contrast, I continually find the VA "getting in the way" of the music.

However, just to redress the balance a little, I would be the first to say that the under-the-skin operating system of the old i3 was a total pig to fathom. Pretty much anything was actually possible, but somtimes hair-tearingly difficult to set up.

In contrast, I find the VA generally fairly user friendly under the skin. You can always nit-pick, but I think Roland have done a fair job on the operating system, which is generally clear and informative.

This was one of the reasons for being particularly interested in the G-70. It looked as if Roland had arrived at a good balance between giving you lots of physical buttons for things you need often, or in a hurry, coupled with a well implemented touch screen for more in-depth control and editing, such as you would want when setting up the finer points for a particular song (or whatever).

I am reserving judgement on how the instrument sounds until I have a good chance to try one properly. Same goes for the "playability" of the styles in practice.

However, I still maintain that the G-70s lack of dedicated direct access fill buttons is an issue, as is my concern over the relatively simple style structures. I do appreciate these points may not be of concern to many potential owners, and won't affect their enjoyment of the instrument, but they potentially detract from it for me.

Regards - Mike


[This message has been edited by MikeTV (edited 12-19-2004).]

Mike,

Your point is taken.

Not having had a Korg, I did not realize that it had the facility for the 3 custom style variations.

As far as a G-70 goes, I am hoping that since G1000 is not causing me any problems, neither will the G-70, though I concur that if you need more style variations, you will be hamstrung not having them.

I am still curious, though, how it will work with the FC7 switch - the schematic for it is trivial (the center jack contact is the common, and each switch makes the contact between one of the seven other pins and the common). I think anyone hampered by the lack of buttons on the VA or G-70 should use/build one. Anyways, the question is what happens when you press a fill button on the FC7, does it advance the variation of the style as well as trigger fill (unwanted operation) or repeats the previous fill and keep the variation where it is (better design).

Perhaps one of the new G-90 owners can enlighten us as to how it works.

Regards,
Alex

There is no simple "Fill" function assignable to FC7, but its switches can be assigned as a replica of the four "Variation" switches on the panel.
Provided that your keyboard setup (User Program) has "Auto Fill In" on, if you press the Variation switch corresponding to your current one, the arranger will play the fill and then remain in the current variation; if you press a different Variaton switch, the fill will take you to the chosen variation.


[This message has been edited by o3bor (edited 12-20-2004).]

[This message has been edited by o3bor (edited 12-20-2004).]

O3bor,

thanks, I guess this kind of operation makes sense.