Hi Richard,
thank you for your very detailed answer.
16 tracks ( wow ).
I agree you woundn't want too many instrument changes throughout a style.
When I edit a style for OMB I usually swap the tracks around to try and avoid unnecessary program changes ie try & keep strings on just say channel 14, guitar on 12 etc etc

Hopefully Aust. will have a distributer.
Supposedly we have one but haven't managed to find a Mediastation on their website as yet.

Thanks again

best wishes
Rikki
[QUOTE]Originally posted by richard_shiflet:
[B]

As to your question about having individual tracks change voices within a style.
I don't think that this is an option currently supported, Domenik can correct me if I'm wrong. However there seems to be an easy workaround.

As the Mediastation can handle 16 individual tracks, in the example above using 3 variations with different instrument sets, you could try the following: lets say we wanted to use audio drum loops for the percussion, a different audio wave file for each variation. Let's also assume that we have chosen a very good quality Giga Bass that will be the same on all tracks. Then with the remaining 15 tracks we could use 3 different sets of instruments for accompaniment on the 3 variations. Each containing 5 instruments unique to one variation. 3 sets of 5 different instruments in addition to the audio drums and giga bass, that's 7 instruments at a time. You probably wouldn't need more and if you did you still have access to the other 10 instrument not already in use in a particular variation.

Hi Domenic,
no, even my Yahoo id is under rikkisbears
for the various groups I belong to
(including my stylemaking group)

Styles are a bit of a hobby of mine, unfortunately don't have the musical talent to create them from scratch. Just find it fascinating how the various keyboards handle styles.
I'll have to study your answer for a while as the Mediastation style format appears different to the other keyboards I've owned.

Very interesting indeed.

best wishes
Rikki
[QUOTE]Originally posted by LIONSTRACS:
[Bstyle??

Hi Rikki
is your ID in yahoo: Kats...? If are you, I have replyed to your message but never get back a reply of mine. Anyway if you will contact me, post the message in my web page: Contact us.

Rikki, Glad to help anyway that I can. Thanks to Domenik's post above, I realize the error I made in forgetting that 4 of the arranger tracks (9,10,11 and 12) have been designed for drums and percussion and as such they do not follow chord changes. This would make them unsuitable for other accompaniment instruments. So that would leave us with 12 such tracks and not 15. altering the number of unique accompaniment instruments per variation (not used in other variations) to 4 instead of 5. Hope I didn't cause too much confusion with my answer.

For someone with your experience in tweaking or remapping styles with OMB and using soundfonts, Using the Mediastation should be a "piece of cake". With the giga sound library already connected as the soundsource all you have to do is make sure that the music data is in the form of std midi files and that the style parts have names that the arranger engine can recognize. Names like intro1.mid, intro2.mid for introductions or like var1_maj.mid, var1_min.mid for variation 1 major chord accompaniment and variation 1 minor chord accompaniment, respectively and so on.

And with onboard tools already installed like Rosegarden, Ardour GTK, Audacity and others you can do almost everything from inside the Mediastation. And these programs are updated to the most current version with the Mediastation OS upgrades. I received the newer version of Rosegarden about 4 weeks ago automatically when I loaded an Mediastation OS upgrade the iso installer handles it with no action necessary on my part.

Richard

Hi Richard,
sorry to take up so much of your time, have another question

If I understand correctly,
you have a full 16 tracks to create a major variation, you also have 16 tracks for a minor variation?? can you also create parts for any other chords like 7th's , diminished etc???

Sounds like it shouldn't be all that difficult to put together a style using EMC software. With Universal version, possibly wouldn't even need to go thru the process of converting from one format to another ?
just save as midifile & then put it thru whatever process is required to create a mediastation style & do the necessary tweaking of the sounds volume etc

I'm probably being overly optimistic.

Just wondering is there any literature available ie guidelines on what is allowable in styles, ie
for instance in a variation chord track
if the track has been recorded on cmaj chord can only the notes c e g be used?
can melodic phrases be used in variations?
Basically I'm trying to find out what is permissible.

I still haven't found a perfect replacement for my ex KN7000 as far as style creation process goes, though OMB was getting fairly close to what I wanted, but laptop/soundfont etc has disadvantages too.

thanks again

best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by richard_shiflet:
[B]
With the giga sound library already connected as the soundsource all you have to do is make sure that the music data is in the form of std midi files and that the style parts have names that the arranger engine can recognize. Names like intro1.mid, intro2.mid for introductions or like var1_maj.mid, var1_min.mid for variation 1 major chord accompaniment and variation 1 minor chord accompaniment, respectively and so on.

Rikki,
No problem glad to help!

Yes 16 tracks for maj and another 16 for min also 16 for 7th and 16 for dim7th.

Here id an excerpt from the arranger specifications:

16 Tracks Arranger Pattern, MIDI File format 0
4 INTRO
4 FILLS
4 VARIATION
4 ENDING
4 CHORDS system: Maj, Min, 7th, 7thdim
Unlimited lenght structure for each pattern! One style MAY BE 50-100-200Mb!
Unlimited Styles Family Group
Unlimited Styles presets

I copied this from the website just follow this link
http://www.lionstracs.com/site/index.php?option=content&pcontent=1&task=view&id=42&Itemid=61

Richard

You are right it is a simple conversion. You import into the Roland module of EMC, then export as a standard midi file. That's it! Then the tweaking begins balancing volumes and choosing better sounds where necessary.

I think that the Roland module is only used to get the proper names for the style parts. If you would like more than the info on the web, then take a look at the Stle Making package. http://www.lionstracs.com/store/make-style-p-140.html?osCsid=4bbd88fc1ec34b2b1cc37e39db89ca95

It includes the PDF Arranger specifications
and Cubase Templates.

You also asked "for instance in a variation chord track, if the track has been recorded on cmaj chord, can only the notes c e g be used?

No, any notes could be present but the transposing would be applied to all notes

Yes, melodic phrases can be used in variations?

Richard

Hi Richard,
thanks again.

The style section of the keyboard sounds more interesting by the minute.
I'll check out the link you gave me.

best wishes
rikki

QUOTE]Originally posted by rikkisbears:
Hi Richard,
thanks again.

The style section of the keyboard sounds more interesting by the minute.
I'll check out the link you gave me.

best wishes
rikki

[/QUOTE]

Rikki,

Were you able to get the information you needed from the website?

I have even heard about the posibility of eventually being able to read Yamaha styles directly into the mediastation. But I don't know when that might be possible, as Domenik has a couple of new things he is releasing already this month and these things take time.

Anyway, all these developments make me glad that I put my money into extremely high quality hardware with a very flexible open software system, rather than into a lower quality build of hardware and only a more extensive proprietary software library of styles. Because, as we all know you cannot upgrade your hardware for free, but with Lionstracs, we can upgrade the software for free.

A one-time purchase and you can take advantage of all that Lionstracs is developing for life. Not a bad deal at all!

Richard

did Domenik say that all future software upgrades wouild be done for free ??? If thats true then you do have indeed a very good bargain but if Dom is a business man (and i am sure he is) then he would never commit to that indefinately . Dont get too carried away.

Hi Spalding
All the Lionstracs OS updates will be always for FREE for the ALL Mediastation users. After they register in our web store, we move thy under mediastation group.
They can login and they will find all the OS product at the price of euro 0, = FREE download.
One example: the GIGA sounbank 4300Mb was till today downloaded 157 times and always for FREE.

who is NOT owner of one mediastation keyboard, they have to pay it, this is normally.
Regards