John,
I'm with you on this one. Give me 20 to 30 good styles and 20 good voices and I don't need anything else. Uncle Dave and a few others had expressed the same sentiments in past posts.

Tom

Nowadays there is so many who are gigging by use of arranger kb's who
don't need a single style anymore, because only using the midifiles or
sequensed songs as backing-tracks all the way, so when use a little of
this and a little of that I guess 20 styles will be enough?

20 styles for a evening gig seems to be a kind of short if you use only
the styles as accomp when play 4 - 5 hours, but I guess when we know
modern kb's have styles with two or more intros, endings and variations,
one style can easily be used at least for two songs, so then 20 styles
all that sudden cover 40 songs.

But then again, you're kind of stuck to play songs who fit to that styles,
rather than find a style suitable to the songs you want to play, and that
is a reason why I just don't have enought with 20, specially since I don't
play the bass manually by left hand as UD and many other does.

GJ

Hi folks,

Interesting to learn your views on this, but one of the main reasons for putting it up is the fact that the new top arranger keyboards all boast enormous storing capacities, one way or another that is. (harddiks, sticks,etc.etc.)
My point is that if you basically only use say 100 styles and 100 sounds, with the odd exception here and there, why set such great store by the merits of these huge storing capacities, as if they are one of the most important factors in an arranger keyboard.
Sure, you will need lots of space if you go into midifiles or into samples, but as far as samples is concerned I am under the impression not many arranger performers dabble in this area, and if you are way into midifiles there are all sorts of solutions there. In short, it is my belief that if an arranger keyboard can harbour a few hundred styles and sounds in its internal memory, and virtually all of them can, the need for extensive storage on the keyboard itself for more styles and sounds is of very secondary importance. Like Gunnar said, and belief me this is an area in which I have acquired some expertise you can actually turn one style into a number of others that hardly bear any resemblance to the "mother"style.
I guess it all came about due to my friend's boasting of how many styles the new Roland could harbour and load and drop within a spit second..........................
regards,
john

The large style library also allows me[or you]to go through the selections and put a name of a song to the style name[rename]..This way when you scan or look at the style names ,it will give you song suggestions..It involves a little work, but can be worth while...just think , 2 or 3 thousand songs ready for you to play instantly[not SMF's]..

One more advantage the large library offers me with my Roland [G1000]...saving all the settings, the style[named as a song] and right hand sounds,controls, tempo etc.
The G1000 loads 192 performances ,with quick loads of additional groups of 192[a few seconds to load a new group]..

[This message has been edited by Fran Carango (edited 03-15-2005).]

The "huge" storage capacities we see are additional for some kb models and
became standard on some or most of the top models.
As we see that we can store lyrics, scores, mp3 etc. to use when play, this
is important. More soundsamples and use of the sequencer increase the need
of more storage I guess.
Also the prices for HD's and other storage mediums are as low that this did
not increase the price of the keybard very much as we could see earlier on.

Myself I really love to have all needed stuff onboard without have a load of
diskettes floating around, and hopefully the next thing they make huge is a
screen like we have on the laptops, 17" or 19" colour widescreen to fold up
when use the keyboard.

GJ

I sincerely belive the main advantage of acquiring large numbers of high-quality styles is it provides your audiences with diversity. Granted, there seems to be a number of styles that get lots of use, the same as there are a small number of voices that are used more than others. However, after a while I find this has the tendency to make many performances sound repetitive.

Consequently, this was inspiration to create the first gig disk, which for me was the best way to organize hundreds of style files, many of which had the same names. And, when the PSR-3000 became available, those disks, along with others, were transferred to the USB thumb drive. Sure, this all takes a fair amount of work, but it's worth ever minute you spend. By renaming those style files, Big-Band-Fast, Slow Rock, etc, to song titles, and having the ability to select them instantly, you can create your own library of songs, one that can be accessed on the fly. The styles can be linked directly to registrations, all of which can be stored on the thumb drive or smart media card. What a wonderful tool for OMB entertainers.

While the new arranger keyboards offer huge numbers of excellent styles and voices, there are some that many of us will likely never, or at least rarely, ever use. Many of the techno beats and similar genre styles are not suitable for my audiences. However, I'm confident that for some performers, those same styles will be useful.

I'll continue to search through the myriad of style files, play every one of them, evaluate their quality, and more than likely continue to discover one in a hundred that has sufficient quality to be used during my performances. If I only found a dozen new styles each year, that's OK, becuase that translates into a dozen good songs. That's what keeps those creative juices flowing. Kinda' like Uncle Dave when he discovers a new keyboard--only I didn't spend as much money.

BTW: Just a foot-note about the gig disks. At last count, there were in excess of 125,000 downloads since the first one was posted a little over 2 years ago.

Cheers,

Gary

[This message has been edited by travlin'easy (edited 03-15-2005).]