Mike,

There ain't one at Ebay, I found one at a German flohmarkt The price is EUR 4500 ($5000), yes that is second hand. What bothers me is that nothing is mentioned about the ability to install soundcards. Mayby Cosel can tell us if that is possible.

Cassp,

What where these guys thinking when they designed an F thru F keyboard! When you are used to playing inverted chords in one octave you could use a 3 octave keyboard for both chords and melody. But with the Prodikeys you should either teach yourself to play all your chords in a different way or have less (not enough) keys to play melody. The software that comes with it uses function keys for chords. I actually built in that feature in OMB to be compatible with the Prodikeys. But then also made it possible to use the other PC keys for melody so you don't really need a Prodikeys anymore. Lately I made some adjustments in OMB for accordion players. Maybe it would be able to design a small accordion like instrument where you play melody on keys on one side and chords with buttons on the other side.

Jos

[This message has been edited by Jos Maas (edited 09-06-2003).]

jos u r right, at that price we have to go a different route,mike

Hi Jos,
sorry , I meant recording the styles into the kn sequencer, then converting them & saving to midifile would take at least 5 to 15 minutes per style. Then you'd still have to convert them via OMB ( not sure how long that would take) If you're looking at a couple of hundred styles, that's a lot of time spent. I tend to think most of the converted styles for psr's ,would have been converted via the EMC software program, which only takes a couple of minutes to do. The hard part is then tweaking them to make them sound good.
I have to admit I haven't had a chance to try midifile to style with your omb program as yet.
I'm still don't think it will convert accurately, because these a's d's b's are actually "tensions" used within the style by the kn7. Actually having these notes automatically transposed to cegb may not give the correct result ie the midi file part recorded in the c chord already contains the notes ceg as well as a's d's b's.

When I get a chance, I'll give one a try & let you know how I go.

Intro's & endings I don't think would be a problem.

Having fooled round with style creating on at least 4 different brands of keyboards over the years( roland korg technics yamaha ) the one thing I did discover is that they all handle the styles differently. Each machine has it's own unique requirements.

best wishes
Rikki

best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Jos Maas:

Rikki,

It is true that you need the keyboard to produce the midifiles (you said that you own a kn7). But it surely wouldn't take ages to convert the midifiles into styles. You didn't use this feature in OMB yet. If you paste a part of a midifile into a style part using the "Chord" option, then OMB will automatically transpose the notes to cegb. In intro's and ending you would use the "Melody" option. The melody option is tricky when used with normal midifiles because you need to specify the key it is played in. But that is no problem with midifiles that you made yourself for style conversion. Just record all the intro/endings in C and the rest in Cmaj7. It will never sound off. Do the turorial http://www.1manband.nl/convert.htm

Hi Starkeeper,
I hope you guys are right. I think it would be great to have a p.c. arranger.

Big problem is, who's going to write the styles. Third party styles for our keyboards appear to be pretty scarce as is , and the ones that I have come across for sale are pretty expensive. You can't have converted styles as your source of styles for your p.c arranger. I think the manufacturers a tending to turn a blind eye as far as style conversions go when it's done by music enthusiasts, but I tend to think they'd go after a software company that was trying to do the same thing.

One thing that I have noticed is the lack of new styles around for sale. Back in the 90's before the net was so popular, I could pick up a new style disk for my kn every month or two. Haven't seen a new one yet for a kn7.
Maybe the money's not in it for the professionals to make it worth their while creating them, or maybe they worry about us sharing styles which we rightfully should be paying for. Lets face it, computer software, styles etc are pretty much open to exploitation.

best wishes
Rikki
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Starkeeper:
[B]Ricci,
I don't think the keyboard manufacturers have a choice. If one of them does it, the rest will follow, and they lose.
If they don't and, as Jos mentioned, the Dell, IBM, Compact, etc. do it then they have to follow suit, and they lose.
If neither do it, then we'll do it ourselves, and they lose.

Rikki,

15 minutes for the whole conversion process for each style would be my estimate. Doing hundreds of styles would still be very time consuming and boring. But you can select the 40 or 50 that you really like and do a few whenever you have some spare time. You do loose a little of the character of the original arranger. E.g. BIAB claims that, because it can predict the chords and variations that are coming (it's non-real-time), it adjusts the accompaniment to that. But to me it sounds just as fine as I play it in real time with OMB. That's because the styles aren't designed for a particular synth but are full GM compatible. They have just a few basic instruments, mainly drums, bass piano. The biggest problem with style conversions is that you mostly don't have the original synth they where designed for. And the more sophisticated that synth is the worse it will sound on a not compatible synth. Styles from old GM keyboards often sound best after conversion.

About the inavailabillity of good and affordable commercial styles. A lot of the commercial styles are not designed for a particular synth but are plain vanilla GM styles. That way they can be converted and sold for any arranger. Making styles for a particular synth would mean a smaller market an therefor higher prices. Keyboard manufacturers aren't that interested in selling styles as software. Selling styles and new sounds in the form of a new arranger keyboard is in fact a very extreme but succesfull way to protect their software from illegal use.

So where are the styles going to come from? First of all everybody could make some themselves. You don't need to start from scratch. Take an extisting style or midifile and add some personal magic. It doesn't take a skilled musician to make styles. You just need an ear for it. And if you can't hear if a change you made is better or worse, then you shouldn't be playing keyboard anyway. Secondly they may come from one-man-companies in stead of big companies. You don't need big companies to produce styles, but at the moment you would need them to reach the public. It would just take time before the public realised that if they need new software and styles they should't go to the music-store but surf the net. The main reason that they don't do that at the moment is the general opinion that the shareware and freeware that you can download is crap (it often is). Anyway I intend to produce some commercial styles for XG keyboards this winter. Others are already doing so and I'm sure there will eventually be some among it that can compete with the built in styles. Mainly because I find these built in styles high quality but very middle-of-the-road. There should be place for styles that are targeted at different musical tastes.

Jos

Style conversion is possible, and you can get pretty good to excellent results. In many cases it just takes a good bit of tweaking. With programs like Joe's OMB or the freeware conversion software made by Michael P Bedesem, the actual conversion has become relatively easy to do and can be done in a matter of minutes. It's how you tweak them and the making the effort to optimize the conversions for your particular board / module that makes all the difference. This does take some time to do, but if the style is worth the trouble of converting, I think for me that the conversion is very incomplete if I don't spend the time needed to make it sound better. This is never an exact science either. One needs to find the right patches ( panel voices ), eq settings, dsp / effects, panning, vol levels ..etc.

Some of the styles I converted for the 2000 from my PA80 sound pretty good. There are some voices and parameters that are hard to dupicte exactly, and sometimes drum parts have to be remapped, but all in all conversion is possible. The PSR to PA80 conversions seemed to work out better, as the PA80 itself is has very good editing / capabilites and allows for adjustment of a lot of parameters. It has many useful patches ( voices ) to boot. Of course If I made XG voice based styles I could use XG edit to tweak further for the 2k..

There are other ways to make style too. The PA80's style sequencer is user friendly enough that I do a lot of work in it when I want to add some parts that I play in real time to a style. Otherwise, for me often it's Sonar to record or slice up pieces of midi files, or use the R&C chords guitar program or slicy drummer, then add some of my own playing. Or I might make some sophisticated drum patterns in jammer pro.. There are enough programs to assist.. The key is having the time ( and / or be willing to spend the time ) to make styles that sound good. Sometinmes, it's easier if I'm writing a tune to just do most of it in real time, but I have made a few song specific styles for tunes that I want to play live on an arranger ( particularly a couple of my originals ).

AJ

[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 09-07-2003).]

Jos, do you know if "LiveSynth Pro" can do this?
(I cannot seem to find any information if it
does). Thanks for any help.



[This message has been edited by Vquestor (edited 09-07-2003).]

royandreno & Jos,

It was not Wersi ! It was not a US mfr either. But I remember there was a thread here about it since I was the one who brought it up. I just could not locate it. BUT, it did not have the assignable buttons that Jos was talking about. The concept in my head that I was thinking I believe matches Jos'.

That particular keyboard had the keybed and the computer (probably a laptop) built in that can be closed like a notebook computer. I am quite certain that it was discussed here.

Vquestor,

I have no knowledge about LiveSynth Pro, but if it hasn't any info in the documentation about this then it probably won't do the trick.

Lukitoh,

It it had a built in laptop then you wouldn't be able to install the soundcard of your choice. That's not good enough.

Jos