Yamaha called me today at work.. Too bad I was out to lunch at the time, but the guy was generous enough to leave a message with the answer to my question.... Ok folks here it is.. You CAN hook up a drum machine to the PSR's, and there are two ways to do it.. You can either have the keyboard set as the "master" or the drum machine as the "master". The tech said if you want the keyboard to trigger the drum machine that you really don't have to do anything to the keyboard.. Just set the drum machine's midi sync to external (ext). This way you can control the drum machine from the keyboard. If you want the drum machine to control the keyboard you set the midi on the drum machine to Internal (int), and go under the the midi settings on the PSR and set the "Clock" to External (ext). This way you can control the start and stop of the keyboard from the drum machine.. This way works nice if your drum machine has a jack for a footswitch. He didn't say anything about whether or not you can bypass the internal styles on the keyboard to just hear the drums... I'm not going to bother asking him this because I've already figured it out.. When you sync to the drum machine the keyboards styles will play in sync with the drum machine.. This isn't bad though because there are a few ways around this.. You can turn the accomp volume all the way down and you'll only hear the drum machine. This way works well if you like to split the keyboard, and play manual bass on your left and piano on your right.... If you want to record styles and songs and use the drum machine you can still do this.. All you do is program your patterns on the drum machine... then record the styles without the drums.. The drum machine should play along with you while you record. This works for both songs and styles....

Interesting. I did not get about creating styles using external drum machine.
Let's say if you're going from 1 var to another... how the drum machine will react? Or doing fill-ins?
Or I guess everything should laid out in advance for the whole song?

OR - you create a style using everything on arranger and configure the drum amchine so it'll play the drum patterns off arranger and using it's internal module?

NewYorker,
With the drum machine you don't switch between variations like on an arranger.. The drum machine calls it song mode, and what you're really doing is chaining your patterns you create.... You can have fills and quite a few different variations.. All drum machines differ in the amount of user patterns you can have, but most are 50+ With the drum machine you have to map out the drum track entirely by chaining the patterns until you've completed the drum track itself.. I'm sure you can still use the fill buttons on the arranger in sync with the drum machine.. Keep in mind that when you're using the drum machine, you're not using any space on your keyboard for your percussion tracks. The drum machine is just programed to play along with your keyboard. Just be sure to either (mute) or turn the volume completely down on tracks 9 and 10 of the PSR.. Hope this made sense...

OK. How synchronization works in this case? Thru midi?

yup it's through midi... You just need a midi cable.

almost forgot....., If your keyboard doesn't have an input jack you'll need a set of speakers for the drum machine.. However I noticed a lot of people here already use outboard speakers with their arrangers, and most amps have more than one input/channel... I have a nice set of Roland Micro Monitors that have several inputs so I can run my keyboard and drum machine through the same set of speakers... Anyone out there use the Roland Micro Monitors? Man they're nice little speakers.. They push SOOOO much air too.. You have to hear them... They have two types of inputs.. One is RCA, and the other is 1/8" jack (of course you can use a converter to make a 1/4" plug fit) There is a separate mic input jack on the front with its own volume control, and there are separate controls for bass and treble. Each monitor has a driver, tweeter and port... Makes a nice set for home use (especially if you do computer applications)

[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 09-03-2002).]