One Man Band is a software arranger (real-time and sequenced) and style editor utilising Yamaha styles. It has been rebuilt from scratch and is now available both for Macintosh and Windows. Because it is completely different from the popular previous version, both versions will stay available. The new version is One Man Band Essentials (Windows and Macintosh), the old version is One Man Band Originals (Windows only) and also has a new update 10.2 with some bugfixes.

More info and demos at http://www.1manband.nl/index.htm

Jos Maas

Cool... finally Mac guys can play too...

Has anyone had any success playing Mega-voiced styles into a Yamaha module (I imagine a MotifRack would do) via MIDI using OMB?

Motif rack WON'T do, unless you are using it in GM mode (yes there is a control to do this). And if you are doing that, you would be better off using another GM sound module as the Yamaha does not have the best GM set available, imo.

You can create a Cakewalk INS file for the rack presets (if you want one I probably still have one somewhere) to load into OMB, but my experience with it and the rack was not acceptable for live performance.

Chord timing glitches being the main trouble, even on latency of 6ms. And to be fair, this is more the fault of the "bloated" Yamaha styles and not OMB, but it made the use of some of the more modern styles, lets say later than the PSR 1500, mostly unusable.Unless the user did some serious tweaking, which of course took away most of the character of the style you wanted to use.

You also need to tweak velocities on the style itself as some are too strong, triggering unwanted ambience sounds with some patches. (talking preset patches, not GM). Again not the fault of OMB, but yamaha styles.

Bottom line, you CAN get the rack to work with OMB (or Live Styler for that matter) but O.O.T.B??? Apart from GM mode, Nope!

To be honest, it IS great if you want minimalist style action (which is what you have left after editing)behind live playing. For those of us who sing and are not just instrumentalists, this is probably a good thing.

Perhaps this latest version may be better. I will certainly be checking it out.

Primarily, I'm interested in getting the Mega-Voiced guitar patterns out of something that will integrate with my G70.

You're telling me this can't be done, despite the OMB's claim to be able to play Tyros styles (which mostly have Mega guitars in them)...?

Its a synergy between the style and the sampled sounds with Yamaha Diki, you would understand that. Unless you are using actual mega voice patches, well then no, OMB will not magically do that for you. Of course I am no expert and I am only passing on my experience, so perhaps "power" users can advise you better.

I used it with both the ES and XS racks and when I used the presets on both modules I got it to sound reasonable, but as a "whole" the styles generated from OMB and played via the racks were nothing like the same styles played on and actual Tyros 2 for example.

And anything newer that psr 1500 (well maybe 2100) was too glitchy for me, left unedited that is. I found when I stripped out a lot of the controller info, and reduced some instruments I got to where the results could be called acceptable for live use.

And in my view, way too awkward to use in real terms..

But I have to admit Jos has done a great job with the new interface and it looks MUCH easier and intuitive.

As I said perhaps the new version has some new bells and whistles..I have already asked Jos about a purchase. I DO like having fiddly bits around

So a Mega Voice guitar patch on a MoRack is completely different in note layout to the same patch in a Tyros...?

That's insane! Are Yamaha deliberately trying to balkanize the lines, or just stupid?

Has anyone written a translation program, to convert between the different Mega Voice layouts? You would think that might come in handy...

No sorry, I didn't say that, exactly.... But I can see how this line ..."Unless you are using actual mega voice patches..." could be perhaps a little confusing, I should have added ..."on the ES/XS".

To clarify further..the racks (ES/XS) have the mega voices but they are patched in a different way, (not nomenclature but in 0,32 terms), to how they are in the Yamaha styles, so a re-mapping is needed within the style.

Oh and the other thing is don't expect the full range of mega-voice guitars on the racks. There really isn't too many at all.

The presets have superb guitars, which in my view are better, but again you do need to do some re-mapping work within the styles you are using with OMB. It might have been me, but these preset guitars on the racks also seemed to have slightly different velocity trigger levels, so I also had to edit note velocities within the chosen Yamaha style if I wanted to use preset guitars.

In the end I just resigned myself to using non-mega guitars and basses as I really did not have the time, at that time, to spend on it. I was playing in a duo, a band, and some solo work, PLUS I had a part time "day-job" too, so I was a little busy.

Dennis

It's the chokes and rakes and everything else in a Mega-voiced guitar patch that float my boat... without them, they don't really get my juices flowing any more than my G70 ones do... and of course, they are not meant for live playing, but for style use primarily.

So, to get Mega voice guitars into the Rack, you only have to change the address of the patch? That's hardly onerous, is it? Or is that a considerably more difficult task than the Makeup Tools make it on a Roland..?

First off, NOTHING is easier than the set of tools Roland provides, so no this is not as easy.

It really isn't that difficult, sorry if it came across that way, but it is a bit time-consuming. You do need to create a patch map the OMB can use to access the mega sounds in the racks. Then the style parts applicable need to be edited to use this map, and of course because only one map can be in use within a particular style (and indeed the overall operation of OMB) you also need to ensure the map also contains all the correct data for the other instruments the style uses.

Now this presents another set of problems because the patch map needs the cc 0/32 data to point correctly to the preset bank that contains the mega voices.

BUT this cc0/32 data is then incorrect to address the "normal" sounds required like strings or bass or brass or whatever, which is based around the Yamaha maps used on the PSR/Tyros keyboards.

I cannot remember enough about the Tyros/PSR 0/32 data to give you an example, but it IS different to that required to address the Mega voice bank on the racks.

Essentially you need to incorporate a few different patch maps to get say, one part, of the style to use a mega voice.

You COULD load up an INS file for your Roland banks and access the guitars in it, along with the drums and other ROland patches. Essentially running the Yamah style, but using the Roalnd sounds.

BUT, (alwasy a but ) this then presents the problem of the Yamaha style "bloat" which noticeably makes the style lag, mostly between fills and changes of variations. In fact when using some of the later styles this is even to the point where the entire style hangs for maybe 150-200ms.

Some of which, as I recall are pretty good with differing velocity layer ambience effects???

So as I said its not particularly difficult but it is awkward..to the point of not really being worth the effort for one sound. Well, for me anyway.

FWIW, I am about to get a new laptop, and I am going to give the new version a whirl, so if you can wait, and IF you are interested I can give you my views on how it works.

just to add to my last...this wont be with mega voices as I do not have the racks anymore.

What I am going to try is accessing the superb guitar and bass VST's I have on the MS. This I suspect will be easier as the VST's (as you would know) are mostly one bank of presets 0-127 which matches both the 0/32 and patch number data of the GM sound spec.

Hi Diki,
I don't think there's a perfect soundsource for playing the Yamaha megavoice styles. Whatever sound source you use , the styles are going to require a certain amount of editing.
Also you may want to check into the drums.

I still use OMB software as an editor for for my style conversions across to korg format. Means I don't have to do my conversions using EMC.
I'm not very knowledgable as far as sounds go, but it was recently pointed out tto me the RX sounds in my PA800 use velocity switching. So it will be interesting to try & work out how they compare to to the megavoices. The RX sounds also have fret & other noises that can be used in a Korg guitar track. IFrom memory, and I haven't done it in a while, but I think I had to transpose some of the sounds. If the velocity switch RX sounds work are similar in the Korg, it may just mean altering the velocity of some of the notes to suit the RX sounds.
I have to dig a bit further into that before I'll be able to tell if it will work.

Ive downloaded the new demo, but haven't had a chance to try it yet.

best wishes
Rikki