Lucky, I'm not sure what you mean by a button that 'enhances' the style. I am thinking that this possibly is the Basic and Advanced buttons on the older arrangers. Correct? You STILL haven't simply told us what MODEL of older Roland you have, this would help.

But if it IS that Basic/Advanced button, all that was was Roland's older way of triggering different Variations. In truth, even back then Roland had a four Variation system (but only the two fills). They were Original, Original Advanced, Variation and Variation Advanced. Back in those days, Roland had basically a 'Verse' 'Chorus' kind of structure, with the 'Advanced' button playing a pattern that was basically similar to its' Original/Variation source, with simply more Parts added.

These kind of styles come in perfectly to newer Roland's, as they have four Variations (now Roland simply use Var1-4 as the names, but tend to structure them as a more steady progression in intensity, so 1 & 2 are more different than Basic and Advanced used to be). The two fills from the legacy styles are mapped into the SIX fill slots in the new style structure, and basically ( ) the style plays pretty much the way you hear it now.

I certainly have NEVER found an old Roland style that didn't play in my G70...

But yes, you MIGHT want to wait until after the Sept 1st to make any decision (doesn't look like you are in any kind of hurry, anyway!), but my bet is no new TOTL or MOTL arrangers (I'm afraid I put GW-8 and Prelude at the BOTL ).

BTW, it's interesting to hear Elvis, the Beatles and the Beach Boys labeled as 'not dated'! How easy it is to forget that that music was from 40-50 years ago Time flies when we are enjoying ourselves, eh?

Hi Lucky,
yes, roughly round about the time EMC first came out. I had it for KN2000,Korg i2, & Roland E86.
Keyboard junkie from way back.

Earlier styles appear to convert better than the newer ones, they were less complex.
ie I find it easier to convert my 3 year old psr1500 styles than the new T3 styles.
No megavoices to contend with. Also I don't use EMC for converting Yamaha styles, I convert from a midifile of the style.

I don't really use it that much anymore.
It's sort of a security blanket for me, knowing if I sell a keyboard & go to another brand, I still have access to any old styles , should I need them.

The styles I converted will play back in this order
vari 1 original Basic
vari 2 original Advanced ( enhanced)
vari 3 variation basic
vari 4 variation Advanced (enhanced)

Fills I programmed
f1 orig to orig advanced
f2 orig adv. to vari basic
break varibasic to vari advanced.

Fills can also be programmed so that when you hit fill 1, it automatically goes to vari2. Hit fill 2, goes to vari 3, hit break goes to vari 4.
Both intro's & endings are there including the minor versions.
There is also a 3rd intro & ending that could be programmed ie a count in for intro 3 & maybe a shortened 1 bar ending for ending 3.

Before selling any of my old keyboards, apart from saving the styles, I used to also record a midifile of the style just in case emc didn't convert it properly.
Only the ones I thought I may use again one day.

Basically used to record it as
C maj chord
Intro 1 to vari 1 to fill to vari 2 to fill to vari 3 to fill to vari 4 to end 1.

Next Intro2 to End 2

Next C minor chord for each of the intro's & endings.

Kept this stuff for years on floppy disks.
Didn't realize that they become corrupted even if they're not used. Lost the lot including a lot of my old keyboard styles.
One ray of sunshine though, I was going thru some of my old stuff yesterday & found the hexdecimal codes for converting my old Technic Piano styles back into KN5000 styles. My piano styles I'd saved to cd rom. In technic piano format EMC couldn't convert them, now I have access to dozens of my old Technics styles that I thought I'd lost forever. A lot of Bigband & Ballroom styles.
Be interesting to see if they convert as easily as the Roland, my KN7000 styles didn't.

Since you own both keyboards, converting the Roland style to Korg , from midifile, is an option, it's more work, I find it far more accurate, one has to do their own drum remapping IF required ( I convert my psr styles this way) & EMC isn't used.

Send me the styles you're reffering to & I'll try converting them. Hopefully they'll work as easily as the other 2.
If not, maybe we'll give the midifile option a go, but I'll have to explain the best way of recording it for the korg to turn it into a style.

best wishes
Rikki

You know, rikki, that's a GREAT idea for ANYONE migrating across manufacturers... or even giving up on arrangers and going to sequencers and SMF's (this would at least give a great database of good drum grooves and guitar playing).

Tell you what else would be real handy alongside it... make an audio recording of the sequence, too. You never know, a few years from now, if you are going to be able to remember exactly what the style sounded like, what the drum sounds were, etc.. But if you had a nice mp3 with the sequence, it would make conversion a snap...

OMG,
Rikki, Diki,
I wish I would have thought of both of those before I sold my T2. Thanks for the idea. I guess one could beg, borrow, buy, steel a ?? keyboard of your past for long enough to go back and do it??

Or ask a friend to help out that has one still.

Like Rikki said, only the stuff you really like and may want to convert or re-create.

Lee S.

Hi Diki,
main reason I started doing it, was because I knew how often EMC used to get things wrong , especially the drum tracks. I actually had the 3 boards I mentioned at the same time, so I was able to do comparisons of the conversions. You can't really blame the software when the styles I was converting were using non gm drums, & the destination instrument didn't have the same drum type available. EMC picked sopmething bland to replace it ( ie a hihat tap), & the rhythm no longer sounded quite the same.
I've always kept copies of the instrument & especially the drum maps.
Anyway I recorded the midifiles, I did actually do some audio recordings, must have been to cassete tape & eventually I had a tiny digital tape recorder, but mainly I recorded drum tracks, (drums have always been a hassle for me, trying to get the balance right between hihats, bass drum etc)

Only thing I wasn't smart enough to do , was find a better storage solution when I gave the music up back in 1999-.
Over the 3 years in storage, the floppy disks corrupted, the Atari & harddrive died.

Fortunately I got back most of my Roland styles when I bought a VA7 back in early 2000.

My Technics styles fared slightly better,
I had replaced my KN5 with a Technics piano,
converted all my styles across to the piano
( which EMC doesn't read ), so I had complete backups in piano format.

It's a pity your idea of mp3 recordings of styles, didn't take off, when you suggested it a couple of years ago.
Would have been of great help to style "Convertors".

I don't have the mp3 option in my PA800,
( I did consider buying it with the prize money I received from the Korg forum styles competition) I've never really gotten into recording though, except for the couple of Ejam tunes & they were done in PT12 with a lot of hassles. haahaa

best wishes
Rikki

Well, I'm still up for it if anyone is interested.

Basically, the idea is to take a short mp3 recording of your ROM styles' Divisions, and post it to a database somewhere. Doesn't need to be a fancy recording, a relatively low bitrate mp3 (128-160kbps) would suffice. But having an audio recording of the original would go a LONG way towards making drumkit, bass and other sound decisions a LOT easier.

Of course, EMC does little else but make a 'best guess' when doing conversions, and as arrangers get more complex, Mega voices, guitar modes, non-standard drumkits, etc., it is going to get harder and harder to know EXACTLY what the conversion is supposed top sound like unless, as Rikki was, you are lucky enough to have all the arrangers at your fingertips. Few of us are...

This would be the answer, IMO.

It would take a little time to put together, but each style division only need be two to four bars long. Even if the style is longer, you are primarily going for the sounds and sound balance, and that is usually apparent right from the start. Add the endings and Intros, you are done...

Especially as many arrangers have mp3/.wav recording built in, this might not be as difficult a task as you might think. And if more than one person with the same arranger were interested, the task could be divided...

I still hope that one day we can get this off the ground. With these economic times, it makes sense to consider conversions rather than a new arranger every three years or so...

Hi Lee,
for psr styles you don't need to record the midifiles. Just change the style's extension to .mid. Instant midifile with
MARKERS that can easily be altered to suit the Korg. Plus the psr style variations/fills are normally recorded in maj7th chords, perfect for the Korg iseries ntt setting. This way you can get away with recording only the 1 cv for each of the variations & fills.
The intro's & endings, some are done in Maj & Min versions, some are done based on maj7th chord.

When you basically play back a psr style as a midifile, when you get to the intro's & endings, on certain sections you'll hear a jumbled mess. Reason is the maj & min intro/endings are stacked on top of each other, so you hear both playing at the same time. If this happens, mute tracks 1 to 8 & you'll most likely hear the major I/E.
Mute tracks 9, 12,13,14,15, 16. You'll hear the minor version. When I convert one of these midifiles to a korg style, I basically tack any minor I/E on to the end of the midifile & delete bits accordingly.

The mp3 recordings that Diki suggested are a great idea. Really helps to know what the style is supposed to sound like.

best wishes
Rikki

Hi Diki,
I've been looking for a good excuse to get the mp3 option for my pa800.
I'll do a bit of checking.
I'm hopeless at doing it via pc, it's something that's never really interested me.
best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Diki:
[B] Well, I'm still up for it if anyone is interested.

Basically, the idea is to take a short mp3 recording of your ROM styles'

I'm thinking of using my Zoom... it has an option to automatically stop and start recording when it hears a gap, so all I have to do is call up the style, hit Intro 4 (I think I'm just going to record Intro 4 and Ending 4, the complex ones, they pretty much usually have the same sounds as 1,2 &3), and press start. then I play each of the Var's, (auto fill on), Ending 4, and wait for it to end, the Zoom will stop recording and re-arm, call up the next style, rinse and repeat...

It ought to be a cool rainy day project (or rainy week!)

I did that one many of my machines, including
workstations, recordging the Aregios in Midi
and MP3, as Diki said, each style all elements.
I usually do it in my DAW and then keep an archive
of all of them, its really easy for conversion.