I don't know about you, but one of the things that drives me crazy on arrangers is listening to the chord parts jump around like jackrabbits, rather than use smooth voice leading...

I know you can usually program a part to not exceed a certain range, but that doesn't really fix it. While it is necessary for the bass to jump around to the 'one' in a chord progression, why do many of our style chord parts have to do the same thing? Wouldn't it be simpler to take the voice leading that we actually play to be how the chords move? In other words, lets say you play a C chord from bottom to top CEG. Now let's play an F... CFA. But that's not what the ACC voices are going to play... If the style was programmed with CEG, that's what the part will jump to (FAC), unless it exceeds the preprogrammed range. And hence the 'jackrabbit' chord changes.

Surely some king of chord recognition system could be figured out that, when it sees a first or second inversion chord, it could get the ACC part to play in that too? Sort of like having the Bass inversion ON, but ONLY for the chords (or even just certain parts), while the Bass still plays roots...

One of the things I particularly like about Roland's Guitar Mode is that, depending on where up and down you play in the chord recognition zone, the inversion of the guitar chord (it's voicing on the neck of the guitar) will go up and down too. In fact this is so good, it drives me crazy that it isn't integrated into the style mode, and can only be played live!

Surely something similar could be programmed into the NTT's of ACC parts?

Good voice leading and change of part range is something that is the mark of a REAL player. Personally, I would give up considerable realism in the SOUND of something for more realism in the way that it PLAYS. After all, an ultra realistic sound, playing a part that no human would ever actually play is no way to create realism, IMO....

What do you think? Should we be asking for this from the manufacturers? And does any current arranger already do this?

WOW great post Diki...!!!!!

Does any current arranger already do this?
YES!! Yamaha and Korg both have a few pages in their style creation sections devoted to Note Transposition Rules and behavior. See pages 46-48 of the Tyros 3 reference manual. Similar functionality is described on page 119 of the manual for the Korg PA2X. This was enhanced from the PA1X generation, and is roughly equal to Yamaha IMO.

One of the things that makes the T3 special (and its styles incompatible with the T2 and lesser models) is the edition of the "Guitar" type of NTT. For these tracks, it is supposed to emulate the chord voicing as it would be played on a guitar, rather than a keyboard.

Beginning with G70 V3 and the E-50/60/80, Roland arrangers are supposed to have "Adaptive Chord Voicing" (ACV). This is the "Alteration" parameter described on p222 of the E-80 manual. As with the others, Roland allows you to establish the wrap range for each instrument and track, but really as you said, this is not as sophisticated and results in the odd non-standard voicing once in a while.

Also please look at the RETRIGGER (RTR) parameters on p48 of the T3 Ref Manual, and p137 of the Korg PA2X manual. Roland's arrangers (going as far back as the G-800) seem to lack any user-selectable parameters to determine whether a sound should be retriggered, if a chord is released and applied again within the same measure. I posted about this on the Roland forum a while back, under a thread titled "Improvements to Style Composer." Others there misunderstood or ignored my question. Compare this to page 33 of the manual for the Ketron SD5, which offers the greatest flexibility for retrigger, IMO. Please use your insight/ influence to get a retrigger parameter added to the next generation of Roland arrangers, if there is one, LOL!

I have a Roland E-50 and like the features for live play, but when it comes to style creation, Korg and Yamaha are way ahead in this area.
My $.02,
Ted

[This message has been edited by TedS (edited 08-22-2009).]

Hey Ted, stop hiding behind those tumbleweeds out there in Texas and give us some more posts - that was great! You gave us very good insight and information. Thanks much.

As does the Wersi OAA (Open Art Arranger) which is selectable for each Track,Part and chord selection.

I've tried using the ACV on Roland's, but it seems more to me that it is designed for single lines, rather than full chords, but maybe I'm doing something wrong.

I have a workaround for when I'm preparing a style-derived SMF that seems to work OK. I play the backing tracks TWICE... once with BASS INV (onBass) off, and once with it ON (but I play the chords with the voice leading I want, and ignore the bass line being incorrect). I then import BOTH SMF's to Cubase, and select which part I want to play, and combine something out of both. So I can have correct roots in the bass, and still get inversions and voice leading out of the ACC parts.

With the utter silence from Roland for the last few years, I'm not sure that begging for this ability would help much. I am certainly envious of those that have it on their arrangers. I just wonder... do many of you try to take advantage of it?

Hi Diki,
I beleive my PA800 has.

It has 2 types NTT's

Parallel & fixed.
Parallel I use basically for phrases that need to be played back as is, but transposed according to whatever chord is played ie piano arpeggio's, stuff like that.

Fixed I use for chords where it doesn't matter what inversion gets played back.
ie if a C maj is played c3 e3 g3, then
f maj is played it will play back as
c3, f3, a3.
It makes it a lot smoother when played back in style play mode.

I quite often mess around with the wrap around. Nothing sounds worse than all the style parts dropping on the same chord.
Fixed NTT isn't affected by wrap setting.

best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Diki:
[B]I don't know about you, but one of the things that drives me crazy on arrangers is listening to the chord parts jump around like jackrabbits, rather than use smooth voice leading...

I've always been able to program most arrangers to play the chord the way I spell it. Voice leading and voicing in general has always been very important to me. It's been so long ago I don't remember what I did on the T1, but it responds just like I like it. The Rolands I used in the past did it automatically. But the Yammies are easy to program. Also, you can control it by the way you play. When you play the left hand in octaves, it automatically goes to whatever bass note you are holding in octaves. Once again, the keyboard will pretty much do whatever you tell it to do.

Joe

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Songman55
Joe Ayala