I have ordered my new keyboard and it should arrive by Thursday this week!

is there anywhere i can go to download all the G70 / E80 styles?

do i need to purchase any 3rd party conversion software to make them work in the GW-8?

I cant wait for this new machine to arrive.
having the style backing functionality should compliment my motif XS very nicely

Nick

Thanks Fran for emailing me the G70 styles!
much appreciated - you got mail!

Nick

Do you want the E80 ones as well?

You need to format your USB stick on the Gw8. This will establish the folders needed.

On your PC transfer the styles to the Styles folder on the thumb drive. It is the ONLY way for the styles to get loaded to the user bank.

Bear in mind the GW8 will only load up to the max of the user bank, so if you copy across 200 styles for example, it will only load the first 128 ( I think its 128, it might be 100, I cannot remember).

The style conversion program from Roland is ONLY for converting MIDI files into a style.

To convert other brands you will still need something like EMC or similar.

Dennis

thanks Dennis,

are the G70 styles the same as the E80?

will the GW-8 load and play G70/E80 styles straight up without any conversion needed???

G70 and E80 styles are often similar, but tweaked for their respective soundsets, but the E80 DOES have some extra ones (and there were more released for OS2). Personally, given a choice, I might go with the E80's styles, given that its' soundset is newer than the G70's, and I think it has ALL the G70's styles as well as its' own (as well as an Insert FX for a style Part)

The new OS allows you to edit your styles in the GW-8 itself. From past experience, you can expect a fair percentage of G70/E80 styles to work fairly well without tweaking much, but some will take a bit of work.

They should at least load and play without any further work, but sounds vary a fair bit (and there is an insert MFX section to add to a style part, which isn't on the G70, and may not translate from the E80 without knowing which Part it is applied to, and what FX it is).

You also have fewer fills (four to the G/E's six) but they appear to map OK. Overall, you should expect to do at least SOME work to get them to sound their best, as different from the E's soundset as the GW is. But probably no more than any other arranger. Try getting a T2 style to work in an S900 without at least SOME work!

I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

When you get your GW-8, make sure it has the latest OS and styles. You can't edit the styles until you do...

[This message has been edited by Diki (edited 09-13-2009).]

The E80 has a lot of the G70 styles, but (and again from memory) there are about 80 that are only on the E80.

Some styles load up and play fine , and in fact sound better than on the G70. But many do not. I found the instrument tracks to be mostly okay, needed patch adjusting sometimes, but for the most part okay.

It's the drums that create the problems. There are not the same kits on the Gw8 (or the G70 for that matter) that are on the E80. OR they are the same but Roland haev them re-mapped slightly..When you get yours and load up some styles you will understand.

The other annoying thing is there is no way you can set a "startup" performance. It is hard-wired to load up the first factory performance everytime you switch it on, which is ,,,,,"Hungarian 8 Beat" I think?

I did send an email to Roland US techs about this but got no response about setting a user default performance.

This CAN be done on the G70 and E80.

Dennis

Not the hardest thing in the world to create your own default startup Performance, and select it manually, though...

The drum problems can at least now be addressed by the Style Editor in GW-8 OS2. It just takes selecting one MIDI note in the drum Part and transposing it to where it needs to go. Not by any means as easy to do as the E/G drum Makeup Tools, but at least it IS doable (and STILL a lot easier to do than most sub-$1000 arranger)...

I have probably missed this or perhaps it doesnt exist, but can u still mute style parts on the fly like other arrangers?

does it have multi pads / arpeggios?

Nick

ahh - how about "read the manual Nick" i just found out for myself

never mind me!