yes for somebody is this workstation. But this workstation is many steps above others.

But also arranger is integrated. And how many workstations are have arranger inside. I mean typically arranger that can read what you want. Any style and you can play with it.

Yes Diki you are right that workstation and arranger in ordinary way are totally different.

But in new age they will be same market.

We both are using one keyboard for playing in the band and also for one man band or duo.

You are right that keyboard need to be prepared for playing out from box.

But some users wants to use keyboard in other way. We want freedom.

That offer systems like Lionstracs, Wersi, Openlabs, etc.

Diki is roland lover, i like roland products to, only i did not forget that roland sold G800 and roland G1000 as a workstaion with arranger option, maybe is diki forget that.

it is only what someone understands by name workstaion.

workstaion can also mean extensive editing of styles sounds and audio, which in some products is missing, so a arranger can be a workstation to like Roland G1000. an arranger is software, for example if korg like it,they can put PA serie arranger software to korg oasys, there wil be no problem, but they do not do that. maybe someday we get synths from big 3 with arranger option without styles, for me it wil be a good idea, becouse some players likes only arranger option and editing. it is not importent if a synth with a arranger option and editing comes without styles for some people.

Hi Diki.



No, the only reason why you haven't heard me doing that is because I don't own one and you know this.



Again, because I don't have an open keyboard and your suggestion is simply not practical for one man to achieve in order to have a product they can sell. To write a few hundred styles would take one man years of work.




So now all of a sudden people have to write their own styles from scratch ? Come on man, a quick search on google and you can download the factory styles from ever major keyboard.

As for making them work on the Mediastation or any OPEN keyboard, I've already covered this in detail in my posts above. It's not rocket science but it does take a certain technical ability.

Such are the efforts you must take to create your personal ultimate arranger if that is indeed what you want this open VST HOST to behave as.



Again you do not have to write your own styles.
Arranger users load styles from all sorts of different keyboards all the time.




Again with the broken record , your just trying to create the illusion that you have to make your own styles which is total nonsense. I know why your doing this too, your just trying to make things sound as complicated as possible.



Your words not mine.
I've made it very clear in all my posts who the keyboards are marketed at and that it takes a end user with a certain ability to be able to make it their ultimate arranger if that's what they want this VST HOST to be. I've also clearly said it's not for everyone. You only need to read my posts in this thread to see all this.

Your post is actually entirely pointless as it bears no connection to anything you have said previously or my reply to your previous post .



Be nice now. I've been very objective and very open about my views and who I think this keyboard is for, and what is actually possible. You haven't presented a single argument that can stand against my views becase I'm very much sitting in the middle on this all anyway.

Your problem is based exactly on what your “idea” of what an arranger should be. You want someone else to do all the work for you and to leave the opening of the box and the wow factor to you.

Good for you. So stick to your closed arrangers. There's nothing at all wrong with them and if they offer you all you need, then perfect. Just don't piss all over this thread just because you don't like the idea of having to customise something before you can use it even if that means having to buy an entire sound engine to drive the arranger.

It is what it is and exactly what an OPEN keyboard should be.



I scene hostility and a little nonsense www.live-styler.de



So you believe it's an awesome workstation / groove box, yet you can't accept it as an arranger. It boils down to everything I've been saying all along in this thread.

VSTi Synths come as complete packages, ready to go and fully of content that does not need any work at all. But there is no such thing as a VSTi Arranger that comes in such a complete state.

Content is not the problem, neither is function. The problem is there is no sound engine at all and so you have to use a second program paired with the arranger in order to produce a sound. With that also comes the fact that each style needs to be adjusted in volume and assigned sound in order to get the most form the system.

That's all. No writing your own styles or anything silly like that.

Regards
James.

PS: Chill out man. I'm not going to argue with you over a keyboard.

[This message has been edited by Irishacts (edited 01-05-2010).]

Sorry James, but having struggled for years to make translated styles sound as good as the originals, I'm afraid once again I have to disagree. You yourself probably know that the sound and the performance are inextricably linked. Change the sound, and the performance needs to be changed. Sometimes in a large manner. You know all too well that, I would have thought.

Drum sounds with multi velocity samples, cross switched instrument samples, velocity curves that don't match up, non-linear controller responses, not to mention performance switches (like Yamaha Mega Voice stuff), all of these make translating a style from one arranger to another an exercise in frustration. Yep, sure.... you can get close. But it is rare to see a translation better the original. And that's dealing with closed arrangers, who already have well balanced soundsets, and a fair degree of common tones.

Throw an open arranger into the mix, with it's hodgepdge of different sources, all with different velocity responses (until you spend weeks trying vainly to get them to match), all with different EQ responses, all with drumkits with sample switching in totally different places and totally different sounds, and it's easy to see why, so far, there's once again very little proof of your theory...

Once again, if a player is NOT already making translations that rival the TOTL ROM styles (I've heard very few that come close to the original), what use is that open arranger?

Honestly, James, I'm coming from the same place as you, I use VSTi's for lots of music, but perhaps I'm just more of a pragmatist. As good as they are, until someone actually DOES make a coherent soundset and a few hundred style (what 99% of the arranger market is looking for OOTB) for an open arranger with an OS that IS geared towards the users of closed ones, I just don't see this flying.

You have a PA2x don't you (or is it a PA1X)? Seriously, now. Would you honestly sell it, and just about all your other closed hardware, to get an MS if you had to gig a large variety of music on it? I know I wouldn't. But, once aging, theory rears its' ugly head. It's all well and good to proselytize these things, but another altogether to back up your words with action.

I'm sorry I take such a narrow definition of the word 'arranger', but I'm afraid that, I truly believe that well over 99% of the entire arranger playing world agrees with me. I mean, for one thing, the MS is not some über-expensive Scala, or even an Oasys. Yet it has pretty much tanked in the arranger market. To the point that Dom has thrown in the towel, and is now marketing it as what it was all along... A VSTi player with groove and arranger (albeit clunky) capabilities, but no intrinsic content of any value. If the MS had truly been what arranger players wanted, they would have bought it in droves.

I'm pretty sure I could cobble a bunch of vintage analog modular synths together, work out some sophisticated sequencing voltage voodoo, and create something that COULD, if you had all day, maybe make something interesting musically that you could get to follow chords played a bit. But I'm not insane enough to try and market it as an 'arranger' to the whole arranger world... Spending an entire DAY to make one piece of music that wouldn't rival a T3 (unless you were going for Kraftwerk!) and would never sound as good doing a foxtrot wouldn't strike me as a particularly good investment of my time and money.

I'm sorry, but you nailed it, for me. You said YOU wouldn't be able to take the time to program the hundreds of styles you might need as a gigging pro (or even a well rounded amateur). And I'm sorry, but I don't think you would want to spend the time making hundreds of translations, either. Especially once you got to hear how poorly they fare when compared to their originals...

Come to think of it, you have an Oasys AND a PA, don't you..? Now SURELY, you ought to be able to translate all the PA's styles over to the Oasys, and build Karma setups that could do much of what the styles do. But your not crazy enough to do that, when you already have something that does the job MUCH better. THAT'S really the point I've been trying to make. Sure, you COULD use a Swiss Army knife as a hammer. But why would you, if you already had a hammer?

And use that Swiss Army knife as a hammer for very long, and you'll be WISHING you never gave up your hammer.

Hi Diki.



Ok, I get where your going here but your still thinking CLOSED Keyboard.

Yes there is a link because the sounds on a closed keyboard are very limited by the number of layers of samples they have. Most sounds will have only 1 layer, some bigger sounds might have 2 or 3. Because of this there is a sweet spot where the performance played on them will sound best.

When converting styles from one make of a keyboard to another, the sweet spots in the performance many not match up to the sounds used, and so on... which is the entire basis for your argument here.

The problem with that is though you are thinking totally CLOSED Keyboard minded. You don't take into consideration the fact that a premium VSTI will offer sounds that don't have anywhere near the limitations of a closed keyboard. You get sounds that are FAR more detailed here, large samples, more of them, many times more layers.

So why do you think they won't sound as good as the original sounds on a closed keyboard preforming the pattern ?

Imagine using Pianoteq as your source for all Piano and Rhodes sounds ? It's so detailed that the midi standards actually limit it by what it could actually do.



I agree, I've said more or less the exact same thing in this thread a number of times at this stage. This is exactly why I've been saying that I'm delighted to see that Lionstracs are marketing the new keyboards at the workstation market.

The thing is though, if there are any arranger users out there who are technically minded and like the idea of surpassing the standards of a closed arranger, then an OPEN keyboard is the machine for them and there are huge benefits to be had if you put in the work.

You have to do the work yourself because as I've already said countless times in this thread, there is no such things as a VSTi Arranger that comes with it's own sound engine and content. None in the same sense as a VSTi Synth comes as a load up and instant play piece of software that requires no additional work.

Lionstracs could very easily make the Mediastation or the new keyboards typical arranger user friendly. It's just a matter of pairing the arranger with a quality vsti synth and having someone with the skill to do the work optimise 2 or 3 hundred styles taken from the net.

The catch with them paying someone to do that though is that they can't sell the work once completed. They would have to give it away for free because of copyright law on styles. So is that worth the cost to make the keybaord more typical arranger user friendly. I don't know.




No, don't twist my words. You where taking about writing new styles. Writing styles is far more effort than just downloading the best of the best collection from the net and remapping the sounds.

Remapping sounds is something I could do very easily, but it woudl be illegal for me to sell that work due to the copyright on styles. I'd have to give it away for free.

This is why I've said in my previous post to you that the only way you will see the type of OOTB arranger that YOU expect from Lionstracs is if they pay someone to do the work and they turn around and give it all away for free.

Simply doing that so they can sell keyboards to people like you is not the total solution either. A VSTi of premium quality would need to be purchased as well.



Well actually that would disprove your point quite simply because the OASYS would instantly make the styles sound better even if I just recorded the midi out of the Pa1X into the Sequencer and remapped everything so the OASYS sounds were used.

I think I've got a few songs on my mixing desks HDD where I've actually on this with a Pa1X and a Triton Studio. Possible even my OASYS. I'll see if I can pull the songs out.



If only you where living close by and you could visit the Studio. You totally don't even acknowledge your own abilities Diki. I think you just need a push and the opportunity to see what can be done and you be a changed man.

Regards
James

Well, James, I am afraid I AM talking from experience here. And I believe you are still talking theoretically. I have a plethora of Korg translations, Yamaha translations and Technics conversions. And JUST by substituting sounds (in my G70's case, especially with older styles, I ALREADY have sounds that are 'better' than the originals), I rarely ever get something that sounds as good as the original. I just don't think that you are getting the fact that, even though a sound from a VSTi may be WAY more realistic, that is no guarantee that it is going to match up to the performance very well. For me, at least, the sound IS the performance.

Call up three different brass patches. Try to play the same part. You can't. They sound so different, you adjust your playing to the strengths of each one. Same with bass sounds, pads, you name it. Piano is the simplest, and even that you have to adjust if the original performance leveraged the sample switching to emphasize dynamics. And don't even get me STARTED on how difficult it is to get drum Parts to translate to other drum kits cross platform. We have moved a LONG way away from simple GM/GS sounds on most TOTL arrangers. Drum kits are no longer mapped consistently, there's no standard for multi sample crossover points (say where the snare skin turns into a rimshot, just for a simple two sound example - multiply that by the number of samples a snare has... my G70 has four on each of many snares available per kit). What about ruffs, stick drags, tom flams, timbale flourishes, all the many things different in each closed arranger different from the basic GM/GS spec? Now take into account say bass parts, that may have performance samples all mapped differently, slaps, clicks, pops, mutes, notes that trigger mutes, etc.. How on earth do you map that onto a sound that has them all in different places?

You end up with nearly as much work as if you had decided to create a style from scratch. There are no macros... you have to do almost as much work for each different arranger you are translating from.

You see, I'm not talking about getting close. I'm not talking about getting adequate. I'm talking about being BETTER than the original... after all, what's the POINT of a open arranger if you don't end up with 'better'? Might as well buy the original, if it is going to take you MONTHS if not years to translate all the styles you need to even equal the original, let alone better it.

You are thinking old school, James Modern TOTL arrangers have FAR more nuance and detail in the sounds than older ones did. And the style creators leveraged that nuance for all it is worth. And it is translating that nuance that is so difficult. I'm afraid you glommed onto the ONE sound that doesn't have that much problem (Pianoteq) translating. But you conveniently ignored the drumkits, or things like Mega voice guitars and basses. You know. The FOUNDATION of the style...

The thing is, Yamaha and the rest do EXACTLY what you think Dom couldn't do. They make tons of new styles (and have a back library of hundreds) and give them away for free with each new arranger model. Or do they? You pay for the arranger, don't you..? You are paying for the styles, too.

Here's where Dom slipped. He thought that the content was something that arranger players could do without, make themselves, translate, whatever. I am convinced he DOESN'T have the musical skills to do this, and severely underestimated how hard it is. He thought that the technical aspects of the arranger would be sufficient. And a handful of people went along with it. And, from everything I've heard posted, NONE of them succeeded, at least at the level rivaling a T3, etc..

And, like most people that see this new, exciting technology and look past its' daunting flaws, I think you are still underestimating it yourself.

I don't think I DO sell myself short. I've tried making styles, and I've tried making translations, and even with my skill (take that as modestly as you want!) I find it VERY hard to equal the best of the ROM styles when played back on the arranger they were created for.

I'm afraid your offer to compare things between a Triton and a PA just doesn't hold water. The PA was BASED on the Triton. You want to impress me, take a style from a T3, with mega guitars and lots of nuanced drums (maybe an ethnic multipad layered on it), and replicate it on your PA. Better yet, replicate the MIDI file of the Yamaha style on a V-Machine...

Not as easy, I betcha!

It would be interesting to hear how people on both sides of this discussion define “arranger”.
It seems as if we have two (or may be more) type of arranger users.
The ones who support and understand open arrangers use styles the way most Yamaha users use their styles. They use third party styles, the change sounds of individual parts of styles, they copy parts from one style and put them in another to create a new style …. I think in Yamaha terms they call it style assembly.

On the other side however, those who do not understand and do not see the use of open arranger are still stuck on the close arranger concept and use an arranger with just the OOTB styles and sounds. The Audya would be the perfect arranger for them where there is not style creation and the editing is limited.

Hi Diki,

We are getting nowhere here at all. Your just locked into an idea here and there is no way I can even have a conversation with you that would make you consider the possibility of what I'm saying.

I go through your posts and I comment on each part, and you won't even return the curtsey and do the same because you don't even want to discuss the points I make.

Maybe I'm wasting my time because your not the type of user who can or wants do move beyond all your preloaded factory presets content you get with your closed arranger. Which is fine, I'm not knocking closed keyboards at all. They have their place just as any keyboard has.

So I'll leave it at that. I've spent far too much time on this already and we have gotten absolutely nowhere whatsoever. Your still saying all the exact same things.

Regards
James

As are you, James. Difference is, you are still talking about what OUGHT to be possible (but haven't actually tried), and I am talking about what IS possible, at least on any reasonable timeframe.

We have far more in common that you think, James. I DO use VSTi's, I DO use complex WS's as well as arrangers, I am pretty aware of everything you've said. Thing is, you refuse to acknowledge the herculean task of preparing an open keyboard to do the job that any good TOTL arranger can do, OOTB.

When I want to make one off, original productions, I primarily use WS's and VSTi's. But to do the job at a very high level, it takes a LONG time to do anything. Days on each tune, weeks or even months per album. And an album is a paltry ten or so songs. Scale that up to the hundreds of styles you need to be able to cover ALL the bases, and you can understand why no-one is using these things as an gigging arranger, yet.

Fran's sits at home, and never gigs. Dennis's got returned after its' shortcomings were made apparent. We had a guy gigging one from Romania, or somewhere in that vicinity, and nothing he posted impressed in the least. The only decent things I've heard from the MS were one off sequences, and those were few and far between, or some techno loop stuff (some off the MS website) that have no practical use unless you are playing to the DJ crowd...

There isn't ONE person using their MS as a full gigging arranger on this forum, and little on the web other than Serbian type music (whose practitioners don't HAVE a closed arranger as a viable alternative to choose instead).

All I have EVER said to all the 'theoretical' proselytizers on this forum is. first, why don't YOU go and get one, and SHOW us how easy it all is...? Telling us all how it OUGHT to be doable, but you have no experience to make that conclusion other than conjecture is such a cop out. It's amazing how all the people that think an open arranger is the future DON'T have one. And all those that DO have one are using closed arrangers to gig with.

Maybe we ARE at an impasse, James... I truly believe that you have completely ignored the salient points of my posts, too. You haven't refuted anything, merely repeated the same theoretical objections to my position. Me, I'm a practical man. I can do the math. Let's say it takes me two or three days to make a really good translation of a single style. I am talking balls to the wall, WAY better than the original, no cobbled together bull... All the drum nuances remapped to a VSTi (I'm just theoretically imagining there IS a VSTi with a drumkit that CAN map to the original, personally, I ain't heard one yet), all the guitar Mega stuff remapped to alternative switches, yada yada yada...

That means, it's only going to take two or three YEARS to make 300 styles or so (what I need to cover everything I use my G70 for... reggae to swing to alt rock to disco to ballroom to...). Now, I don't know about you, but I haven't got that kind of time

Sure, if you are sitting at home with all the time in the world, doing one offs of original tunes, then yes, the open arranger might be just the tool. But, OTOH, a computer rig for VSTi's and a couple of good closed WS's (with samplers and a TOTL sample library) and a DAW sequencer could do the job just as well. After all, that's basically what YOU have decided to use, for all your stuff. Oasys, computer rig, V-machine as a VSTi host, all the other gear.

But for those of us that play thousands of songs, using hundreds of styles, or those of us that barely can operate our closed arrangers, for those of us that can't write good styles, for those of us that struggle to make translations sound even usable, let alone better than the original, the open arranger is a complete bust.

And sad to say, from everything I've read and heard on this forum, that's basically EVERYBODY. The only people disagreeing with this don't even HAVE one. Those that do (or did) are definitely in that group...

Can we revisit this topic once you have actually taken your own advice, gone out and bought an MS, and can report from actual experience just how easy or impossible this is..? We are just talking in circles until you do...

Sure, maybe I could put a kit car together from all the little bits and pieces in about ten years or so (if you count the time I'd have to learn to be a mechanic, too!). But I've got to drive to the gig TONIGHT... And I don't have the patience for someone that keeps telling me what a great Porsche kit car replica such and such a company make, and how I ought to get one, especially if he hasn't made one himself...

I'm member from SLOVENIA(EUROPA) I use MS for giging as arranger.

Also some my colegues here are using MS as arranger.

My MS is prepared with normal styles like 8 beat, 16 beat, samba, cha cha, polka, waltzer, reggae dance etc. . .


I play with it usually 50% styles and 50 % mp3/midi files ( but this are only drums + bass prepared - the rest I'm playing).

And interesting what is possible to do with it.


BR