The T3 has so many fantastic styles already and of course so many also can be downloaded for free, however, there are some styles on the T3 site that I really want, eg, the 90's Pop Ballad is great, but do you think they are priced right or should be free like Korg's are.

Thanks for reading.
Danny

Some of the T3 styles are worth it. Depends on how badly you want/need them.

Korg styles are free, but when was the last time they produced a new style? Their website bonus styles page was last updated 12/08. (Or is there another place one can get the latest KORG-manufactured styles?)

I think I'd rather pay $6.95 for a newly introduced style today than have to wait for over a year for a new free one.

[This message has been edited by CoasterTim (edited 02-11-2010).]

Hi Coaster, thanks for the reply. I guess that's true what you're saying. I've identified 5 that I really want so much so I guess I'd have to take the plunge and get them! I also love the PopReagge and Sunday Chillout, 80s Sister Pop great stuff indeed.

Thanks.

The whole reason I buy arranger keyboards and not some other keyboard is the styles.

The Premium styles are almost always as good as what's on the keyboard. This is my hobby, so I don't mind ponying up $7 - $14 a month for new styles.

Beakybird

I think it is realy personal if you want to spend money on new styles. If i had a Yamaha and I really liked a style I would buy it. As beakybird said it is a hobby and hobbies cost money. About Korg styles. Every month you can get 4 Free styles from the German site. Also the Italian site give you so now and then free styles so it isn't true it took years to get new styles. Also there are some places where you can buy styles for the Korg PA's. So there is no short on Korg styles.

I've just bought them Can't wait to try them out!

Hi Danny,
enjoy.
I possibly $1,000plus on Technics style disks over a period of 10 years or so. Do I regret it , no. Even though I no longer own a KN, at the time, I thoroughly looked forward to the new styles on offer.
Wish I'd had the luxury of buying individual styles the way you can with Yamaha, with the KN disks you had to pay for the whole lot, even if you didn't want some of the styles.

best wishes
Rikki

Hi Frans,
( apologies for going off topic Danny,)
you mentioned other possible style sites for buying Korg styles, apart from some for sale via Irish Acts site,& the 2 sites that sell usb sticks with styles & sounds, the only other site I'm aware of is Carrillon in the UK.
Are there more that you know of?

I thought there might be more sites, but I lost all my links when my computer died a couple of years ago.

best wishes
Rikki

Here are 2 sites that sell Korg styles
http://www.mister-music.de http://www.d-o-o.de/home.php

And they have also technics styles

Frans

You either pay a little for your new styles now, or you wait three years and pay a FORTUNE for a new arranger with a few new styles later...

Pay for them now (and don't share them)... the more the style creator makes for his work, the more likely he will be to making a lot MORE. The less he makes...

Well, you get the picture.

Tell Yamaha you WANT copy protection for styles. It's the only way that it will EVER be profitable enough to be done in the numbers we really want. It would take little effort on Yamaha and the other manufacturers' parts to include a unique Identifier Code to each unit sold, then the style is keyed to the code. No more trading them around like bubblegum cards, and we would see FAR more being made.

Yes, I know it would suck... But having so few being made at all because of piracy sucks even worse.

Both Wersi and Yamaha (With their premium sounds) have their sounds tied to a particular instrument, (With minimal complaints) so it wouldn’t take much to transfer this to styles.

Bill

Thank you Frans,
I'll check them out.

Technics regrettably I no longer need.
I sold it it a few years back.

best wishes
Rikki

Would you still be able to edit the style? What if you wanted to put the drum from that style onto another style?

The problem would be that either you wouldn't be able to do any edits, or if you were able to do edits, you could resave the edit style as a non-copy protected style.

Beakybird

I think it ought to be able to tell the arranger that an edit is of a protected style, and THAT file is also protected (keyed to the arranger).

Only problem arises making SMF's of protected styles for songs, but, to be honest, if the styles aren't too expensive, who's going to want to do the prodigious amount of work to FULLY export a style (all chord types, all variations, all multipads, all fills, Ins and Ends, etc.) and laboriously reassemble the style completely to make an unprotected one? If they can buy the style pretty cheaply?

This is what the industry is going to have to deal with. Just like now you CAN get almost any tune for only 99¢ on iTunes, and nearly a billion have been downloaded legally, keyed to their computer (protected), if the styles' price is lowered from where it is now to maybe a buck or so, nobody will bother. But EVERYONE that uses the style WILL have payed a dollar. I would not be surprised that for every legal style sold at the moment, it gets copied at LEAST twenty times, so if everybody BOUGHT it at a dollar, they'd make TWICE what they are now (conservatively).

But keep them at $10-15 bucks or more like they are now, and MAYBE someone would think cracking it worth the work...

iTunes has shown that, if the price is low enough, people WILL pay for protected content. And a billion dollars is back in the hands of the industry, rather than being lost to piracy. The inference is obvious. Protected styles WILL work, and work well, as long as the prices are kept low.

Steve Demming... you reading this?!

UPDATE...

Double checked my facts. Premium styles are about $7. Still think it's too high. Pretty sure at a buck, I'd pick up nearly anything made that I could use. At $7, not so sure. But me and twenty others would buy them ALL if they were a buck each

Take piracy out of the picture, I am convinced you could put up five new styles a WEEK and everybody with a T3/2/S910 in the world would buy them. That's a LOT of people...

And a LOT of money.

US $7 for a good produced style specially made and fit to play well on a dedicated keyboard brand/model is CHEEP!!
Too bad there are very hard to find (if find any) any good original or 3rd party styles for anything else than
Yamaha anymore.
I.e. MidiSpot who did make styles for Ketron, Technics, Roland etc, now only produce for Yamaha. That alone is
maybe a reason to start look for a T2 or T3 to add and explore.

Cheers
GJ

I agree with GJ...$7 is very inexpensive for a well made style, which you only have to buy once...it's not like it costs $7 every time you use it.

That would be expensive.

I didn't know Midi Spot dumped Roland...that's rather odd, as they still make arrangers, if you count the Prelude/GW-8 and the KR-series.

Ian

I pay similar prices for professional backing tracks (sometimes I do a little KJ'ing). For the work that goes into a nice style I think its good value. Yamaha styles rarely disapoint.

The Midispot styles aren't quite up to the level of the Yamaha Premium Styles, and they are too expensive: $12.95.

If you could copyright protect these styles, I could see the price going down, but not down to 99 cents.

Beakybird

And when you upgrade from one model to another you have to buy everything once again?

Copyright is one thing, copyprotect another. Back in old Technics forum we could see how original
made Technics stuff was spread by "private e-mail" club. Ended bad, as Technote forum closed down
way too early compared to when final Technics keyboard was produced.
All that sudden the SZ Technics forum start grow, but that's another story.

I think copy protection is good, but it most be in a way that you can edit and resave, and still
bring your stuff into your next keyboard as long as it's within the same factorybrand.
The bad thing will be, that my EMC convert software will be worthless .......

We have a say here: Whatever way you turn, your butt will be behind you.

Cheers
GJ

Depends of what you're after. Myself I like MidiSpot styles because the "live and punchy" sounding, and
they are programmed in a way that fit my style of playing as well as many are made to play well for the
Scandinawian Dancefloors.
Regarding the pricelevel, yeah, a bit expensive, but they try to make a living of styles and midi, not
by build the hardware.
Yamaha is for me too CD'is or may I say, "too well studioproduced and polished". That don't mean they
are not good, but it prevent me from buy any yama keyboard so far.
When I'm out dancing and listening to the music, I would rather have musicians that dare to play a
wrong note but still make you wanna dance, rather than a orchestra that just sit there and play perfect
as written in the paper, and sometimes make everything sounds like expression never invented.

Cheers
GJ

I love it!

TWD

Conversely, those of us who cherish the Yamaha sound, find the polished sound much to our liking...especially if you do any home recording.

I've played dances with Yamaha arrangers...didn't seem to have any problem getting people out of their seats to have a go on the dance floor.

People's taste with how an instrument should sound will always be varied...thankfully we have choices in what we buy.

I like Midi Spot styles as well...as you say, very punchy, and not overdone either.

Ian

Well, I've never said the Yamaha instrument sounds / solo sounds don't sound good, in fact
they sound great, and so do your work and recordings.
But the styles play a kind of limited regarding peek and expression for my personal taste.
I'm sure there is features that let the user adjust or tweak this in any way or other, but
stright out of the box, as most of the demoes and uploads we hear are, it don't make me
run to the shop and buy.
After all it's the autocomp/styles who are the main rason I buy an arrangerkeyboard, if I
was any good piano or synth player, I would buy soething else.
The part about "punch" in the styles I think Ketron and even Roland G-70 do better than
Yamaha.

Cheers & Happy Playing
GJ

I like the styles straight out of the box for demoing, but for personal use, I always end up editing them for my own liking.

I tend to try and make the style progress from variation to variation in a more balanced way.

I like the Roland sound as well...just not as much as Yamaha...of course, that's why I work for them.

Ian

Guys, you are not getting it...

It is obvious that, at the current price, few people actually ARE downloading the Premium Styles legally (or there would be a LOT more of them ), the best, most skilled writers aren't making enough to want to make a full-time job creating new styles constantly.

I am convinced that, for every person that actually PAYS their $7, AT LEAST ten or twenty (who knows?) end up with the styles eventually from trading around, style sites, etc.. And that, to be honest, is a VERY lowball estimate, IMO.

So, let's look at the math. ONE sale at $7, or TWENTY (conservatively) at $1... If I were making styles for a living, guess what I would choose

I would happily make a $5 a week impulse purchase to get five TOTL produced styles. And, I'm pretty convinced that thousands worldwide would to the same thing. Not sure I would pony up $35 a week, though.

BTW, you can transfer a protected iTunes MP3 from one computer to another. I can't think of any reason why, with Ethernet jacks on them (how does IDC connect now?), one arranger can't be hooked to another transmit their ID codes, and allow a one way transfer to your NEXT arranger (program would automatically delete styles from the source arranger, so you can't sell it with the protected content still on it after transferring).

This system has generated billions for the recording industry. I don't see any reason why it can't for the arranger one. We all complain there is never a lot of fresh, exciting new styles, but never wonder WHY. Piracy makes it impossible for writing styles to be anything much more than a marketing tool for the arranger. Yamaha underwrite the Premium styles, to coax the best style writers to make a few more. But if they could make an honest living selling styles, they would make them 24/7.

Maybe the system could be set up like iTunes, where ANYONE could post their styles on the site (in a special, non-manufacturer section for instance) and the 'store' takes a cut of the $1, but the writer, if he makes GOOD ones, makes a fortune.

What better way to encourage the growth of what is, essentially, a pretty stagnant industry, right now?

How did you come to that opinion, Diki?

Ian

If I could sell a CD for $200, I'd have a thousand different ones of them for sale...

The free market fills up whatever capacity it can. If people are buying Premium Styles at a sufficient rate, they'd make a LOT, lot more, a lot, lot faster, until the market was saturated. If the current rate they are making them at is any indicator of what the market will bear, I'd say I proved my point...

Sorry guy, I removed my post...it's not that important an issue.

Ian

[This message has been edited by ianmcnll (edited 02-14-2010).]