Great News,
we now have our own forum where we can discuss our softsynths, be it soundfonts, software samplers, sample players etc.

Arranger software like OMB, LiveStyler, Jammer Live , BIAB etc

Options for controller keyboards.

Hopefully we can help members who are interested in this form of musical instrument.

best wishes
Rikki

Great timing I'm just about ready to begin a project. Should be fun!

Jerry

[This message has been edited by Mainer (edited 07-12-2006).]

Hi Jerry,
what are you planning on doing, & what are you using?

best wishes
Rikki

Hi Rikki

This is really great news!! Especially since I have just recently downloaded OMB, Live Styler and Jammer whatever a few days ago.

I already have questions and I'm thinking, I wish there was someplace where I could ask all of these related novice questions. It is with pleasure to see this forum open up and with you being able to contribute your vast knowledge of this seemingly mysterious side of music to a guy from the old school.

So, thanx Nigel and Rikki.

I am still thinking that one day I can go to a gig with my laptop (when I get one) and a 7 pound contoller keyboard and be able to confidently do a gig easily and have it sound as good as or better than say my Tyros 2 Am I dreaming? I don't think so. BUT it sounds like a lot of work. But maybe once I undertand all of this which is like Greek to me now maybe it won't be as hard to do as it seems now.

First question. From what I have gathered, it seems that everyone is tweaking each style seperately. Is there some way one can set up kind of a template of instrument choices and setting for each type/genre of music and then just need only a few tweaked settings? LIke maybe one setting for country, one for big band, latin, etc, etc, and be able to use it on any number of the same genre style.

Unless I missed it, it seems like this doesn't exist. If it doesn't I would think Jos or Norbert could add this genre/style template feature.

Scott
http://ScottLMusic.com

[This message has been edited by Scott Langholff (edited 07-12-2006).]

I thought it might be a good idea, so I contacted Jos Maas of One Man Band, Norbert Stellberg of Live Styler and SoundTrek of the Jammer products informing them of this new forum thinking that they may want to participate if they have time, see what's being said about their products and possibly get ideas on how to enhance their already great products.

Scott
http://ScottLMusic.com

This is good news. BTW,I had suggested a subforum like this over a year ago(perhaps two years ago?), and was ignored.

Hi Scott,
I'm fairly familiar with OMB,
I haven't used Livestyler mainly because both programs use the psr .sty format, and I find OMB handier because it's an all in one program in that
I can edit the styles,
it's got a basic sequencer
it has an arranger window (similiar to BIAB where you drag n drop chords & style parts to create an arrangement)
etc etc
basically it saves me having to use numerous individual programs.

Not sure whether you're reffering Jammer Live ( realtime arranger) or Jammer Pro. I actually have both.
I was using using Jammer Live in the early days, but it didn't have a huge stylebase, so I ended up concentrating on OMB.
I may check into at again though, as the new version of Jammer Pro (6), has some great new style creation functions including creating styles from midifiles.
I believe that Jammer pro 6 styles can be used in Jammer Live ( though not in their entirety). If that's the case I'll get more involved with Jammer Live again.

I beleive some members may already be gigging with a laptop & controller.

It will be great when the softsynths catch up to the requirements of the realtime arranger players needs.
At the moment most of the software samplers etc are geared towards the musician who sequences , rather than a player who uses it in realtime.
Options for "style parts" at the moment are
soundfonts
Hypersonic 2
Hypercanvas
Bandstand?? (Have to check with Frank on that one.)
There's maybe more that I'm not aware of.
For the melody part you can use a higher quality sampler. ( personally I haven't explored past the soundfonts yet)

Maybe one day, one of the manufacturers will create an all in one package, softsynth , styles & realtime arranger program.

At this stage we're still pretty much stuck with tweaking styles individually. There again, anyone using a converted style usually has to tweak it also.

best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Scott Langholff:
[B]Hi Rikki

Hi,
maybe Nigel noticed that more & more members are taking an interest in the subject, and we're just not going away haahaa

best wishes
Rikki

Huh, did you say something ??? I really am so sorry Vquestor. I don't intentionally ignore anyone. You just need to get my attention and sometimes I can miss the occasional posting. Rikki just sent me a direct email and asked me if it was possible. That's pretty much all it takes. I'm a pushover for a request. If you ever email and I don't respond it is usually because my spam filter has eaten it so if that doesn't work it is always worth trying me a second time. This website is only here for all of you to use however you want. I'll always consider a reasonable request and try to answer you one way or the other.

Hi Rikki

That's interesting that each and every style needs to be tweaked individually. Wow, that sounds like a ton of work.

This might be a good time to use what some of the guys on the General Arranger forum call the "easy eight." I believe this started with Roland arrangers when they used style cards that had 8 styles per card that covered all the major kinds of popular music.

I don't know if I could get by with just 8 styles but I'd bet the right 20 styles with good choices for the variations could cover anything a person would want to do. That almost sounds do-able.

I guess one of each of these used at different speeds would be a good possibility: swing, latin, 8 beat, ballad (triplet feel from the '50's), 2 beat (for country, march, polka, dixie, foxtrot, quickstep), rock, disco, boogie, shuffle, waltz. That ought to cover most of it.

That's one thing I think is funny about the arranger keyboard concept. I used to play in bands playing, trumpet, sax, organ, electric piano and drums mostly. Each of the genres we did almost always fit into the groove of one of the styles I listed above with a few variations. The rhythm sections almost always played the basic beat and the only thing that changed was the melody and fills that the musicians would put in. Now I have a Tyros 2 with 400 styles and probably over 10,000 other styles. Really kind of mind boggling when I think about it

Scott