By now everyone must have had a chance to demo or hear Tyros 4 live..

With Tyros 3 many people where complaining about the styles and drums, with the tyros 4 those complains seem to be gone...


So how do you think the Tyros 4 styles compare to Audya, PA2X, Roland G70 and Tyros 3....


Personally i think Yamaha has taken a huge leap and finally created styles that are there to rock in a life performance, the Drums are seccond to none... I am very pleased with the style quallity of Tyros 4...

The styles sound better than my Tyros 2, but not as "live" as the Audya. I haven't played the Korg or Roland to make a good comparison.

My question is, are there any new Latin styles on the T4? I'm not talking about easy listening bossas and ballroom Latin. I mean actual popular Latin styles such as salsa, cumbia, merengue, bachata, reggaeton, nortena, banda... My Tyros 2 falls short in this category:(

I did play the Tyros 3 but not the Tyros 4. After hearing some of the demos, the Tyros 4 sound better especially the drums but personally I find the styles still boring compared to Korg. You have to keep pushing buttons to keep it interesting. With Korg is that much less. Again just my opinion.

There is no doubt you can get the drums on the T4 to sound as "in your face" as the Audya. All you have to do is turn up the drums in the mix and/or exchange the WAV or voice of the snare / bass drum.

What you won't get is the groove because the Audya is a recording of a drummer as opposed to midi drums.

Al, would you know if it is possible to change the "groove" on the Audya's drums (and drums against bass) as it is to alter it on the Yamaha Style Creator using the Groove/Dynamics feature? Korg has a similar feature I believe.

I realize the Audya drums get their realism from being the actual recording of the "live" drummer, but, is the user able to change the "feel" (or "groove") of that particular recording, or is it set in stone?

I thought I read something by AJ that said it was possible to change it...but, I can't seem to find it.

Ian

You might need to be a bit specific when you say 'groove', Ian. I got a feeling you are referring to how much 'swing %' there is in the style, whereas I think Al is more just referring to the drummer's 'pocket'.

Mind you, up until now, I hadn't even heard there was a feature on Tyros4 about changing a pattern's swing value? How well does that work, and how well does it deal with notes INSIDE the swing value?

I always missed that old 'Swing %' knob they used to have on much older arrangers and drum machines. Mind you, back then, the patterns were SO much simpler, and changing the timebase of the clock was all that was needed!

Got any examples of something going from a straight 8 style to a swung 8 style (even if it is just moving it a BIT) to compare?

Yes, the Groove function in Style Creator is actually old news Diki...it's been around since at least the PSR-8000.

It works as you described, although the "swung" style must be saved as a custom style...you can't use Groove in a "live" situation .

It also works in reverse, taking a Swing 8 beat and changing it to a straight 8.

It works on each part of the style (Variations/fills/Intros/Ending) with several different values for each part, or all parts of the style.

I use it very often, not just for swinging a straight style, but also to "fit" parts of a swung style to a straight style so it is all straight, or all swung, if you get my drift?

Not a lot of people seem to understand or use the Groove/Dynamics of Style Creator, although all my clients get a course in how to use it, and do very well indeed.

I'll see if I can put together some examples...I am a bit stretched at the moment preparing for a clinic tomorrow....(did a quick one today)...Maybe I'll pop one off on the S910 if it will be quicker.

If the Audya has a swing/groove function similar to what you describe, and what has been on the Yammies for years, but using it's audio drums, that would be pretty cool.

Ian

PS...I'd be surprised if Korg doesn't have a similar feature to Yamaha's regarding the Groove function.

Yep it does!!

Hi Diki,

Here are two quick/short examples using the factory style Cool8Beat...


http://www.4shared.com/embed/506434111/c12f1414

http://www.4shared.com/embed/506434780/6367e379

The first is un-grooved...the second is grooved by about 50% (or "C" when choosing from A-E in Amount)

I used Intro III and Ending III as they would show the change in the best way.

You are also able to fine tune the "groove" by "pushing" certain parts of the beat by varying amounts.

Although it (Style Creator) may lack (or do differently) some features that your Roland can do, it is still a pretty sophisticated system, that isn't very difficult to use...most, if not all, of my clients catch on right away...of course, it helps that it is in a clinic where they can see what is being done...trying to describe it in text would be very tedious, for sure.

Ian

very nice example Ian....this feature alone doubles the amount of style variation you already have on the unit.

Ian, nice Tyros 4 example of converting Cool8Beat from straight to swing.

Ahhh, the groove I'm talking about is not the same groove feature on the Yammie or other arrangers. Midi drums must align their beats to a specific boundary specified by the limitations of the hardware/software granularity. A real drummer has an infinite level of granularity and can hit a bit anywhere in the measure. As a drummer, I can play around with the pocket by hitting the Snare on the beat of the measure; OR I can play around with the listeners head and hit the beat micro-seconds BEFORE or AFTER the beat of the measure to give the impression the beat is faster or slower. When you retard the beat a little, it gives the song more of a groove or funk kind of feel. Playing a little sooner give the listener the perception the song is moving faster.

Did I explain this correctly or are you MORE confused? LOL

Al

Al, I did understand your meaning of groove...I play drums a bit myself(not very good), but the groove or playing in the pocket, timing can also apply to keyboard solo phrasings, chord accompaniment patterns, ior even left hand bass lines, when playing in a group.

I think the Audya's drums are awesome.

My query was about being able to take Audya's audio drum patterns and edit them as described above in the Style Composer, or whatever Audya calls it.

The ability to be able to change a straight 8 to a swing 8 would, as Donny says above, double the variations of the preset styles.

I am just curious if audio drums can be "Swung" or if the user/player is locked into what groove/pattern the drummer has already laid down, or in the Audya's case, recorded?

Ian

ALl i can say is that you can do this on any professional sequencer...

So technically it should be possible to "swing" audya styles...

"Swinging" audio drums would be pretty cool...either in a sequencer or the keyboard (far handier)

I wonder if AJ, or someone with an Audya (DonM?) could post two examples (one straight 8 Beat, the other the very same style, "swung"), much like I posted earlier in the thread which were done on the Tyros4?

Ian

The ability to convert an Audya's audio loop style from 'straight to 'swing' or vise versa would be awesome.
If really possible, I'd certainly love to hear a sample of that.

I doubt it could be done internally. But many audio DAW programs can now 'snip' a loop and change straight feel to swung and vice versa.

The problem tends to come in fills... It's not so much the eighths (the core beat of the pattern) but the beats INSIDE the eighths. A simple timebase switch rarely gets those dead on. Of course, with a MIDI style, you can edit that, but audio is MUCH trickier. Requires a fair bit of hand massaging to get acceptable results.

Anyone that jacked around much with ReCycle in the early days of D&B can tell you about such things, or if you use Beat Detective with ProTools, or 'Elastic Audio' with many other DAW's, you may have run across these issues.

If the Audya's loop import features are finally completed, doing this to an audio loop would be tedious beyond what it already is on a MIDI arranger, but at least it OUGHT to be doable..

It appears that reprogramming or editing the style to swing would involve, in Audya's case, a combination of audio drums, bass and guitar parts, as well as midi parts as well, and some of the guitar parts are a combination of midi and audio, depending on the chord.

It seems like it would be a monumental job using the instrument's on board style creator/editor, but is there a program that lets you edit a Audya style in a PC?

Ian

I would think that simply recording the loops, then swinging them and slicing them, then re-import to the Audya would deal with the audio stuff. Repeat on the MIDI side (with a percentage swing quantize tool) would deal with that, too. But yes, as I have said for SO long, audio loops complicate things that are often MUCH simpler when dealing with just MIDI.

I definitely envy the Yamaha system for this feature. Roland's, I believe you have to go into each style division individually and do the quantization. A one button 'Swing value' would be a GREAT addition to the OS.

I STILL think you would probably need to massage the fills, though..

Re-listened to the audio for the changed style you did, and what I wanted to point out was about every 8th being swung nicely (in fact, that style would benefit from being swung just a little less, but I know you were making an easily heard example) but I had issues with the 16ths they were playing. A real player would have straightened those out a bit, even when the 8ths were swung as hard.

Doing this to a lot of the older, simpler styles is VERY effective, but I still have problems when more modern styles leverage the 'ghosting' and inside the beat stuff that makes the straight version of the style so tasty! Things used to be so much simpler, and back then, many things DID have a 'swing %' knob, but as patterns got more complicated, that no longer worked as well, and eventually got dropped.

But that's a great tool, Ian. Sure wish I had 'one button' swing on my Roland!

I did push it a bit hard for clarity sake, Diki...the neat thing is that each and any variation can be swung by varying amounts, plus, as I said earlier, you can accent any part of the beat of each and any variation to balance out any issues. Fills can be done separately, as well as the Intros/Endings.

I find it handy enough for just "swinging" a style, but it really comes into it's most effective use for me, by allowing me to fit parts from different feeling styles together, culminating in a fairly individual and personal sounding style.

Together with StyleAdjust, the program Michael Bedesem made especially for me, going by some ideas that I had, and his incredible technical knowledge, I can really get a lot done without needing to create from scratch; something not that easy to do on any arranger, in my experience.

StyleAdjust lets me change the note values within a style, and the tempo as well...it is completely adjustable, although I asked him for default values that would be the ones I'd use the most.

It will be interesting to hear if anyone has examples of Audya styles that were swung.

Ian