I have read that a lot of players prefer Korg over Yamaha because Korgs styles are more "live" sounding. When comparing my KMA to my Tyros 2, I notice a big difference in the bass Paterns. Yamaha bass patterns seem have no variations while Korg bass lines seem to have little fill ins at the end of phrases. On walking bass lines on the Korg I hear sort of random accented notes which gives a better overall swing. Anyways I've come to prefer the Korg style sound when it comes to bass patterns. Has anyone else noticed this?

Yes that's one of the many reasons I changed from Yamaha to Korg. Korg has the best styles from all arrangers. Well that's my opinion

Why don’t you get yourself a set of Bass pedals and play your own bass, that way you don’t have to put up with the repetitive bass lines that styles supply.

Just a thought

Bill

I agree Fran Korg styles are far more advanced especially the bass lines reation with the chords played. At this time I could never go back to Yamaha.....for me regarding arranger Kbs....Korg is Top of the heap in so many ways.......

Some of my favorite "go to" styles are converted Korg styles.....but tell me, why does Korg have great production in style writing, and ruin it by changing the bass player and drummer within the same style via variations..

I hate when a nice upright bass turns into a electric bass.I have never worked with a quick change bass player.

Fran..That's no prob at all to change basses within a style .....most korg styles react with 1&3 ..or 2&4...variations.........btw thanx for calling me back...

Paul,

If you need some converted Korg styles, let me know and I'll be more than happy to email them to you. Like Fran, I have some go-to styles that I use for specific songs and they really sound great. It all depends upon the song.

Cheers,

Gary

Same here. I would never go back to Yamaha arrangers. Maby a Roland BK-5 as a second kb but still not sure.

Another plus with Korg basslines is that they're not the same pattern in both major and minor keys, or from variation to variation. And I'm not just talking about the obvious flattened third involved. I also like the easy adjustment of bass turnaround points.

Also, if your Korg has a style called Bebop1, variation four provides four bar drum breaks (four different ones), so you can trade fours between your lead voice and the drummer. Very jazz, very cool.

Believe me, I thought about that but I think it's going to have to wait for my next life.

Hells Billy,

Now most folks here wouldn't know where to plug a set of peddles in, and then play them, don't think so, that's for orgin players....

About the only issue I had with Korg's styles' bass lines is, yes, much longer loops are nice, but the problem comes if you have phrases OTHER than simple 4/8/16 bar lengths. The longer loops in Korg styles means you CAN'T stop these 'pickups' from happening... They are stuck in the middle of a longer phrase, and you are going to get them whether you want to or not.

Now possibly, this is because, until the PA3X, Korg made do with a mere TWO fills (and a Break/Fill) for a FOUR variation style. So they needed these pickups because there wasn't enough variety in the fills themselves.

They also have an issue with the fills being two bars long, and whether you ask for the fill on an odd or even bar number, it will determine how long the fill is. Once again, an uneven number of bars to a phrase can completely throw this off.

When used in the right context, they are spectacular (I've got a translation of that Bebop style and it is fun as hell!), but don't throw anything odd at them or you can get surprised!

Roland tend to go with shorter loops, usually only 4 bars long, but have plenty of fills (again, only one bar, but they can be triggered at all kinds of different places), so you can choose when YOU want that pickup (or not) rather than Korg deciding for you. Swings and roundabouts, I suppose, but I tend to prefer to have the upper hand over my arranger, not it over me!

Not to mention, Roland don't have the software that decides when either a two bar or truncated one bar fill is played on odd or even bars, so asking for a fill on the last bar is going to give you a two bar fill, like it or not! Once you are used to one bar fills, remembering to call them up two bars early (and remembering which styles do this and which DON'T!) can be a real minefield on the gig.

I also feel that, rather than having ONE 16 bar loop, why not have FOUR 'VAR 1' loops, and allow the arranger to either play them in order (so you can pop pickups in when you want) or even in a random order (to lend less repetition to the loop)? This seems to me to be a more MUSICAL use of longer phrases...

And... as I have posted about in the past, only 4-6 fills for a four Variation arranger is short-changing us. You really need 16 fills to go smoothly from every possible combination of Var. to Var., including Fill-to-Same. The odd thing is, you would think this would make the style creator's job a lot harder, but the opposite is true! Trying to make ONE fill work for a variety of destinations is a lot harder than simply making one for each. The flow remains natural, you can simply PLAY the fill knowing where it is supposed to go, and it's job done. But trying to make one go to multiple destinations takes a LOT of work (or you end up with unnatural jumps).

I think that there is MUCH that can be still done with an arranger's OS to end up with a more MUSICAL backing, and avoid some of the 'mechanical' pitfalls the current system forces on us.

I'm not sure I understand that. Could you explain it further?

I did listen to the Bebop style on the PA3x.....is that different from Bebop1?

I noticed that if you hit the "fill" switch 2x rapidly, it will keep playing the "fill" until you disengage it.

Very well said. I agree.
DonM

How many fills do you really need???

All I can get.

Gary

As many as it takes to smoothly go from ANY variation to any other variation. Have you noticed that often, going from the 4 Variation to the 1 or 2 isn't QUITE as smooth as going to the 3 (which is probably what the fill was written to do best)? Or going from 1 to 4...?

What I WANT is something that fools me into thinking I have a BAND, not a machine backing me. I never heard a band IN MY LIFE play the same identical fill two times in a row.

It's the little things that make the difference.

Less is more to me....you so.t foolin anyone.....let alone yourself....times are changin big time.........jump on the train or get left. Behind at the station...

Not even on the same train as you, Donny.

And, I guess, with less being more, NO fills would be ideal, yes?

Hell, I missed the bus too!

Gary

Guess that means my LH is going to have to do the walkin'!

Too each his own....just like the song says..

I don't remember how many fills and breaks Audya has now, but it is a LOT. There are, I think, four different Break/fills for each style, in addition to the fills, l,2,3,4. They are selectable ahead of time as to which ones you call up.
The fills on PA3X are way better than on previous models, but still could use more variety.
DonM

So Don is it back to Audya again now...or?

Oh no, I'm very happy with the Korg. I just came across an extra one, that's all.
I have two, or two and a half, complete setups as I frequently need gear in two locations at once, but two PA3xs is way overkill.
DonM

Ok.......Understood....as Gary would say ..."gotta have backup"

You guys need to throw your arranger keyboards away and play with some real musicians. I can tell that you will never be happy with an arranger keyboard. After working with drunk, drugged, weed smoking obnoxious musicians ( I'm the Obnoxious type) for 20 years, then, and only then will you appreciate an arranger. Five or ten years does not count. It has to be 20 or 30 years trying to work with baby, temperamental mentality to appreciate an arranger.

Ooops again!!!!

Russ,
Not talking about you and your grand children OK buddy? Really, I mean it Russ, OK?

HEY BOO!


BURP!

R.

Really Russ? Really is that all you have to say?

The bass patterns on my i30 will bury any bass patterns on any Panasonic arranger keyboard or Casio. Even the $300 Casio. As a matter of fact, I don't care how much you paid for them.

Yes how many fills do you need. I want to play not constantly push fill in buttons. Korg has great styles. No need to push buttons all the time.

Don't you guys know how to play a turn-a-round "fill" every now and and again? I can even do that and I'm not even a keyboardist and I only know 350,000 chords and 50,000,000 rhythms.

You guys should take lessons from Uncle Dave. He can do it with the left hand walking bass. Anybody wanna bet he can't.

I may have missed something because I was really concentrating very hard (because I bragged too much on the forum and I wanted to impress DonM) but I didn't notice him touching the fills every 4 bars and playing with the keyboard's buttons. He was playing with both hands 99% of the time.

If he ain't a real musician, he sure fool the HE** out of me, because I always thought that I knew a real musician when I saw one ever since I progressed from "Ace Cannon" to Ray Charles and Dexter and company back in 1856.

Take some time off from learning 3 chord tunes and practice, practice, practice something hard. If you learn "Darn That Dream," "Body And Soul" will become like "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."

Donny,
Is it still storming?

Boo, It didn't take me anything near 20 years to figure that out. You must be a slow learner.
BTW, there are lots of forums for REAL musicians. Most of the guys there are young, because the booze and drugs tend to kill them at early ages. Don't let the door hit you in your Coonass butt!

DonM

Boo, I WAS JUST JOKING! Finally got ya, didn't I?
DonM

Don't know why anyone hasn't noticed... but most arrangers nowadays have AUTO-FILL. So you get the fill when you go from one Var to another. You aren't even pressing any buttons for fills, they just happen!

But, as I said... the fill for V4-3 doesn't work as well when asked to go from V4-1. All I would like to see is more fills to make these transitions natural. You wouldn't need any more buttons than you do now.

Anyway, I don't use the buttons. Vars 1-4 are on my FC-7. My hands got better things to do than push buttons!

Don,
I'm relieved! Whew, I thought you were going to ask for a petition to be signed to get rid of me. How in the heck do I put a little face right here???????????????????

Here's a video that illustrates 'trading fours' with the drummer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFjKk6gd-cM

Note that at 0:18 the pianist gives a signal to the drummer and bass player to start into trading fours, i.e., four bars of piano, four bars of drums, in an alternating pattern.

Now, I don't know about the Pa3X, but Variation 4 of the style called Bebop1 on my Pa1XPro plays this pattern. If you have a Pa3X, give it a go. Maybe it's the same.

The trick is to play the first 12, 24, whatever, bars of your tune in Variation 3, then switch into variation 4 for this 'trading fours' for as long as you want, then break back into variation 3 to keep on swinging. It's a lot of fun to jam away on this.

On your other point, hitting a 'fill' twice quickly in succession to trigger repeat fills has been a feature on Korgs for several years - my old i30 had it, and I don't think it was a 'new' thing, even then. Again, a useful feature if, like anything else, it's used judiciously, of course.

Just for the record, Yamaha Tyros models have a similar session type Bebop style that was first introduced, I believe, on the Tyros2...Variation "D" trades fours.

It's also on the PSR S-series, and CVP-Clavinova.


Ian

Tank-a you 124, I'm-a understand-a dis now!

Mark-a Marconi

Yes you can hear the yamaha tyros 3 bebop here

http://www.synthzone.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/338286/2

I've noticed that the Korg arrangers do have a more "live" feel...that's why i use both a pa50sd along with a Yamaha psr 910 on my single gigs...when i play with my duo i also bring my Yamaha mox8...stevec