Riceeroni9, if you're writing tunes like "Round Midnight," Body And Soul," "All The Things You Are," etc. good luck trying to do 2 or 3 in your life time. Lol!!! If you're doing R&R or R&B, you should do a minimum of a couple of hundred a month eh? Ha ha!

Hi Boo:

No... I'm more interested in creating an equivalent to "Stardust" or "Laura"... LOL! Good to hear from you again. I hope you are surviving those sometimes nasty winters up there in John Denver Land. (A far cry from "N'awlins.")

Your point is well made and I agree, today's music won't hold a candle to the old standards we grew up with.

All the best,

Dave Rice

Thanks, Donnie, Dennis and Dan:

Gotta go get my conversion tables out... LOL! I'm guessing this is going to be on the cusp of affordability for me. I just spent my children's inheritance on the 910 Yammie. If only I possessed the wealth and talent of Don Mason.

It really does look like an interesting product. Do you know of any youtube videos showing the different aspects of this product from receipt, initial setup, it's use during the creative process and then the final conversion into what will become MP3 format songs? I'll do a lookup asap, but if you know of any really informative videos, it might save me some time filtering through the wheat from the chaff... LOL!

Thanks,

Dave Rice

If you want to look at the screen layout, there is some videos from a french user explaining some things...

http://www.varranger.com/vforum/index.php/topic,878.0.html

Thanks, Fran and Dan:

The video was impressive. Unfortunately, the artist and the cameraman did not provide me with the essentials I need for my decision making process. The ultimate result was not displayed but I get the "drift." Thanks, Fran. Much appreciated.

Dan: The link does not work but I'll write it down and plug in each letter and slash, etc. manually in an attempt to see what you generously provided.

B-T-W... I never use MIDI but might be interested in converting MIDI files to styles if I ever run across something that might jazz up a composition's intro, middle break and outro. I'm most interested to know if varranger will "handshake" with my 910 Yamaha Arranger and a PC or Laptop via USB... or will MIDI cabling be required no matter what?

Thanks for all your trouble.

Dave Rice

(A few of my songs can be heard at the SongRamp - unfortunately, I don't have a link to my page there.) I abandoned the ShowCase site for lack of real music biz folks participation.

Dave this all depends on your sound engine - in this case the Yammie?

Does it have a USB b port? That is the one that looks like a fat "D" , and do Yammie provide USB midi drivers? If the answer is yes to both, then no problems using the USB as the midi interface

Connect your USB cable from the yammie to the PC, select the Yamaha USB Midi as the output in vA, select the Yamaha mode and off you go

Dan has done a pretty good job in getting Yamaha styles to play correctly. AFAIK, you can store all your Yammie styles onto the vA usb thumb drive...and load and play!

There are a few Yammie PSR710 styles already in the styles folder...but you would want to add your total collection I would assume?

I say afaik, as I use mostly Roland styles with vA.

Dennis

here the link again.

http://www.varranger.com/vforum/index.php/topic,878.0.html

If you have the 910, why do you need vArranger?
I don't say that there is no need, but I want to be sure that you will have a use of it.

For the PSR-S910, you only have to plug a USB cable to the PC.
It will be used as the master controller and the sound module.

Hi Dan:

Thanks for reposting the link. I looked at it by typing it in manually. It was impressive but failed to show me what I wanted to really see in order to make an intelligent determination.

Your question is a good one. With the 910, I probably don't need vArranger... but I want to know enough to make an informed decision. Naturally, I'd rather have the 950 or a T-4 but it's a question of affordability. Songwriter's are crawling out of the woodwork and the competition is fierce, so I need a "leg up" and Arrangers offer that option.

Miden clarified the ability to use vArranger with the 910. My thinking is that many styles not available for the 910 might be created or modified for use on the 910 via vArranger. It appears that the cost would not justify the acquisition but I wish you well and will continue to watch the many changes and new technology available to folks in the music creating biz.

Regards,

Dave Rice

As a songwriter IMO would only needs a piano or guitar that would be sufficient to write songs on a basic level scratchpad,....and let all the rest of the magic happen in the studio with singers and some good musicians.