PianoCheetah is a windows app.

If you can get windows8pro to work with it, great. But no touchscreen specific stuff.

Sound source will be whatever midi devices you have hooked to your pc. Or else the built in .WAV playing softsynth that pianocheetah has.

I plan on moving PianoCheetah to Android tablets in about a year. But that'll take a while to convert all the c++ and win32 API into java and android API.

I don't plan on porting to mac/ios as it seems to be in a downward spiral to me.

Android still needs audio latency fixes and a decent midi api (not to mention hardware midi<=>usb interfaces). But I think I see those off in the future. I'm pretty sure I'll be rewriting all my dang code in about a year's time to get onto Android and drop Windows. In the mean time, windows doesn't suck too bad.

That's disappointing I was considering MAC as my next computer anyway good luck to you and your project keep us posted on your progress.

Well, don't rely on me as an authority on the future of computers


Look at my history - I picked Commodore 64 and Amiga, got really good at each OS. And then Commodore died. I picked Mac over windows95 at first. That ended horribly, too.

The reason I bet on Android over iOS is that

1) I don't want to learn Objective C and iOS. I already know Java and Android is a fun OS with beautiful free docs.

2) Apple no longer seems to have a stranglehold on hardware manufacturers as Android devices (Nexus 10) seem nearly as fancy. Google is no slouch in design.

3) Android's java and (really weird)linux seem more in tune with "work junk" programming. Not a big deal, but a bit of an influence.


Make your OS choice based on the software you use right now. Or just get em all - honestly, computers are dirt cheap these days. And keep in mind that I'm a developer - I'm weird.

As you said, Android still need low latency Audio and MIDI interface native support.

May I ask...what are the benefits of using a computer based software Arranger program versus an all in one conventional Arranger KB?

Well, nothing - if your keyboard supports all the sounds and style formats you need.

If your keyboard doesn't (my Yamaha CP-33 doesn't "do" styles) then you can use a software based arranger.

Also, a software arranger can acquire new features over time. With a keyboard, you may have to buy the next model.

Stephen,
If you search the Web a you'll find a handful of very smart folks have already put a lot of effort into deconstructing and understanding Yamaha styles. Look at sites like psrtutorial.com. Google names like Jorgen Sorensen, Michael Bedesem, Ocenenko Evgeny, Paul Tumelty, not to mention posts by Dan who wrote and supports vArranger. I forget where I downloaded it from, but in my reference folder I have a 30+ page document that describes the Yamaha Style File Format (SFF), at least pre-SFF2 when they introduced guitar mode.) It explains how to edit the CASM to get Yamaha styles to behave like Korg and Roland (where you can have different pattern variations for different chord types.)

I agree with the poster who encouraged you to work with the earlier styles first. I will further advise you to download all of the manuals for the QY-700 sequencer, PSR-730, and PSR-8000. Look at stuff from around 1995 when SFF and XF/XG were new technologies. It seems that back then, Yamaha put more detail in the manuals, perhaps in an effort to allow users to fully understand the new style format and get the most out of it. If you do the research that I'm suggesting (and TEST your hypotheses on an actual machine) you'll know as much about SFF, NTT, NTR as anyone here.

Good luck and we would love you to share your findings, sincerely,
Ted

Hi Ted,

nice ta meet ya.

Yeah, I've already been all over JorgenS and PeterW's sites. (Peter is the one who doc'd the .STY format).

Thanks for the pointer about looking in some of the older reference manuals. That'll probably help if I want to make things as "yamaha" as possible.

My little .txt leadsheet+.STY => midi program seems to work. It doesn't do all the chordal adjustments that yamaha does, but it sounds ok. Sometimes you'll need to mute some tracks...:)

But it at least will keep chordals in the played chord's set for chord tracks, do onbass for bass tracks (although it's not very smart about melody tracks yet).

Code is done, just gotta do the "release stuff". It's still probably buggy, but, eh, that's life. When it's on my site, I'll bug everybody (yet again:) )

Yes of course. I didn't mean to omit Peter Wierzba and Heiko Plate, who also contributed to our knowledge of and ability to manipulate Yamaha styles. And hopefully you will add to that body of work!

Well, I don't have much to add to PeterW's doc.
I did figure out the Ctb2 format. Variation of the Ctab format.
I'll ship it his way.


Ok, next questions...

Are .STY files copyrighted? They usually don't have melodies. Typically, chord changes can't be copyrighted.

Also, if anybody has some links to good groovy pop styles, I'd appreciate em