I frequently play my sax with backing tracks in restaurants and one of my favorite "fans" kept asking me "please Randy can you possibly play Kirk Whalum's "Desperately""? If you listen to (my Hero!) Kirk's AMAZING performance on this song, you will see why the lady kept requesting it....

Kirk Whalum "Desperately"


Kirk is a musical genius for sure!

I listened and listened to the song....and it is an absolutely beautiful song for sure and typical Kirk Whalum!..... So I scoured the internet hoping to find a backing track for that song....with zero luck.... Well, after the umteenth request from this lady for that song, one day I fired up the Tyros 4 and decided to see if I could create my own backing track. At the outset, I wondered "how in the world will I ever get a a backing track to work for this song?" As we musicians know, where there is a will, there is often a way....and well, my Tyros 4 led the way! Thanks to Yamaha and their amazing sounds and a great couple styles, I was able to create my own version of "Desperately". I fudged a little on the chord progression to keep it simpler for me. But in the end, after some serious head scratching, and a lot of style auditions.... I was able to create a very usable version of the song. If you listen you'll also note that I stole the Intro from the original version before the Tyros kicks in....

Randy's Track


In the ultimate test at the restaurant, my lady friend was surprised and seemed elated when I performed "Desperately" for her.

From my perspective, thanks to Yamaha sounds and styles, I was able to get close enough to make this wonderful song part of my repertoire. This backing track is yet another reason that Yamaha will likely always be in my arsenal when I am making music!

Hope you enjoyed my "sax player's perspective" as to yet another reason why I love arrangers - and Yamaha in particular!

I can see that you also own Korg pa900.
What is pros of yamaha over Korg style wise?

randy ... that was really cool ... my only disappointment was not hearing YOU playing the lead ...

Tony - thanks! I will see if I can get a recording of me playing the lead...I'm no Kirk W but it is a cool song and I enjoy playing that tune.

Jamman - Didn't have a Korg in the house when I did that track - but had I owned the Korg I would definitely have considered the PA900 as well as the source for the track. Now that I have had PA900 for a while, to me, here are the things I've noted about the Korg:
- More "live sounding" on many of the styles
- Many nice styles cut for specific songs in several genres
- Touch display and better control for mic settings and great vocal processor
- Nice variety of drum kits and integration w/the styles
- Several instruments are so close to Yamaha sounds you would have a difficult time telling them apart
- Songbook feature simplifies saving songs with my settings
- On the negative side, triggering endings, breaks, and fills can be tricky to time - sometimes resulting in volume differences or synchronization issues
- File system "appears" to be more difficult, i.e., I have to load banks of styles into the board - can't seem to play them from a USB stick
- Some sounds, i.e., saxes are not as accurate to me as the Yamaha sounds (but, being a sax player I tend to not use the sax sounds when playing the keyboard)

In contrast, here are some things I've noticed about the Yamaha's:
- More "studio sounding" on the majority of styles/sounds
- Allows you to trigger fills, endings, and breaks without regard to the beat you are on
- Simpler (at least to me at this point - but I do have much less experience with my Korg) to access styles on USB media and no need to load them onto the board to play them
- Registration capability can be used to simplify song arrangement, sections, tempos
- Seems (at this point) that there are more multi-pads available in various genres

To sum up, at this point I am happy to have access to both brands. I don't currently take a keyboard to many of my gigs as a soloist although if I do get a 4-hour commitment I will usually take the arranger along and intersperse some instrumentals with it. In the future, I do hope to try some vocals in which case due to the vocal processor on the PA900, I would have to carefully consider which board I would want to use. Bear in mind my thoughts on the boards are based on being a Yammie guy for a long time and only recently acquiring the Korg.

One thing I love about both the the Korg PA900 and the PSRs is the on-board speakers. Makes it much simpler to play the board at home as well as at small crowd gigs without having to take a full PA system.

Thank you for your detailed response, Saxman.
My thoughts exactly with Korg' fills and synchro / vol issues . Plus style variety and bass line issues with some styles.

Randy wrote:
“On the negative side, triggering endings, breaks, and fills can be tricky to time”

I must agree with Randy’s statement; I owned a Pa800 which did not have this problem. I wonder if this can be fixed.

When working with loading and playing new styles the Pa800 was not friendly. Korg has addressed this problem with the Pa800; once understood I found it to be exceptionally easy. You can even rename a style without saving again.

The big plus is that you can make changes in the factory styles and not have to resave them in a different place. Or you can place a new style that you have loaded or edited in its place. That means that the Pa900 can meet more of my style playing needs, the keyboard can become more like me.

John C.

Excellent, Randy.

Very good taste.
Do you remember which style you used?

Congratulations.

Thanks guys! Paulo - I am not positive about the style... I do have it saved somewhere....I'm wondering if it wasn't the one called "Guijira".... You'll note that there are the latin guiero's and dog barks in there on the chorus.... As I recall, that may have been from one of the Latin styles...