Better to not talk about vArranger in this thread. I don't like to change the initial subject

By the way Groovy, you seems to have done some good and hard work for your product. No need to be sarcastic about vArranger

Hi Henni

I don't get involved on this forum because of my bad English. However I come to read the speeches every day
( since Synthzone exists ).
I'm not sure I understand you well, but here's what I understood
this software is able to communicate with a Yamaha PSR keyboard (only) . It therefore appears that it transmits the exclusive codes to the engine
The software itself does not have emulation of the Yamaha engine. So he seems unable to play anything other than a generator PSR ; in XG format .

As it is said and everyone seems to have understood , the use of a PSR is mandatory and there is no Yamaha expander with a
style reading .
The question is: What use it to use this software with a PSR since it does nothing more . If it is not that we can then dispose
a well-mentioned touch interface on a PC screen with the advantages that this can bring for some.

The PC's transport to a scene becomes problematic so that it has just this interface that won't be able to compete with the PSR itself.
Emulating an engine and the sounds that go well with , this is at least 10 times more programming work and I know what I'm talking about.
Not sure that the team here , who didn't deserve it anyway , is considering launching this into such a challenge ? Especially for a niche market that
remains very modest.

Thank you Henni for sharing all your experiences from your interest in arrangers and we are always attentive to all
innovation in this field that we are passionate about .

Hi Magali,

As I said, if this software could add the Genos drums & voices to my PSR S770, I would have definitely purchased it.

The demo is free, gives you ALL the styles that comes ONLY with the most expensive elite version and is fun to play with. I REALLY like the added effects to many of the styles.

In my opinion the main advantage of this software is the ability to add more effects to the styles. (Plus of course 8 variations, 8 OTS settings, two Fills/Breaks, extremely easy style editing, the use of registrations etc) I would not attempt performing live with it - yes, I am sure it CAN be done, but it will not be easy until one gets used to it.

I also cannot pay a quarter of the full price of a new SX900 just for some added effects to some styles. As it stands the newer styles as lately available already put the PSR S series in a totally new category sound wise.

But I certainly enjoy listening to those effects. I think Yamaha relies very heavily on effects (they are masters in this department). Groovy Band Live makes the Yamaha guitars sound even more amazing!

For studio work this will be a nice option to have & hence the need for a style sequencer to be urgently added to the software. Ad to that a built in digital human voice harmonizer and then this would no longer compete with similar software arrangers but be in a niche of it's own.

The styles from Groovy Band live DO sound better than the default styles of the PSR S770 - I'd even say they sound MUCH, MUCH better and to achieve that must have taken quite some initiative. So I give the developers credit for that.

Thus it really might be the best sounding Soft Synth currently available even though it requires the Yamaha sound engine to do so. If you want studio quality sounds, you should seriously consider looking into this product. And nothing better than their free demo to explore all of this hands-on for yourself...

Henni

Someone at the PSRTutorial site made the following BRILLIANT suggestion:



Now THIS is something that developers can seriously ponder upon... Just imagine the new possibilities as you can now apply FULL DSPs to ALL style parts!!! Styles can then be sold as registrations that apply the correct DSP settings to each midi channel for each individual style.

Some more Groovy Band Live! demos recorded using the demo program to my PSR S770:

Groovy07

Groovy08

Groovy09

Groovy10

Groovy11

Groovy12

Groovy13

Groovy14

Groovy15

More to come...

WOW!!: Thanks for such a review. Given your standing and 10+ years long career in this forum (and others) it should be clear to everybody that we did NOT pay or influence you in any way.
In the splash screen of our software we write that our product is designed " .... with love, passion, and attention to detail ...". We are glad that this shows up and is noticed by the users.

With our software, even a 2 generations old mid tier arranger can, sound and content-wise, compete in the same league of big guns battleships. And certainly give great and renewed pleasure while playing it.

But wait! There is more.

Features-wise Groovyband Live! outclasses any Yamaha arranger, irrespective of price. Here is a (surely largely incomplete) list of what you add to your table/workflow:

• Modern flat UI (inspired by the latest design trends in Win 10 and Android). Razor sharp graphics that scales to any resolution and screen size. Natively touch enabled, but you can also augment it with keyboard, mouse, and fully configurable physical controls from attached midi devices. More in depth discussion.
  Sensible layout and real estate utilization to convey a lot of useful information, be easy on your eyes and offer easy targets for your fingers.

• Native first class support for up to 4 midi input devices (keyboards, pedalboard, control surfaces).
  You decide the size, action type of the keyboards to use to play chords, lead voices, auxiliary voices to embellish your performance. You decide what physical controls you need to offload (almost) ANY parameter/command editing task.
  Auxiliary voices (playable on a second/third keyboard/pedalboard, with configurable splits/layers) are saved with the style, and hence they are automatically instantly configured at each style change.

• Limitless utilization of DSP power built-in the XG sound engine. You can assign all the available DSPs (whose number depends on the actual keyboard you have: see this discussion) to whatever part you wish (style, lead, aux) with no restriction. You can even use 2 inserts per part. The unleashed power is clearly showcased in the preset styles and readily noticed by Henni.
  But power is nothing without control. That's why we have implemented a visual DSP editor that lets you freely experiment everything with immediacy with few clicks (or finger touches). And also have a clear visual feedback of what is going on. If you can assign/move/change a DSP algorithm and/or parameters in seconds with the sequencer running, then the limit is only your imagination! See more with the manual chapter on Dsp Editor. We have also implemented a Pedal Wah effect that is modulable with a pedal (surprise!, surprise!), and Rotary Slow/Fast whose speed can be changed with a pedal (or any other switch/controller, including mod wheel).
  With Yamaha's firmware these seemingly elementary actions cannot be done! With Groovyband Live! you can!

• Smooth (= glitch free) transition of OTSes. When you change an OTS the decaying tail of the old voices (and effects) is not abruptly cut/fed into the new effects (if any) with unpleasant sound glitches.
  Groovyband Live! uses all the unused hardware resources available (DSP units and midi channels) to dynamically assign new resources to the new voices, leaving the old ones playing/dying with their old channel/DSPs. This strategy is so effective that you can even hold some notes, change the OTS, play new notes and hear at the same time both the old and new voices with their respective effects!
  The more free DSPs you have the more this is effective. Groovyband Live! automatically and transparently uses whatever is available to achieve the maximum benefit possible: you only notice the final result, which is amazing even on a PSR-S, which is the most resources constrained of all Yamaha arrangers.

• Advanced style structure. Each style has 3 Intros/Endings (as usual), but has 8 Mains, 8 Fills, 2 Breaks. All the mixer parameters (including mutes), DSPs and Voices are independently configurable for each section (intro/ending/main). You can also change on the fly by pushing a single button (with immediate feedback from the playing style) the pattern played by each part in each of the 8 main variations. Mix & match everything to countless possible combinations with little effort.
  Thanks to the ample real estate and the well thought UI, you have always a clear visualization of what is going on (and you can quickly change everything without leaving the main screen).
  Given this flexibility in editing and the ample availability of mains, you can easily arrange the whole song by assigning a (heavily) customised main variation to each part of your song (chorus, verse, ...). Of course you can copy and reorder mains as you see fit, so that their order always reflect the natural order of your performance.
  In a while you can readily experiments dozens of combinations of patterns, mutes, (edited) voices, DSPs. Copy a main before attempting further changes, and when you are done with your brainstorming reorder everything the more logical way.
  Groovyband Live! never hinders your creativity: whatever you want to experiment is always only a couple of clicks away with realtime feedback from the running sequencer.
  During the editing process, and without stopping the sequencer, styles can be saved either on-disk or, even faster (= single click), in on-board scratchpad memory locations.

• Flexible and clever Style Conductor. You have a fill button for each Main variation: you hence decide where a fill should you bring to. Groovyband Live! knows where you are (let's say Main 2) and where you want to go (let's say Main 6) and builds on the fly a suitable fill taking into consideration the complexity of the starting and landing variations. You can bias this dynamic fill building process by explicitly requesting a fill closer to the source or destination. The fill can be synced to next measure start, even if played in advance. You can request an Half bar fill for each division which has an even number of beats per bar. You can force an immediate beat reset to the measure start to cope with a false start or odd measure (i.e: 3/4 bar in a 4/4 song). The beat reset function always acts at the end of the current beat, and hence it is 100% musical and your tempo is always exactly preserved. You can also spice-up your running main with an in-line fill that does not reset the pattern natural looping cadence.
  You have two breaks (busier, simpler) and they, as the fills, are context aware: the same break is more or less crowded of playing parts depending the context it is played in: you never gets a disrupting 8 parts break while you are only playing a 2 parts drum&bass. But the same break will be 8 parts wide if later the context calls for it!
  Intros and Endings can be looped (useful while editing) and if an intro is used as a break the possible sequenced count-in bars are automatically skipped.
  This reinforces the fact that Groovyband Live! is not a dumb midi player with some built-in mechanic transposition rules: it has smart algorithms that run under the hood, and tries hard to behave like a real band made of humans!

• Randomization. The velocity of played notes can be randomized to varying degrees of "humanization". As usual the algorithms are clever enough to know what is possible (and credible) and what is only a computer artifact. If you strum a guitar chord, all the strings (played a few milliseconds apart) can be hard or softly hit, but you definitely cannot play some of them hard and the others significantly softer.
  We also randomize, where possible, the noises of mega voices (= we select similar but different samples) so that a looped guitar part never sounds identical to the previous loop.
  We know all the fingerings possible on a real guitar (for all the chords and neck positions). Whenever possible (a real guitarist cannot play all the chords in all the possible keys) we strum guitar parts only using actually playable finger tabs, and when a given chord can be played in different ways we randomize the actual finger tab depending on the context (and keeping into account the current position of the "virtual" left hand on the neck).
  All this randomization going on automatically under the hood is subtle enough so that you do not consciously perceive it, but all adds to the realism and illusion of a real Live! performance.
  We also implement a virtual round robin to all drumkits by subtly varying many sound parameters (ADSR, cutoff, resonance, ...) to each stroke, so that no two strokes are identical to each other.

For now we stop here. There is still a lot to say! More to come in a following post(s) ......

I pondered all day about this software. Here are my thoughts in words:

1. a Chord sequencer is a MUST have - every studio utilizing any Yamaha styles should have this software.
2. Limiting styles between the different versions is a serious put-off.
3. If more people purchased this, I would have loved to create/modify more high quality styles for them.
4. The existing styles really are of outstanding quality - ready for recordings as is.
5. The extra variations, breaks, OTS's & fills can mean a lot for detailed recordings.
6. I like the registration function.
7. It would be nice if voices from installed packs could also be used in styles.
8. That way I could add real Revo drums which would boost the styles tremendously.
9. That way I could add human choir voices which would boost some styles also.
10. If I had the funds, I would have purchased a copy.
11. I could do a LOT with the free demo program if used for recordings only. I could create extremely high quality backtrax with it as is plus the demo version comes with ALL the styles.
12. The demo runs for around 10 minutes at a time forever. Enough to record one song completely.

As for my contribution on this thread - I received a 63MB demo version of Groovy Band Live! for free. Apart from saving, it is fully functional & I am having a blast with it. The least I could do for them is to evaluate it properly and to give my personal feedback on it. On top of this, I've ALWAYS been known to make demos of any high quality styles I discover and share those demos with others. I thoroughly enjoyed recording those style demos. They are ALL on my phone and I listen to all of them a few times a day as good styles always inspire me.

Henni

Henni, send us an email (contact us page) with attached the VCE files of all the Revo Drums installed into your keyboard (the VCE files encode the Bank MSB:LSB:PC).

We will prepare a special Groovyband Live! "Henni edition" just for you with built-in the required voices (calling your Revo Drums expansion pack voices) you can substitute into the preset styles as you will.

Remember that I stated recently that with Yamaha new things pop up so frequently that I could hardly keep up with it. This is yet another one of those.

1. Not too long ago the GHENOS Revo Drum pack revolutionized my PSR S770 and caused a huge improvement in all styles modified since then.

2. It is hardly a month later and here I find yet another product that will do same. Please take note of the styles produced with this package in future as now I can play with the effects also - something I longed to do for a very long time already.

Yamaha has NO!!! competition in this regard. There is always something new to do & to try if you are in the Yamaha camp.

Decided to do some side by side style comparisons. First version is the ABSOLUTE best version I have of the style on my PSR S770. Second version is the standard Groovyband Live! style. Judge for yourself:

Country

Ballad