Hi Dan,

Yes, absolutely!

I just verified the playback of the following XF MIDI files on a Yamaha Clavinova CVP-609

http://www.DavidApps.net/TestFiles.zip

I found the matching Styles from the Music Finder Database.

How Deep is Your Love.mid
Style = Boy Band Ballad
Tempo = 110


I Don’t Know How to Love Him.mid
Style = Love Song
Tempo = 110


Mamma Mia.mid
Style = Disco Teens
Tempo = 120


Rivers of Babylon.mid
Style = Disco Hands
Tempo = 120


Spanish Eyes.mid
Style = 8 Beat Adria
Tempo = 112


Music of the Night.mid
Style = Broadway Ballad
Tempo = 100


What a Wonderful World.mid
Style = 12-8 Ballad
Tempo = 86



After loading the XF MIDI file and selecting the appropriate Style you have to press these buttons in the following order:

1.
Under STYLE CONTROL
Press the SYNC/START button

2.
Under SONG CONTROL
While holding down the STOP button, press the PLAY/PAUSE button


3.
Under STYLE CONTROL
Press the START/STOP button


The selected Style will begin to play in sync with the melody line.
The Chords will change automatically as they appear in the display window.


This feature of following Chords in an XF MIDI file is built into every Yamaha Arranger Keyboard.

Hi Diki,


Yes, it is certainly more natural to use the Chord Sequencer. As you said, this offers greater flexibility and spontaneity.

I would assume a professional player would prefer to exploit the advantages of a Chord Looper.

The auto tracking of Chords embedded within an XF MIDI file is more of a learning aid for beginners to help them learn a new song.

Now they don’t have to worry about playing the correct chords while trying to master the melody line.

Without the auto Chord Tracking, the beginner will be stuck on hearing their favorite Style play on the C Major chord which may sound rather discordant!

This is incredible ! How do you know this feature?

With the vArranger software, I can select a style, enter few chords in a grid, and then export the song to midifile.

vArranger write XF chords too in the exported midifile

Can you try if my test midifile allows the following chords feature too?

It seems we can't upload files here

Here is it : Test.mid

Hi Dan,

SUCCESS!!!

Your Test.mid file played back perfectly on the Yamaha Clavinova CVP-609.

I picked the 8 Beat Adria Style and your XF MIDI file changed the following 9 Chords:


Bb
Fm7
Ab7
C#Maj7
Ebm
F7
Bbm
A#


Your arrangement sounds very professional.

I see that you have the following Style Markers:


Main A
Fill In AA
Main B
Ending A


Thanks a million for sharing this.

I learned about this special capability of Yamaha Arrangers to track XF META Chord Events from the Yamaha XF Format Specs.
Please see Page 19 about Style Messages.


http://www.jososoft.dk/yamaha/pdf/xfspec.pdf


It appears Yamaha added these XF extensions to their original XG Format to allow Styles, Chords and Lyrics information to be included in a MIDI file.

This was to allow all Yamaha Arrangers to display the Chords and Lyrics and have the Chords change automatically.

The XGWorks MIDI Sequencer made it very easy to enter your Style Information with precise control over where you wanted to have the Main A, B, C, D sections and Fill-Ins including Intros and Endings.

This was the best MIDI Sequencer from Yamaha specifically targeted to help Yamaha Arranger Players sequence complete songs using the built-in styles of your instrument.

Yamaha stopped supporting this wonderful program once they took over Steinberg and began promoting Cubase.

I have doctored my 8 Test MIDI files to play back using the Piano Voice and the correct Tempo.

http://www.davidapps.net/testfiles.zip

Thanks for testing, this is great. One of my users will be happy

I believe we may have a Universal Solution thanks to MuseScore.

MuseScore can read the META Chord Events in any XF MIDI file and Export that out to a Standard MIDI file.

What is so special about this Standard MIDI file is that MuseScore automatically translates the META Chord Events into actual Notes of the Chord and inserts them into a separate MIDI Channel.

This means if you set your Arranger Keyboard to track for Chords on this MIDI Channel, the Chords will change automatically when you select any Style.

This should work on all Arranger Keyboards from Korg, Roland, Ketron, Casio, Wersi and other vendors. You are no longer limited to Yamaha Arranger Keyboards for auto chord tracking.

To run this test on your favorite Arranger, download this ZIP file from:


http://www.davidapps.net/testfiles.zip


The MuseScore folder has 8 Standard MIDI files:

• Clocks.mid
• How Deep Is Your Love.mid
• I Don’t Know How to Love Him.mid
• Mamma Mia.mid
• Rivers Of Babylon.mid
• Spanish Eyes.mid
• The Music Of The Night.mid
• What a Wonderful World.mid

The Melody Track is on MIDI Channel 1

The Chord Track is on MIDI Channel 2

If you set you Arranger Keyboard to track for Chords on MIDI Channel 2, you would most likely hear the Chords change as you play back any Style.

You can download MuseScore 3.6.2 for FREE from:


https://musescore.org/en


If this test is successful then we have found the cheapest way to create MIDI files that will automatically change your Chords during Style Play.

1.
If your source is a Music XML file, just open the file in MuseScore and export to a Standard MIDI file.

2.
If your source is an XF MIDI file, export that to a Standard MIDI file.

3.
You can manually write the melody line in MuseScore, add the Chord symbols and export that to a Standard MIDI file.

4.
You can use the NoteReader Premium App ($9.99) to take a picture of your printed Score Sheet, download the MIDI file, open that file in MuseScore, add the Chord symbols and export to a Standard MIDI file.


In each case, MuseScore will insert the notes of the Chords onto a separate MIDI Channel.

I wonder if there’s a market for software that could convert the chord metadata in XF files into the file format that drives the chord sequencers in Korg’s and Yamaha’s? I know that Korg can save the chord sequences, I’m not 100% sure if Yamaha can store them separately (anyone?) but some way of editing and saving in these formats might be of great use to owners of those arrangers...

Also, what about conversion from BIAB format files? There’s a huge and public resource of BIAB files (for instance, I’ve had the entire RealBook series in BIAB format for decades) that all contain the chords for thousands of songs. Surely some enterprising programmer could find a way to convert these to Yamaha and Korg’s chord sequencer file format?

With any luck, the designers of these chord sequencer formats didn’t stray too far from SMF norms (Yamaha at least stayed close to SMF for even its style format, you can simply change a Yamaha style’s suffix from STY to MID and most DAW’s will read it). Now that the trend is to chord sequencers with multiple sequences all linked (so you can restructure the song at will) it would be wonderful if you could import an XF file or a BIAB file and designate sections (like verse, chorus, solos, intros and endings etc) to export as different files (like I said, I’m not sure how Yamaha link up the different sections in their file format). As long as the format isn’t too proprietary, I doubt it’s an impossible task...

Each new innovation in arranger tech (or old innovation! The chord sequencer has been around for decades) seems to bring capabilities that allow us to leverage older resources. I hope designers of these new features take into account the vast existing resources for other related features, and make translation of old to new possible...

Hi Diki,


I completely agree with your thoughts and observations.

Indeed, the various vendors of Auto-Accompaniment devices and programs would do us a big favor if they could get together and come up with a unifying standard or some exchange format so that Chord Data can be freely transported across different entities.

The Music Notation Programs have settled on the Music XML format to make their data portable across different programs. This was an excellent move.

We need something similar to move Chord data between Yamaha, Korg, Roland, Ketron, Wersi and of course Band-in-a-Box which has grown a large following.

Yamaha took the initiative early in the game when they published the XF Format Specs way back in 1999.

This made it possible to embed Chords, Lyrics and Styles into a MIDI file.

I am studying how Yamaha implemented the Chord META Events in an XF MIDI file.

It appears to be very straightforward and logical.

For example, this is how the following Chords are mapped to their Chord MetaData Values for C

MetaData________Chord
43 7B 01 31 00 7F 7F C
43 7B 01 31 01 7F 7F C6
43 7B 01 31 13 7F 7F C7
43 7B 01 31 07 7F 7F Caug
43 7B 01 31 08 7F 7F Cm
43 7B 01 31 09 7F 7F Cm6
43 7B 01 31 0A 7F 7F Cm7
43 7B 01 31 11 7F 7F Cdim
43 7B 01 31 12 7F 7F Cdim7
43 7B 01 31 20 7F 7F Csus4


This pattern keeps repeating itself for all the Keys.

For example, the only change is going from 31 to 32 for D


43 7B 01 32 00 7F 7F D
43 7B 01 32 01 7F 7F D6
43 7B 01 32 13 7F 7F D7
43 7B 01 32 07 7F 7F Daug
43 7B 01 32 08 7F 7F Dm
43 7B 01 32 09 7F 7F Dm6
43 7B 01 32 0A 7F 7F Dm7
43 7B 01 32 11 7F 7F Ddim
43 7B 01 32 12 7F 7F Ddim7
43 7B 01 32 20 7F 7F Dsus4


Here again, the only change is going from 32 to 33 for E


43 7B 01 33 00 7F 7F E
43 7B 01 33 01 7F 7F E6
43 7B 01 33 13 7F 7F E7
43 7B 01 33 07 7F 7F Eaug
43 7B 01 33 08 7F 7F Em
43 7B 01 33 09 7F 7F Em6
43 7B 01 33 0A 7F 7F Em7
43 7B 01 33 11 7F 7F Edim
43 7B 01 33 12 7F 7F Edim7
43 7B 01 33 20 7F 7F Esus4


Once again, the only change is going from 33 to 34 for F


43 7B 01 34 00 7F 7F F
43 7B 01 34 01 7F 7F F6
43 7B 01 34 13 7F 7F F7
43 7B 01 34 07 7F 7F Faug
43 7B 01 34 08 7F 7F Fm
43 7B 01 34 09 7F 7F Fm6
43 7B 01 34 0A 7F 7F Fm7
43 7B 01 34 11 7F 7F Fdim
43 7B 01 34 12 7F 7F Fdim7
43 7B 01 34 20 7F 7F Fsus4


It is easy to guess the MetaData value for any Chord in any Key once you understand this pattern.

It should be a very easy task for any developer to include XF capability given the simplicity of the mapping scheme.

The XF Format should be embraced by all vendors like the Music XML format, unless there is a licensing issue.