I agree, Kerry, and this old brush has so many miles on it that it is damned near worn out what remains of the bristle.

All the best,

Gary

Winding the clock back to when styles used to have 2 variations and no or very limited effects. We are really spoiled for choice. Are there any particular styles that stood out from old arrangers that you’ve owned?

Some of the rock styles were really good, and the legacy voices, such as the Growl Sax, and Steel Guitar, were outstanding. On the old PSR-5700, which had some incredible styles and the best grand piano voice and vibes that Yamaha ever created. It was limited to just 35 onboard styles if I recall, and about the same number of voices, most of which were very good. It was a beast to haul around, tipping the scales at 51 pounds and had a built-in 50-watt amp that sounded fantastic for living room parties.

Gary

Not sure about Yamaha, but one of the things I’ve always liked about Roland’s was, they didn’t change their style format ever… or at least as long as I’ve used them, starting with an RA90. If a Roland could save a style, if it wasn’t burned into ROM with no backup options at all, you can still load that style into a modern Roland and it plays!

Mind you, there’s a fair bit of nostalgia looking back at the early days of arrangers. It’s a lot easier to remember the few styles that DID work out perfectly (often not remembering the myriad that didn’t!) and it’s convenient to forget about how we used to have to reshape our repertoires to concentrate on songs the styles did well and not perform the songs that they didn’t!

One of the things I really like to do is turn off all style parts other than drums, bass and rhythm guitar. Does the style now sound too busy? Too song specific? Surprisingly, often the answer is no. We sometimes forget that we now have two or more extra Parts than we used to in the arranger’s early years. Strip even modern styles down to the early levels of complexity, all of a sudden there’s a ton more room to breathe, to play, to sing or dance!

HI Diki

I have never come across a keyboard/organ built from the 90s on; that the style couldn’t be played on later instruments, playing later styles on earlier models is another matter though.
Simplifying a style is always good but, I have found that if you take more than 2 voices (Or sometimes even 1) from the style, the style completely falls apart and is pretty much unusable. (This is particularly noticeable with Yamaha styles)

Bill

I regularly strip out all but bass drums and rhythm guitar, most styles sound fine. Mind you, this depends on how well you can add back enough to give the style some flavor…

In a way, I tend to approach this as I would have playing in a four piece band. You got a drummer, a bassist and a guitarist who can only play one thing. You need a Rhodes comp and a horn section, that’s all you…. You need a piano and some strings, ditto.

Until the advent of SMF’s or arrangers, that’s how EVERYBODY did it! You figured out how to condense the many parts in a recorded arrangement into something two hands could play and still capture the flavor of the original. Not one hand. Two…

That’s why I’m a big fan of the chord sequencer on songs with a repeating structure. Regular style play forces your left hand into doing something that you wouldn’t in a real band. Everybody already knows the chords (except the drummer! 😂). Your left hand can play string lines, or clavinet chops or whatever, without having to play every chord on the beat.

I guess if you want to still drive the bus one handed, strip the style to the rhythm guitar and the piano comp in addition to the bass and drums, you can do the one handed thing. But an awful lot of standard keyboard playing technique is a two handed thing, from regular piano playing to rhythmic chopping between hands, to lead sound bending technique etc.. To be quite honest, it’s why I don’t use styles a whole lot, live. Having to tie up over half of my abilities to input a dumb chord so the arranger can have all the fun playing the actual parts just seemed such a waste!

I like playing!

All I can suggest is, use the chord sequencer, or make an SMF of the style so the chords are already in there, then strip out as much as possible. For starters, you get the fun of actually playing, but also, you can play something different every time and get away from the style’s intrinsic repetition.

The thing is, probably most of us here are old enough to remember playing back before machines could do it all for us. Be honest…. Didn’t you have more fun back then? 🎹😎

But yes, I guess you pull a style apart, strip it down, it might not always be what YOU’D play, but it’s usually enough.