Arranger style choices

[GRS]

Hi Everyone! I'm Geoff from the Vancouver BC area. I have had a series of arranger keyboards over the last 25 years, currently have a PSR-SX900 and a pair of Go:Keys, 3 & 5. I have no keyboard skills to speak of; if keyboarding was golf, I'd shoot maybe 100, but as a long-time OK guitar strummer and bass player, I know my chords, so can have a great time on my arranger keyboards!
I'm asking if anyone has heard of an AI app which matches songs to the closest arranger style settings for a particular keyboard?
thanks for any suggestions anyone has to offer!

 

[Rayblewit]

Excellent question!

I can pick up a piece of music, a great tune of which I would dearly like to play. But I struggle with its style.

Matching a backing style to assimilate with the melody has always been difficult for me. Getting the right drum pattern for example.

Thanks for starting this thread @GRS.
I will be watching with interest.

 

[Biggles]

Welcome Geoff.

You shoot a 100, wow an expert, my first golf shot landed 2’ from the hole, it went downhill rapidly from there.

I am not aware of any analyser App but with Arrangers the Style is often based on a variation of the song from which the Style was created. For many Arrangers there are folks who like to decipher the actual song name from the Style name so perhaps a search will lead to what you seek.

Years ago I asked the Korg Rep why the Styles were named what they were, apparently if they used the actual Song name then in each country they would need to play royalties. Soon after just for UK users they released a Patch that renamed the Styles.

We saw the Jools Holland Orchestra a few years ago and his guest was Chris Difford from Squeeze, Jools had made a Boogie Woogie arrangement of Cool for Cats that was amazing.

Its good to experiment and try different Style arrangements and Tempo’s for songs.

 

[GRS]

All good stuff, Biggles! And yes, I;m old enough to know who Biggles is/was! My family left the UK in 1956 and moved to Vancouver Canada when I was 14. I'm grateful to them for not sending me to piano lessons back then - I'd totally have become a lounge player, maybe a cruise ship entertainer! But no, very poor keyboard skills to this day, but good enough to amuse my friends and jam colleagues.
There is a good Excel database for several keyboards (I'll find it and add to the thread) but I need something I can refer to in seconds during my jams, where we select songs on the fly, picking numbers from a list of nearly 400 songs, and I try to select the appropiate lead instrument(s) in seconds. No pressure, right?

 

[amwilburn]

Hi Geoff! I never realized your family was from the UK (you have no accent... I did O-Levels and A-Levels, so all my teachers had UK accents except Madame Miller who was actually from Paris. Bet you never realized I did London University Board Secondary school since I don't have an accent either!)

Anyway, I may have mentioned this before, but for finding the chords you can use the Yamaha chord tracker app (for downloaded songs only, it doesn't do streaming).

Anyway, there is a site where someone is undertaking to map styles to their intended songs:

Free Styles for Yamaha Arrangers - StylePlayer.io

Community curated archive of free Styles for Yamaha arranger keyboards.

styleplayer.io

And also, starting with the PSRsx900, Yamaha started including song registrations which pull up the recommended style
Here's the one for PSRsx900

https://usa.yamaha.com/files/download/other_assets/9/1279539/BonusPlaylistForPSR-SX900.zip

There are ones for PSrsx920/sx720, and Genos2 (actually a few for G2; the first one they released had 1599 songs!) and while the sx900 can't read the sx920 ones, the other way around works

btw those little gokeys? Some of the styles are even *better* done than they are on Yamaha; specifically the Livin on a Prayer style. So I will eventually be converting those for PSR's; the thing is, I haven't been able to figure out how in the world to export their custom song sequencing format... I may have to just grab one off the wall and plug it into a work pc


And yes, as you may have noticed, our Richmond store is still closed; I've been working downtown for the last couple months. I expect to be back in Richmond ... soon ish...

And as for being able to call up the style you need instantly; that's what I've been talking about for the last few years: registrations, and you just save the registration as the song name so that you can find it easily.

Cheers.
Mark

 

[Rayblewit]

Can anyone suggest a relevant yamaha style for "Rainy Night in Georgia"
I have the Brook Benton score (written by Tony Joe White. . btw)
I can play the melody and chords quite well, but sounds nothing like Brook's voice.
The vocals dominate this tune so getting an instrumental to sound right is a difficult task for me.

BTW.. I can scan and make PDF copy of the sheet music if anyone is interested.
PM me with your email address . . Don't post it here !

Ray

 

[Biggles]

Cannot specifically name a Yamaha Style for you for obvious reasons.

Suggest you try one of the Jazz Styles, slow down the temp to suit and change the voicings.

It is good to experiment

 

[Gunnar J]

Hi Ray.
I'm not sure about wat kb model you have, but here is 3 soulful ballad styles from G2 R&B section that could fit if close the ears and let the good will rule ...

 

[Rayblewit]

Cannot specifically name a Yamaha Style

Thanks anyway Col.

It is good to experiment

Indeed! And I found a Yamaha style "country ballad" . . Sounds pretty good so far.

. . 3 soulful ballad styles from G2 R&B section that could fit . .

Thanks very much @Gunnar J
We may be in for a wet day today confined to stay indoors. So I will have plenty of time to try these out.

 

[nakeyer]

Hmm... It is really something very strange for me. Here most members are musicians (with more or less musical education and years of practice). HOW can it be so - that the musician who played on different musical instruments can not recognise the type os Musical Style!! How it can be?? Each arranger gives you a lot of styles, but in common they are 8 Beat, 16 Beat, Waltz, etc... Is it really a problem to play your favorite sonng using ANY of them?? Or may be you want the accompaniment be absoluttely the same as the original? On that case you need to play not with Style but with MIDI file!!
My IMHO...

 

[GRS]

Hi Geoff! I never realized your family was from the UK (you have no accent... I did O-Levels and A-Levels, so all my teachers had UK accents except Madame Miller who was actually from Paris. Bet you never realized I did London University Board Secondary school since I don't have an accent either!)

Anyway, I may have mentioned this before, but for finding the chords you can use the Yamaha chord tracker app (for downloaded songs only, it doesn't do streaming).

Anyway, there is a site where someone is undertaking to map styles to their intended songs:

Free Styles for Yamaha Arrangers - StylePlayer.io

Community curated archive of free Styles for Yamaha arranger keyboards.

styleplayer.io

And also, starting with the PSRsx900, Yamaha started including song registrations which pull up the recommended style
Here's the one for PSRsx900

https://usa.yamaha.com/files/download/other_assets/9/1279539/BonusPlaylistForPSR-SX900.zip

There are ones for PSrsx920/sx720, and Genos2 (actually a few for G2; the first one they released had 1599 songs!) and while the sx900 can't read the sx920 ones, the other way around works

btw those little gokeys? Some of the styles are even *better* done than they are on Yamaha; specifically the Livin on a Prayer style. So I will eventually be converting those for PSR's; the thing is, I haven't been able to figure out how in the world to export their custom song sequencing format... I may have to just grab one off the wall and plug it into a work pc


And yes, as you may have noticed, our Richmond store is still closed; I've been working downtown for the last couple months. I expect to be back in Richmond ... soon ish...

And as for being able to call up the style you need instantly; that's what I've been talking about for the last few years: registrations, and you just save the registration as the song name so that you can find it easily.

Cheers.
Mark

Many thanks for this, Mark! Please let me know when you get back to Richmond, and I will come by to trade the G:K3 toward a PSR SX920.