Yamahas Midi Song to Style Software

[OldTimerBill]

Hi All,

I wasn’t sure what the proper forum for this question is but this looked the most likely.

Yamaha has a free program called Midi Song to Style. The purpose of the program is to take a midi song file and convert it to a style file that can be used on an arranger keyboard. I am trying to get my head around why you would want to do this? (I have installed the software and it works.)
Is anyone here using this software and how do you use it?

MIDI Song to Style - Overview - Yamaha USA

Convert any standard MIDI file to a ready-to-play Style, complete with intros, endings, main sections and fill-ins. MIDI Song to Style is a new PC software that automatically converts your MIDI file into the most suitable Style data for playing Style on your Arranger workstation. It not only...

usa.yamaha.com

Thanks,

Bill

 

[nakeyer]

Hi Bill!
You know - it will take to you about 10 min to insert markers for Mains , Fills, etc.. in any midi editor. And it will be your Conscious choice, but not the choice of some soft. I think it will be much better. I tried the Midi Song to Style software and I am considering it as a toy (or as a joke).

 

[SeaGtGruff]

I haven't tried it, but I suspect it might be Yamaha's answer to their competitors who have had similar capabilities for years. In other words, I suspect it might be partly a marketing thing (I don't think "gimmick" is really appropriate unless you think other companies' song-to-style tools are also just a "gimmick"), and partly an effort to provide their customers with an easy-to-use tool.

Since I haven't tried it, I can't comment on how successful or unsuccessful it is at doing what it does, or how easy.

However, there have long been third-party tools for converting MIDI songs to styles, or for converting styles from one make and model of keyboard to work on another make and model. Some of those tools are only available for purchase and can be pricey, but others are completely free to download and use.

And as @nakeyer said, you could also do a song-to-style conversion yourself, manually, using a suitable MIDI editor, although that does require having a good working knowledge of how style files are formatted and organized for your particular make and model of keyboard, not to mention a good working knowledge of MIDI data and the Standard MIDI File structure. Since style file formats are proprietary, and keyboard manufacturers generally don't publish the details about their style file formats, the knowledge required to manually convert a song file to a style file can be difficult to come by, and definitely isn't the sort of thing that the average keyboard user is going to be capable of doing without pulling out all of their hair or having a nervous breakdown.

 

[amwilburn]

It works for some songs without much input, it fails miserably at others. It's best, as Nakeyer said, if you insert you own section markers for Section A,B,C,D, intro 1,2,3, and ending 1,2,3 and the fills. However, one thing I don't like is it keeps the relative chord structure of Intros and Endings (meaning you have to tap once, and not touch the chord until the intro or ending is finished), wherease JoSoft's Midi2Style (which came first) automatically flattened bar to its root chord, meaning that intros and endings will play just the 1 chord that you're playing (and it also means you can play various chords for intros and endings and the style will now properly follow you)

As SeaGT just stated, it was in response to the automatic midi to style on board Pa4x (which in theory should have the same strengths and weaknesses, but I found that on the PA4x it inexplicably would change the voice completely, rending it almost useless there.

It works (usually), and that's especially cool when you don't want to set any parameters. But I find Jørgen Sørensen's at

YAMAHA Keyboard - Home

Home of the world's best and greatest YAMAHA Keyboard Resource Site

www.jososoft.dk

to be the more useful style creation tool.

---

www.youtube.com/MarkWilburnTLM/Videos
DX7, CLP300, PSR60, Roland E20 + MT32, CVP309, PSRS970, Fender Std Strat, Squier RB3 Midi Strat, Ibanez SA262, Yamaha CG131, Fujiyama FC390, TUC-Kitty

 

[Cosmos]

Hi All,

I wasn’t sure what the proper forum for this question is but this looked the most likely.

Yamaha has a free program called Midi Song to Style. The purpose of the program is to take a midi song file and convert it to a style file that can be used on an arranger keyboard. I am trying to get my head around why you would want to do this? (I have installed the software and it works.)
Is anyone here using this software and how do you use it?

MIDI Song to Style - Overview - Yamaha USA

Convert any standard MIDI file to a ready-to-play Style, complete with intros, endings, main sections and fill-ins. MIDI Song to Style is a new PC software that automatically converts your MIDI file into the most suitable Style data for playing Style on your Arranger workstation. It not only...

usa.yamaha.com

Thanks,

Bill

I have just managed to run that program as my laptop refused to run it giving a GPU error every time, something that had to do with OpenGL. But now have managed to jump the first hurdle without buying a new computer.

At first it was very simple as you just click on a midi file and drop it inside the program's screen where it tells you to. But I haven't gone beyond that as it was late in the night and had to stop. I will be continuing to learn how it works although I suspected it's going to be sometimes it works right others not.

It will be a good tool for me to be able to create styles for my Genos2. Funnily enough I have a Roland E-80 (of 16 years ago) that lets you 'grab' some bars from a midi file and use them for a style I'm creating or for modifying existing ones. I used this with success usually to modify the style's bass track to be identical or similar to the MIDI file. I'm afraid the Genos2 doesn't do this and for me this was something lacking as it should have been planned in the os etc... in the first place considering the price of the keyboard.

Will let you know further about my progress.

 

[amwilburn]

The Roland G70/E80 both had some *really* advanced features, even compared to today's Genos 1 & 2. Including ability to edit all 16 channels of a style (usually meant major or minor chord variations), and a pretty effective guitar programming mode.

Mark

 

[Cosmos]

The Roland G70/E80 both had some *really* advanced features, even compared to today's Genos 1 & 2. Including ability to edit all 16 channels of a style (usually meant major or minor chord variations), and a pretty effective guitar programming mode.

Mark

Yes you're right... although styles consist of 8 tracks. Then it has a 16 track sequencer. I've modified lots of styles bringing them more like the song.

 

[Cosmos]

Hi All,

I wasn’t sure what the proper forum for this question is but this looked the most likely.

Yamaha has a free program called Midi Song to Style. The purpose of the program is to take a midi song file and convert it to a style file that can be used on an arranger keyboard. I am trying to get my head around why you would want to do this? (I have installed the software and it works.)
Is anyone here using this software and how do you use it?

MIDI Song to Style - Overview - Yamaha USA

Convert any standard MIDI file to a ready-to-play Style, complete with intros, endings, main sections and fill-ins. MIDI Song to Style is a new PC software that automatically converts your MIDI file into the most suitable Style data for playing Style on your Arranger workstation. It not only...

usa.yamaha.com

Thanks,

Bill

As I promised in my last post to get back to you about my progress after I've tried the Midi Song to Style program...

I started with my first midi file:

Baby Can I Hold You Tonight
by
Tracy Chapman

Walla... it converted the tracks and got me very impressed...
I just dropped the midi file to the program blank screen and it built up Intro II, Intro III, Main A, B, C & D, Fill-In A, B, C,& D and Ending II.

Then with my Genos2 connected to laptop I named the style and saved it to the keyboard in the User root directory. From there I could move it elsewhere.

It even set the volumes of the track parts when I checked the mixer page. Only thing there is, is to lower the volumes proportionally as it was a little bit too loud for me, I will do that later.

Although I'm sure I will meet with other midi files that will not convert right, one has to consider all that work needed to convert all the tracks plus other factors. It's not a toy it's clever intelligence.

I'm attaching the style perhaps it will work right on your keyboard.

 

[amwilburn]

Yes you're right... although styles consist of 8 tracks. Then it has a 16 track sequencer. I've modified lots of styles bringing them more like the song.

Styles *are* only 8 tracks, but there are 16 tracks of code (generally 8 for major, 8 for minor) but Yamaha doesn't let you access all 16... Roland and Korg do. That means on all 3 brands, I can have a completely different bassline depending on major or minor chords, but on Yamaha I have no way of programming that myself... programming a style on the keyboard, both the major and minor versions would need to follow the same rules off the bassline *or* steal the part from an existing Yamaha style that behaves the way you want. On Korg & Roland, I can progrma both variations at the keyboard.

However, one of our YamahaMusician & PSRTut members, BogdanH, *has* come up with software that gives you access to the other 8 channels in style programming. That means we *can* still code for both major and minor varations on Yamaha now, but through software, no on board.

Thanks for attaching the style, I'll check it out!

Mark

 

[Cosmos]

Styles *are* only 8 tracks, but there are 16 tracks of code (generally 8 for major, 8 for minor) but Yamaha doesn't let you access all 16... Roland and Korg do. That means on all 3 brands, I can have a completely different bassline depending on major or minor chords, but on Yamaha I have no way of programming that myself... programming a style on the keyboard, both the major and minor versions would need to follow the same rules off the bassline *or* steal the part from an existing Yamaha style that behaves the way you want. On Korg & Roland, I can progrma both variations at the keyboard.

However, one of our YamahaMusician & PSRTut members, BogdanH, *has* come up with software that gives you access to the other 8 channels in style programming. That means we *can* still code for both major and minor varations on Yamaha now, but through software, no on board.

Thanks for attaching the style, I'll check it out!

Mark

Do you have a link to BogdanH software please? Tks...

 

[amwilburn]

I've asked him permission to link it here, but he hasn't responded yet, sorry. I'll ask him again

Mark

 

[keyboardpal]

I've asked him permission to link it here, but he hasn't responded yet, sorry. I'll ask him again

Mark

So.............does this new MIDI ty style thing work ONLY withe Genos2? I have had my GENOS since the 1st week they went out for general sale here in the US and love it, I have hundreds of Styles from Yamaha (free ones, of course) and tons from user groups over the years. I have lost track of the two I most used - - - Eileen's group and the Keyboard User's Group that posted thousands of Yamaha style files for free. What happened to them?????? I go off-line due to hospitalization for 45 days and everyone is gone!@
I am not going to lay down another $6K+ USD for a new board! I have listened and looked and cannot see THAT much difference....at lease not enough to justify the outlay of thousands of $$.

Let me know on the MIDI to Style software. There are enough talented hackers out there, they should be able to jury-rig this for GONOS 1.

keyboardpal

 

[Gunnar J]

So.............does this new MIDI ty style thing work ONLY withe Genos2? I have had my GENOS since the 1st week they went out for general sale here in the US and love it, I have hundreds of Styles from Yamaha (free ones, of course) and tons from user groups over the years. I have lost track of the two I most used - - - Eileen's group and the Keyboard User's Group that posted thousands of Yamaha style files for free. What happened to them?????? I go off-line due to hospitalization for 45 days and everyone is gone!@
I am not going to lay down another $6K+ USD for a new board! I have listened and looked and cannot see THAT much difference....at lease not enough to justify the outlay of thousands of $$.

Let me know on the MIDI to Style software. There are enough talented hackers out there, they should be able to jury-rig this for GONOS 1.

keyboardpal

Hi.
No, the MIDI Song to Style software save to Yamaha style format, and those can be loaded into most Yamaha arrangers.
It's just to download it and try, it's free, so no hacking is needed. But, be prepared to get to know it and do some work to get desent results.
But as always, practice and repeats make masters! There is no shortcuts to success.
There is several videos about it and how to at YT.

Eileen closed down her forum due to health issues. PSR was closed for a while and nobody knew if it would be restored again, but it's now up and running with new owners / admins.
There is also Yamaha Musicians Forum where there is lots of active members.

You can download the software and manual here.

 

[amwilburn]

Thanks Gunnar!

Midi to style, Yamaha as one (that works on all their keyboards) , and Jørgen Sørensen has a midi2style converter

YAMAHA Keyboard - Home

Home of the world's best and greatest YAMAHA Keyboard Resource Site

www.jososoft.dk

I'd Asked Bogdan twice, and I think it just got lost in the shuffle (and then I forgot)

If you have a G1, it's entirely up to you if you want to upgrade to G2. They are most certainly different, and for what I do, there's a huge difference (Orchestral and 80's, which are the 2 main improved areas). If you play Dance/Trance, Modern Rock/Pop on the Genos, you won't hear a huge different to G2. If you play orchestral (movie scores), 80's pop & rock, Jazz & big band, Country, and Latin, you'll hear a very marked improvement, especially orchestrally.

Mark

 

[Gunnar J]

"You can download the software and manual here."

Btw,
don't forget to download the Voice Lists for MIDI Song to Style as well.
It's to find further down the page within Other Downloads.
At this page it's for Genos2.