Good afternoon all, from UK.

I am a 75 year old "duffer" with rather arthritic fingers and have spent ages trying to figure out what to do with BIAB and my Yamaha Tyros 5. Here is what I think I should like to do:

Enter my chords in BIAB from my 'puter, no problems here

Save the output as a MIDI file so that I can use a USB stick to carry it to my keyboard - 'puter in lounge, keyboard is, per SWMBO requirement, upstairs in a spare, small bedroom.

Play the midi file on the instrument [so far, so good] and play the melody line - this will, initially at least, be at a [much] slower tempo until I can get the complete song sounding [maybe] correctly, then save this as a completed song on the keyboard itself.

Is this even possible? I have bought a couple of online courses for beginners, but cannot figure out from the content what I am trying to do.

Any assistance would be most gratefully welcomed and, please try to explain it in language that a 10 year old can understand, then maybe I will understand too .

Thank you for reading this and I hope and pray that I will be able to play something this year Best wishes,

Maurice.

Hi Maurice,

All of this depends on your Yamaha Tyros 5.

1-will your Yamaha accept GM files? If yes great, if not you are DOA. Of course this will depend on if it has a USB port.

2-does it have a GM mode? If so you are all set to fly.

3-if it accepts GM files but does not have a GM mode then you will have to assign each MIDI track to an instrument.

I don't have time right now to look at the manual but if no one else can supply the answer to these questions I will try to look it up later today.

I know this isn't much help but these are questions that need to be answered, sorry about that.

Adding to everything that Mario mentioned

You don’t mention what version of band in a box you have so here’s a link to the online manuals for a number of different versions

https://www.pgmusic.com/manuals/index.htm

From Band-in-a-Box® 2019 for Windows® User's Guide

Chapter 10: Working with MIDI
https://www.pgmusic.com/manuals/bbw2019full/chapter10.htm

Saving MIDI and Karaoke Files
https://www.pgmusic.com/manuals/bbw2019full/chapter6.htm#saving-songs

Thank you both for the insights. Don't know about Tyros 5 and GM sounds. I would be content to learn about instrument assignment, the Tyros has wonderful sounds and the styles are also super, with many additional styles to obtain.

My BIAB version is Band-in-a-Box UltraPAK+ upgrade with RealBand 2020 version. I first purchased, this time around, in 2019 and upgraded to 2020 in December.

I originally, 30 or maybe more years ago, had BIAB on an Atari 1024 and was able to make my songs - apparently fairly easily - on my Roland E35. I still have all songs on an audio CD and transferred to various IPods over the years and I still enjoy listening to them today, but the Tyros sounds make the Roland sound very "thin".

Again, thanks both, just off to read Chapter 10: Working with MIDI to see if that may help. Just a shame that one cannot purchase playing "skills" Regards.

Maurice.

EDIT: Found this FAQ 2016.pdf - PSR Tutorial whilst looking around after reading the above. It also strikes me that a small I5 Laptop and MIDI interface *Might* help. Regards.

HI Maurice

Every thing will work as you originally stated.
I have a Yamaha CVP 450 this is a sim spec to the Tyros 2
I know others that have PRS range of keyboards as well no problem.

The Yamaha T5 will play GM files without adjustment as it has a full sett of XG voices . I wont go to deep on that but the basic bottom default XG voices have a MSB 000 and LSB 000 as direct replacements for GM for its first default voice bank.

You will need a usb to host midi lead to connect the keyboard to a computer (like a USB printer lead) as the computer wont have normal midi skts, (they don’t normally) but that’s fine. Just download the midi driver from Yamaha or use the one that came on the cd with the keyboard.

To make it sound even better after you have your song in gm/ xg midi and loaded on the Tyros you can re voice each track in the mixing console to use any of the Tyros voices,
So lets say you had a basic gm Ahh choir on track you could change that to say the Boys choir from the Tyros, same with gm piano swap it out for Concert grand.

You then save the changes you made in the mixing console and you have a re voiced midi file.
This is the answer to being able to use your Tyros top sounds instead of the basic gm set that BIAB will write to midi. Mind you the basic gm/xg set on the Tyros will sound fine.

That’s enough to think about for now, but I have lots technical articles on my web site
Including how to save changes made in Yamaha mixing console
So have fun hope to see you on here soon.
Best regards
Mike

Mike, thanks kindly, that is good news to read!!! I will carry on trying to do that which I should like to do. Nice, clear instructions and I *think* I understand. I will now wander off to your site to have a browse. I have been struggling since I purchased BIAB 2019, but it appears there may very well be a solution. I am most grateful. Regards.

Maurice.