Yes, I'm aware of the limitations with repeated phrases but those phrases are much more detailed and realistic than most of the Biab midi styles. Maybe thats due to higher resolution? Playing an arranger vs Biab are two different things but the new ones sound really good. When was the last time you wrote styles for them, have you played the new ones? The best phrases are very good pro level arrangements. Don't get me wrong we can do a lot with Biab but when I sit at my Korg I can hear the style details and tbey are very good.
Both Korg and Yamaha have vast sound libraries to draw from and tailor each midi instrument part to work with those sounds. They use custom controllers to create articulations to example. A new Biab would need to go beyond basic GM into the world of custom midi. It would include it's own soundset and maybe include midi schemes to directly work with the big softsynths like Kontakt or Sampletank. Not simple patch selection, we have that now I mean all the custom midi control.
Just a few random thoughts.
Bob
The MIDI sounds of the arranger keyboards sound so good because they have very good hardware synthesizers in the box. They also have much better than 120ppq resolution and the styles can be tailored to the available sounds. They can have more than 5 instruments in a style as well. I've written some with 7.
Also writing a style that is more repetitive allows the style writer to have more and tighter coordination between the instrument parts. It's give and take, the 4 measures of repeat initially sound better, but the repetition and "no surprise" factor makes the musical content less interesting in the long run.
Playing a Yamaha sound on a Korg wouldn't sound as good because the synths are different, balance would be off, and the sounds are different. Of course to do that, you would have to export to MIDI and then build the styles on the other.
The last time I wrote styles for one was for the Korg PA80. I did some for the Korg i3, a Technics (forgot the model KN something) and the Yamaha Tyros (1). I also wrote styles for a couple of BiaB software competitors, and that's how I learned that BiaB styles come out more musical. Most of the other style writing was done under contract and some with a non-disclosure agreement.
I quit writing for everything but BiaB because I was spreading myself too thin, and writing styles for BiaB is more creative because the masks in the StyleMaker allow me to make a more musical style.
In BiaB there are ways to get around the 3/4 or 4/4 limitation, as long as you don't expect it to show in notation.
When I write my EXPANDED styles, each BiaB cell is a half measure. That allows up to 8 chords per measure, and ups the resolution to 240ppq. Unfortunately it creates other limitations in the StyleMaker, for example, you can't write a 2 measure pattern that will always play 1 and 2 together.
For 6/8 styles you can use any appropriate triplet (sw8) style and have each BiaB cell equal two 6/8 measures or one 12/8 measure. 5/4 can be written with one BiaB cell assigned to 3 beats and the next to 2.
I'd rather see native time signatures than these work-arounds, but with some creative thinking you can do a lot that BiaB wasn't designed to do.
And I still say that with a good hardware synthesizer you can sound 95% as good as the RealTracks in tone and have a more musical output using MIDI styles in the long run.
That way you can have both RTs and MIDI, using the right tool for the song you are working on.
Insights and incites by Notes
Norton Music
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