Making Styles using OMB (One Man Band 10.2)

Before you start making a style using OMB remember, the style is only as good as the midifile used, bad midifiles gives a not so good style!

Preparing a midi file
Starting point before making a style is to prepare the midifile for use. Tyros use only the midi channels 9 – 16 for the accompaniment, channels 1 – 8 for solo instruments.
Prepare your styles with any sequencer like Yamaha XG Works, it spares a lot of time later.

Most midifiles have 16 tracks so you must decide which track should stay and which must be removed – listen to the whole files before making a decision – it is possible to use more than 1 track on 1 midi channel but that’s too far for the moment.

When done save your midi where you like but don’t forget to do it!

Structure of Yamaha styles

Basically any style making software does use as chord basis Cmaj7 – midifiles are written in the original key, this smart style making software translates all styles to Cmaj7, remember that when you make styles.

A few style making programs are:
  1. EMC Styleworks (Shareware)
http://www.emc-musicsoftware.de/eng-shop/eng-dscstw.htm
  2. One Man Band (Shareware)
http://www.1manband.nl/omb.htm
  3. Midi2Style (Freeware)
http://www.jososoft.dk/yamaha/software/midi2style/index.htm
  4. Stylemaker (Freeware)
http://psrtutorial.com/MB/stylemaker.html

In my experience OMB does the trick the best – the others are certainly not bad at all but too much changing in software gives a lot of confusion – so my advice is concentrate on one program, doesn’t matter which.

Start making styles

As said before prepare your midi file in the right way, when done I use always a music reading software program in the background because to use the style making software in the right way. As I say this software translates all chords to basic Cmaj7, you have to make the software in the proper order from the key that’s original in the song.

I use Midi Notate to help me out on the point of reading chords.

Listen to the file again and try to locate the intro, the breaks and fills, the basic lines of the song with the different variations and the endings. It will help when making the first say 10 styles to notate where the intro’s, basics, fills an breaks and endings are.
Later on it will work not writing the things down you want to remember.

Basically I use the following points as basic for my styles:
  · Intro 3 for the real intro of the song
  · Intro 1 for a short fill or break but longer than 1 measure
  · Intro 2 for the solo part of the song (if there’s any)
  · Fills and breaks fitting in the song
  · Ending 3 for the real ending of the song
  · Endings 1 and 2 as you like

If you like another structure feel free to do so but always use the same structure because while performing one gets used to using the same things, when not you must notate for every song/style which position the intro etc are!

One Man Band

In my opinion OMB is the easiest program to make styles, accurate and fast. There are a lot more functions in the program, discovers them for yourself.

I always start to make Intro 3 (1), in my experience it’s the best way. After selecting
where to start (Intro 3) one must load the midifile (2).

The Real Start

After choosing Intro 3 and loading the midi file the real work can start. Listing to the song ("Down To The Waterline" by Dire Straits) the Intro comes from measure 1 to measure 18 (long intro) and it’s in the key of Bm. For real-time playing always use the part Melody. One can choose also for chords which has the result that you can play the song in any key you like. It’s your choice!

Part 2

At the end of part one I make a real start making a style with OMB. After deciding which channels to use and saving the midi file with a desired name one can really start making a style.
First start OMB and choose making a new style. I always start with Intro 3, click on that in the dialogue box. Then load the midi file you want to make the style from.

Make a choice, I always start with Intro 3.

Loading A Midi File

Take your pick

The Loaded Midi File

Remember I use MidiNotate to figure out the chords of the midi file

You see that the starting Key = G, so Intro 3 starts with the Key of G

You see in the picture that:
1 – I made a choice for melody
2 – The Key of G
3 – Arrange channels is off
4 – After listening to the midi file the intro goes from measure 2 until
measure 4

For Intro’s – Fills and Ending use Bypass function

Clicking the box will give you the choice

Killing the melody line from the style

Killing the melody line from the style

Listening to the result in the key of G

If you repeat the described procedure for Fills and Endings you have a big part of the style done. Of course you have to discover other features of this software by learning step by step.

Normally I use Intro A for fills longer than one measure (Yamaha Tyros 1 allows no more length than one measure for fills) and I use Intro 2 for solo parts.

Next step is to create Main parts – of course starting with Main A.

First go back to the style making field

The Style making field and choose for making a new part

Pick Main A

OK and make the settings for creating Main A

Pay attention – picking chord! It’s important to pick that to make a main
part that can (in principal) played in any key after finishing the style.

You see the result of this choice – now we are going to fine tune.

Double-clicking on the Cmaj7 box you get the opportunity to let the
software decide if it stays this way or it’s better to follow the advice.

Do that for every track – only the drum part may not be changed!

Of course you can always go to the PC keyboard field again to listen the result of your action(s).

Repeat this for every part you want to make to complete your style. When done you can save your style with every name you want – take care that you use names that are not too long to prevent difficulties with your keyboard.

Fine-tuning Your Style 1 (using OTS editor)
First you can use Jørgen Sørensens OTS editor to put a OTS into your style to make your style more complete.

This software one can download for free from:
http://www.jososoft.dk/yamaha/software/otseditor/index.htm

Starting up OTS Editor

Make the choice for your keyboard type

Pick your brand-new style

Pick your OTS file you want to put into style

Your OTS folder

The result of loading your OTS file and save it!

Fine-tuning Your Style 2 (using Midi Player)

To fine-tune the different volumes, putting a icon to your style and lots of other features you can use Michael Bedesems Midi Player.

You can download this software for free from:
http://psrtutorial.com/MB/midiplayer.html

Loading your style into Midi Player

A few features from Midi Player

Final
Making styles and fine-tune them is not easy but it is very satisfying when you have a nice result. Naturally there are a lot of styles on the internet and commercial made one has to pay for. But to make a style for the song you like and it is sounding like the original song and the result is good – what satisfaction!
Be patient and give it a few tries – after a while you see that the quality will be better and better.

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to mail me:

Pieter-186@online.nl

Happy style making.