Style Editor

In the Style Editor you can modify styles or create them from MIDI files. In the upper left corner you can select a variation in the style and then click on a track in that variation in the tracklist on the left to select a track.

When you increase the number of bars in the variation (right from the play button) you will be asked wether or not to fill the added bars with repeated sequences of the events that are already in the variation. You can change the tempo but changing the time-signature will erase all the MIDI events in the sequence.

With the Style Wizard button you can create a new style from a MIDI file.

The Add and Delete button are for adding and deleting tracks in the variation.

The Default button will assign default values to the track and the Clear button will make the track empty.

The track name can have maximum 8 characters.

Destination channel is the channel where the track will be played. Only channel 9 thru 16 are available for Yamaha styles. Usually 10 is for drums and 11 for bass.

Source chord and type indicates in which chord the notes in this track are played. E.g. CMaj7 will contain the notes c-e-g-b in the eventlist.

Transposition type defines how the notes in track are transposed according to the played chords. Select Bypass for drums, Bass for bass and Chords for other instruments. Select melody is you want to maintain a melody in e.g. an intro, wether they match the chord or not.

Note Low is the lowest note allowed in this track. Lower notes will be raised an octave.

Note High is the highest note allowed in this track. Higher notes will be lowered an octave.

If the base key of the chord played is higher then the High Key then all the notes played will be lowered an octave.

Retrigger Rule defines what happens to notes that are still sounding (between note-on and note-off) when a chord change occurs. Stop will end the note, use it for instruments with sharp attack like piano. Retrigger will end the note and play it again at its new pitch, use it for instruments with slow attack like strings. Retrigger to Root will end the note and play it as the root note of the new chord, use it for the bass. Pitch shift will be ignored in OMB because in MIDI it is not possible to shift individual notes, only the complete channel.

Note Transposition Rule indicates wether the notes are transposed or not. Drum tracks should be "root fixed" all other tracks should be "root trans".

Use the Play button to hear the selected track or (with "All tracks" checked) the complete variation or (with "Record" checked) record a track. The metronome option will sound some ticks while recording.

The eventlist on the right can be edited in a similar way as the Sequencer Eventlist View. With the select button on top you can change the mode from "Variation eventlist" which contains the MIDI events in the selected track to "Initial control changes for all variations" which contains the program changes, volume settings etc. for this track (this destination channel). These settings will be sent to MIDI out when the style is loaded.

For more variety you can make multiple versions of a track and define one version to be played with specified chord root notes (e.g. C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#) and the other version with the remaining chord root notes (e.g. G, Ab, A, Bb, B). Then when you play a AMaj7 the first version will be played in the accompaniment and when you switch to a Gm chord the second version will be heard. In stead of the chord root notes you can also specify the chord types. This is done with the Note Mute and Chord Mute check marks on the bottom of the window. Check all the chord notes and chord types in which the track should be included. Alternative tracks should have the same Destination Channel.

In menu Edit you can copy, cut and paste events from one track to another, quantize recorded events, import variations and tracks from other styles and tweak styles in batch. Tweaking is the same procedure as described in the Sequencer.