Can you use Roland styles on PC?

[Keyman69]

Hello!
Try to use vArranger- this is a good solution for a lots of styles from Yamaha, Roland, Korg.
I have vArranger since 2016. This is a great product.

BR,
Andrew

I just sent vArranger a list of questions. Considerably more costly than One Man Band, but perhaps worth it.

I have about 150 tunes set up to work with One Man Band, two midi controllers and Cantabile on a Win7 laptop for the sounds of drums, bass and live keyboard parts to sound more like a trio. I just disable the other sounds in the style that I don't want in the VSTi that plays from OMB.

 

[Keyman69]

I have about 150 songs set up for One Man Band. I just sent a message to the vArranger people to see what makes sense with my particular set up. I would like to see if they have a trial version. I got a fast responese:


There is no demo of vArranger.

All versions of Windows are OK with vArranger since XP. I am myself using Windows 10 actually.

vArranger include a powerful realtime software synth that can load your own SF2 instruments and also hosts VSTi directly
https://www.varranger.com/wiki/index.php?title=SF2
https://www.varranger.com/wiki/index.php?title=VSTi

vArranger is a lot better than all other arranger software

You can see here some of the vArranger features : https://www.varranger.com/features/

Let me know if you have any questions about the software.

Regards,

Dan

 

[Biggles]

I have about 150 songs set up for One Man Band. I just sent a message to the vArranger people to see what makes sense with my particular set up. I would like to see if they have a trial version. I got a fast responese:


There is no demo of vArranger.

All versions of Windows are OK with vArranger since XP. I am myself using Windows 10 actually.

vArranger include a powerful realtime software synth that can load your own SF2 instruments and also hosts VSTi directly
https://www.varranger.com/wiki/index.php?title=SF2
https://www.varranger.com/wiki/index.php?title=VSTi

vArranger is a lot better than all other arranger software

You can see here some of the vArranger features : https://www.varranger.com/features/

Let me know if you have any questions about the software.

Regards,

Dan

Interesting.

how would you trigger the change of Variations, Endings and Sounds during live playing in varranger?

 

[Keyman69]

Interesting.

how would you trigger the change of Variations, Endings and Sounds during live playing in varranger?

I use the programmable buttons on the Axiom keyboard to select intro, Parts A through D and an ending.
OMB lets me choose which otherwise unused Midi CC's I use.
OMB also has on screen ways to select those with a key click on the computer keyboard or screen with mouse selections if you want to use them. Several intros and endings are possible that way. Both are possible to use at the same time.

I have the same questions for vAarranger. How flexible is the set up to use midi CCs?

 

[Keyman69]

I asked some additional questions to vArranger. It does not allow for style editing or using midi files to create a style like One Man Band does. Here are my questions with the answers from vArranger:

Does your program have a way to take a standard midi file based song and easily create my own custom style with an intro , verse,
bridge , chorus and ending from the various parts of the standard midi file?

No

Can I create a style from scratch using a style editor/creator?

vArranger does not have a style editor or creator, but can read your Yamaha / Ketron / Korg / Roland / Technics styles, that you create in other software/synths
You can search for some software to create yamaha styles in the computer

Is it possible to edit an existing style in vArranger?

Only changing mixers, instruments,volumes etc... but this does not change the style file itself, but another file

I only want the software to generate a bass and drum part while I add two handed keyboard parts played from
two midi controllers. My goal is to simulate a trio. How easy is it to shut off the other voices that exist in many arranger styles?

There is a ON/OFF button on each arranger track

Do you find Win10 to have less latency than Win7?

Win 10 seems a bit more advanced in term of audio latency than Win 7

I would prefer to run Linux, but WiNE for Linux may not work with such a program. Any experience running
your software with WINE in Linux?

Was not working and stable a few years ago, when I tested it.

 

[Klaus2015]

I would like to see if they have a trial version. I got a fast responese:

There is no demo of vArranger.

There is another arranger. Demo available.

https://www.nimbu.de/en/home.html

how would you trigger the change of Variations, Endings and Sounds during live playing in varranger?

You can trigger the change of variations, endings and sound during live playing in nimbu.

This is done via midi control change, program change, noteon/off messages and sysex messages so far only for Tyros & Co.

After touching a control element, the midi message is displayed and can be immediately assigned to a nimbu event. More than 100 different nimbu event types are available for these assignments.

Does your program have a way to take a standard midi file based song and easily create my own custom style with an intro , verse,
bridge , chorus and ending from the various parts of the standard midi file?

Yes,
nimbu first calculates the chord progression from the midi file. After that the different styles instruments are calculated (in chord scale steps without any harmony). Now you have to set markers like Intro A, Main B etc. There is also a NoMarker to indicate the end of a section. The different sections and variations don’t have to be adjacent.

Can I create a style from scratch using a style editor/creator?

Yes,
in nimbu you can create your style from scratch. You can edit your accompaniment at any level of music. There is even a compose mode, to support starting from scratch.

Is it possible to edit an existing style in vArranger?

Yes,
nimbu imports YAMAHA styles in its own structure (chord scale based) that you can edit. You can even export your nimbu style as SFF1 YAMAHA style.

I only want the software to generate a bass and drum part while I add two handed keyboard parts played from
two midi controllers. My goal is to simulate a trio. How easy is it to shut off the other voices that exist in many arranger styles?

You just turn the instruments on and off. There is a button for each instrument. This can also be done via midi controllers.

Do you find Win10 to have less latency than Win7?

This question is not so easy to answer. In the end, Win10 & 11 are doing well. Thanks to the increasing CPU power.

I would prefer to run Linux, but WiNE for Linux may not work with such a program. Any experience running
your software with WINE in Linux?

Since nimbu is a comprehensive real time system, we believe that WINE will not work.


Here there is an overview of the nimbu features.

https://www.nimbu.de/en/overview.html

I will open a nimbu thread

Regards from Hamburg

Klaus

 

[RLaune]

I hope to document my own styles in some sensible, machine readable format. One nice way would be MuseScore with rehearsal marks. You could create 6 small note clips for every tune. One clip could be named "Major, basic". It would contain rehearsal marks "Intro", "A", "Fill to B", "B", "Fill to A", "Ending". You could then concatenate the style to contain modes "Major, basic", "Major advanced", "Minor basic", "Minor advanced", "7th basic" and "7th advanced".

Once this work is done you could edit the score and change it. And finally export it to a new STL file. Much faster and less error prone than using the micro editor in Roland E96.

Eu me interessei pelo teu código. Como faço para testá-lo?

 

[raidmarji]

Hello karri,
Thank you for the insights into the Roland style file format. I own a BK5 and have have been converting Yamaha style files (from psr S910) to Roland format. I have also written a python script to extract the 3 midi files (M, m and 7), which are then being converted to the final style file using the style convertor software.
What I want to know is a way to insert the "advanced chord voicing" (AVC) messages into the STL file using the computer, as I am currently only able to do it using the BK5's internal rhythm editor. Are you aware of the ACV message format/code?

This is really amazing, can you share your script please, it is really a great thing to convert Roland stl to midi

 

[raidmarji]

I recently put a GOTEK drive in my Roland E96 and started to look into the format of the style files. These STL files turned out to be fairly trivial. Basically there is 3 different chord sequences M, m and 7. The length of each sequence can vary. Then there is four variations: Basic original, Basic variation, Advanced original, Advanced variation. You also have 4 fill ins like Fill to original and Fille to variation. In two modes Basic and Advanced. The last two parts are intro and ending.

So I wrote a Python script for analysing the styles. The notes in these styles have a starting time in bar/beat/cnt notation and a duration. Plus the pitch of the note. There is also volume variations. It somebody is interested I can send you a copy of my code. The early Roland styles did not have any audio samples. It is very much like MIDI.

The easiest way is to just play C major, C minor, C7 and record a sequence of intro, original fill to variation, variation, fill to original, ending. Both in basic an advanced. Then import the song to MuseScore. It shows up nicely with every instrument on its own section.

Does your script convert stl to midi?

 

[arimitrachak]

This is really amazing, can you share your script please, it is really a great thing to convert Roland stl to midi

Here you go. But fair warning, the script is very raw and buggy, only tested with some specific PSRS910 styles, and needs the mido library as a pre-requisite.

 

[arrRolStl]

I recently put a GOTEK drive in my Roland E96 and started to look into the format of the style files. These STL files turned out to be fairly trivial. Basically there is 3 different chord sequences M, m and 7. The length of each sequence can vary. Then there is four variations: Basic original, Basic variation, Advanced original, Advanced variation. You also have 4 fill ins like Fill to original and Fille to variation. In two modes Basic and Advanced. The last two parts are intro and ending.

So I wrote a Python script for analysing the styles. The notes in these styles have a starting time in bar/beat/cnt notation and a duration. Plus the pitch of the note. There is also volume variations. It somebody is interested I can send you a copy of my code. The early Roland styles did not have any audio samples. It is very much like MIDI.

The easiest way is to just play C major, C minor, C7 and record a sequence of intro, original fill to variation, variation, fill to original, ending. Both in basic an advanced. Then import the song to MuseScore. It shows up nicely with every instrument on its own section.

Hi Karri,

I would like to develop a simple MIDI C# arranger using Roland STL files (just for me).
Not knowing and not having a detailed specification of the Roland STL file format, I read that you have developed scripts in python.

Have you posted them anywhere? Is it possible to have a copy?

 

[karri]

I did about the same thing for some games programming. It turned out that the styles contain tons of garbage. What I finally did was to play 2 bars of M, m and 7 chords in Basic and Advanced with intros, ending, fill to original and fill to advanced. By connecting the arranger to a PC I could read in the resulting midi file to Musescore. And get everything in an usable format.

From Musescore you can export the music in some machine readable format like midi.

The Python path did not produce usable results.

 

[arrRolStl]

I did about the same thing for some games programming. It turned out that the styles contain tons of garbage. What I finally did was to play 2 bars of M, m and 7 chords in Basic and Advanced with intros, ending, fill to original and fill to advanced. By connecting the arranger to a PC I could read in the resulting midi file to Musescore. And get everything in an usable format.

From Musescore you can export the music in some machine readable format like midi.

The Python path did not produce usable results.

For now I'm studying some material found on the web, and I can get name and time. But I still don't understand the bytes where the various parts start (intro, fill, etc..). I was hoping that by reading the script you could understand its structure. I will continue to search and stud (I sold my bk7m and no longer have an arrager)
Thanks and happy holidays

 

[karri]

Against all odds I found it. But I have not continued working on it for ages. Just rename the extension to .py

 

[arrRolStl]

Against all odds I found it. But I have not continued working on it for ages. Just rename the extension to .py

This is a great work!!! For me this is gold!!
Thank you very much Karri
Happy new year