Yamaha PSR SX600 for looping, looking for advice/help.. anyone have one?

[tomosiris]

Hello All,

New keyboard owner here. I am not a keyboard player/pianist per se, more of a composer/arranger musician.
I was looking for a keyboard with a built in "looper" (sequencer?) so that I could have an easy to use and somewhat portable device for music creation when I am away from my PC/DAW.

I ended up settling on a Yamaha PSR SX600 after seeing good reviews and browsing forums, although most of the input I found was from experienced keyboardists, and not from those using it for what I intended to.

I have been around musical equipment for several decades and find the vast majority of modern hardware to be relatively easy to fire up and get creating right away. For example I also picked up a new electric drum set and had that set up and playing within a few minutes.

However, with this new keyboard I am not having as much luck. I find the interface and settings confusing and difficult to navigate. There are little to no tutorials out there either which I found surprising being that this model has been out for several years.

As far as what I am trying to do, essentially, I am looking to select a voice, jam around until I find something I like, record x number of bars to a metronome, loop it back, select a new voice, record over it, rinse and repeat.

Please tell me this is possible with the machine I purchased! I have not yet found out how to make it do what I want. I have gone into "style creator" but I find it very unintuitive and clunky.
Also, what is a "style" anyways? I'm not sure if thats even the right term for what I am trying to do.
It also has a "song creator" which as far as I can tell is even further away from what I want, as I was unable to find any settings I was expecting to... record on/off? arm track for recording? etc.

I have spent over $1000 on this unit, I will be very disappointed to discover it was the not the right tool for the job. I suppose at worst case scenario I could always purchase an external looper, but would this even be functional for playback thru the integrated speakers?

Any help is much appreciated, thanks in advance!

 

[TedS]

No, but you could get a pretty good trade-in for a better model like the PSR-SX720, -SX920, or -SX900 in the Yamaha range, to gain the chord looper feature. Some Korgs and older Roland models like the Roland BK-9 also have a "chord sequencer."

Depending on your setup, you could connect your keyboard to a tablet, laptop, or small outboard hardware sequencer like the Yamaha QY-70 or Roland PMA-5 to serve as your looper. These latter devices are quite old, but capable for your purpose. My $.02.

 

[amwilburn]

It sounds like you bought it for the sounds, but are unfamiliar with arrangers. It can do what you ask in very roundabout ways: either in style (which is like looping on workstations, but chords change when you change chords, not fixed) or to record a midi, and loop it, but then you can't add layers while looping, only while recording linearly (so you could keep building the layers up until you want to solo on top)

Sounds to me like you wanted a budget workstation?

Oh yeah, TedS is correct, all the other models have chord looper, but that still doesn't sound like what I think you were looking for. I think you were looking for the sequence loop creation like an old TritonLE/Se? Any modern workstation (Roland FA, Modx, Nautilus, Krome,), but it *can* be done on the sx600, but yes you have to play around with style creator.

I could write an insanely long post here, or just point you to youtube tutorials:

This is for the previous model, the s670, but the basic workings of style creator are very similar

Mark

 

[tomosiris]

It sounds like you bought it for the sounds, but are unfamiliar with arrangers. It can do what you ask in very roundabout ways: either in style (which is like looping on workstations, but chords change when you change chords, not fixed) or to record a midi, and loop it, but then you can't add layers while looping, only while recording linearly (so you could keep building the layers up until you want to solo on top)

Sounds to me like you wanted a budget workstation?

Oh yeah, TedS is correct, all the other models have chord looper, but that still doesn't sound like what I think you were looking for. I think you were looking for the sequence loop creation like an old TritonLE/Se? Any modern workstation (Roland FA, Modx, Nautilus, Krome,), but it *can* be done on the sx600, but yes you have to play around with style creator.

I could write an insanely long post here, or just point you to youtube tutorials:

This is for the previous model, the s670, but the basic workings of style creator are very similar

Mark

Thanks for your response. Are arrangers and workstations really considered two different things? All the websites I was shopping on combined them into one section arrangers/workstations. I guess I thought the terms were interchangeable.

So yes I would say I'm not very familiar with the differences. Is there a better machine out there that can do what I want as an all-in-one?

I'm not opposed towards trading it in for something better suited to my needs.