Adjusting Sounds in Each Main Section Separately

In the MIXING CONSOLE lesson, you learned how to adjust the sound balance between individual instrumental parts in a particular style by using the MIXING CONSOLE.  The adjustments you made then, however, applied to each variation in the style.  That is, set the volume of the 3rd track, the BASS track, to 90 and it was set to 90 for all four variations.  Sometimes you do not want the same volume for a particular track to be the same in all the variations. You may have a style that uses a GrandPiano for Chord 1 in variations A and B, and then switches to a JazzGuitar for variations C and D.  The volume appropriate for the GrandPiano may or may not be what you want for the JazzGuitar.  You need to adjust the individual volumes separately in each variation of the style.  How do you do this?  You'll find out here.

The MIXING CONSOLE

The good news is that you already know how to adjust sound balances if you have already completed the lesson on the MIXING CONSOLE.  Because the MIXING CONSOLE is the very same tool that you will be using to adjust the individual accompaniment sounds in each of the four style variations. The big difference is that you will go into Digital Recording of the Style and then start adjusting the sounds.  (In the earlier, broad-brush adjustments, you adjusted all the sounds and  went into the Digital Recording function only to SAVE your adjustments.

The STYLE CREATOR

Load the style you want to work on and select the variation you wish to modify.  Now follow the steps outlined here. Press the Digital Recording button, then press the [B] button to select Style creator. This will open up the BASIC tab of the STYLE CREATOR.  The style you are working on will be shown at the top of the page. In the illustration here, the style is "HeartBeat." On the bottom half of the screen you see the REC CHANNEL box, which shows the 8 accompaniment channels. The second channel, RHY2, is set to REC (for record).  You do not want to record more rhythm instruments, so press the [2-B] button to turn REC off.  The track will now show ON which means the RHY2 track is playing in this variation. (As you press the relevant numbered buttons, the channel status moves between ON, OFF, and REC.)

In this picture, notice that the first two "rows" on the screen show a selection box that lets you adjust either the SECTION or TEMPO. The first option, SECTION, is currently selected since it is highlighted. Use the [A] and [B] buttons to move between the SECTION and TEMPO selections. If you press [B] to move to TEMPO, the bottom of the screen will change and show two boxes from which you can select the TEMPO in terms of BPM (Beats Per Minute) and the BEAT (2/4, 3/4, 4/4, or 5/4). You usually would not be adjusting the BEAT.

Press the [A] button to go back to SECTION and the bottom of the screen gives you two windows to select the SECTION and the PATTERN LENGTH. You normally would not change the pattern length, but you could choose to work on a different section. The section available include, of course, the four MAIN sections (A, B, C, or D). But you can also select to work on any of the four FILL-INs, INTROs, or ENDINGs, as well as on the BREAK.

To get back to the REC CHANNEL screen, press the CHANNEL ON/OFF button. In the REC CHANNEL screen shown here, notice that there are 6 tracks (instruments) for this variation that are turned ON ([1] to [6]).  The last two tracks ([7] and [8] -- PHR1 and PHR2) are OFF, which means they are NOT playing in this variation (MAIN A) of the Heartbeat style..

Listen to Each Track

While you are getting used to this, let's listen to each track of the style.  Press the [START/STOP] button and the style will start playing.  In the illustration above, the pattern length is 4 so this style variation repeats every 4 measures and, when you are listening to it in the STYLE CREATOR, it will continuously repeat until you press [START/STOP] again to turn it off.

All the parts that are ON should be playing.  Press the button below each number for the tracks that are playing and this will turn that track OFF.  Turn off all the tracks.  (If you press the button above the number, you will be presented with the VOICE screen where you can select the instrument used for that track.)   With all the tracks off, you will hear nothing.  Turn RHY1 and RHY2 ON and you'll here the rhythm section.  Now you might try turning on the instruments one by one to see what they add to the style.  Keep the drums going and listen to each instrument separately with nothing else playing.  If you can barely hear that instrument, you may want to make the volume a little louder.  You can, of course, turn on two instruments to see how they blend together.  If you turn them all on, you are back to listening to the whole style playing in this variation.

Adjusting Volumes

Ready to adjust the volumes?  Just press the [MIXING CONSOLE] button and there is your mixing console.  As you adjust the volume up or down on any particular instrument, you will be able to hear the difference the adjustment makes so you can set it to where you want it.  In fact, you may want to try adjusting the instruments one by one.  Set the rhythm tracks to the volume you want and then adjust the other instruments relative to the rhythm volume.  With the other instruments off, turn the BASS on and then adjust that.  When the BASS is adjusted, add the CHD1 track (chord1) and adjust that.  Continue in this manner until you have everything adjusted to suit your taste.

In doing this kind of adjustment you need to alternate between the BASIC screen where you can see the channels and what is ON or OFF and the MIXING CONSOLE screen where you adjust the volumes.  When you were doing the adjusting outside of the STYLE CREATOR, you could alternate between screens by pressing the Channel On/Off button and the [E]/[J] buttons to jump between looking at tracks and volumes.  In the STYLE CREATOR, that won't work.  You must press [EXIT] to exit the MIXING CONSOLE and get back to the BASIC page.  On the BASIC page you can turn tracks ON and OFF.  You must press the [MIXING CONSOLE] button to get back to the mixing console to adjust the volumes.

Moving to Another Variation

There are several ways you can move on to adjust another variation in the style.  While the style is playing, you can simply press one of the four variation buttons.  You will see a pop-up window appear on the BASIC screen where you have the REC CHANNEL window at the bottom showing the individual tracks.  You would use buttons [6] or [7] to select the section you want to modify, and button [8] to say OK (and switch to that section) or CANCEL (to forget the whole thing and stay with the section you are working on).

Another method would be to press the [EXIT] button when you are in the BASIC page and the REC CHANNEL box is shown on the bottom.  This does not exit the BASIC page, but it does exit the REC CHANNEL box.  You now will see a SECTION box at the bottom of the screen above the [3] and [4] buttons.  Pressing either one of these will scroll the section choices up or down so you can select another section to work on.  When you have moved to the new section you want,  press Channel ON/OFF to show the REC Channel box again.  WARNING: Every time you move to another section the RHY2 track will be set to REC.  If you leave this on, and you start the music, any key you happen to press will be adding an instrument to the RHY2 pattern in your style.  You may actually want to do that, but you probably don't want to do it by accident.  So turn REC off.  You won't be recording any new notes to the style, but you can still change the volumes.

Lots of Sections

You can use the method described above to adjust any of the 4 Main sections.  You can also use it to adjust any of the four Fill In's (for Variations A-D), up to four Intros (AD), and up to four Endings (AD).  I say "up to" because few styles actually have four intros or four endings.  To balance your style completely, you have to check the intros and the endings.  You might have the variation A just right, but when you press the Ending button you don't want to be startled by a bunch of horns jumping in and blazing away.  Adjust the intro and ending volumes to blend in with the volume levels you have set for the main sections.

All this flexibility comes, therefore, at a bit of a price.  If you adjust the piano accompaniment just the way you want it in variation A, it won't have that volume anywhere else.  You have to go in and adjust the volume in each of the variations.  You might try getting things reasonably close using the methods described in the lesson on the MIXING CONSOLE, and then go in to the STYLE CREATOR to make finer adjustments to the volume levels.  This may be necessary because the instrument used changed in different variations and you want to keep that instrumental change, but you need to adjust the volumes separately for each instrument/variation combination.  In this method, of course, if you change the instrument for CHD1, it doesn't impact the instruments used in the CHD1 track anywhere else.  If you want that change in all the tracks, you have to visit each track and make the change each time.

Saving Your Work

The process for saving your changes is the same as indicated in the MIXING CONSOLE lesson.  You can go there to review the steps in detail. I'll repeat the major steps here.  When you are happy with all the tuning you have done and are ready to save your work, press the [NEXT] button to go to the ASSEMBLY page of the STYLE CREATOR.  From that page, press the [J] button to SAVE your style.  You will be saving it to the USER styles area, or you can press the [NEXT] button to save it to the FLOPPY DISK.  Press the [6-B] button to indicate you want to save the style.  Save it under the current name or rename if you want, then press the [8-A] button to indicate it is  [OK] to save or the  [8-B] button to CANCEL your save operation.

That's all there is to it.  After you have a done a number of styles, the steps will become automatic and it will not be as complicated as it may seem.  Try adjusting some of those styles that came from other instruments to see if you can tune them to your satisfaction.  You may find that you enjoying making your "own" style.  Of course, with the PSR-2100/2000, you can also create and save your own One-Touch Settings to go along with any style.  We explain how to do that in the next lesson.