Selecting Styles

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"Arranger" Workstations

All of the models we are discussing in these PSR Tutorial Lessons are known as "arranger" keyboards. The most distinguishing aspect of these keyboards is that they include internal "styles" that the performer uses when playing a song. These styles let you perform as a "one man band." You are playing your keyboard, but you also have an unseen drummer, a bass player, a guitarist, and even more members in your "band." Not only that, you have a wide variety of "bands" or even "orchestras" available to accompany you as you play. One song can feature a jazz combo, the next a polka band, then a latin group followed by a marching band and then a big swing band. All of this is accomplished by using the internal preset styles in your keyboard. In the next few lessons, we'll look at how you select styles, the component parts of a style, how you direct what the "band" plays, and, finally, what solo instruments you might use with your "band." You examine all the great solo instruments in the previous chapter. Now let's take a look at the rest of the band.

Style Categories

Styles are grouped into twelve categories (8 on the 2000 and 2100). One of the style categories is labeled "USER" and that is where you can save your favorite styles. With each new model, the number of included styles in the various categories increased. The "junior" mid-range keyboards include fewer styles than their senior brothers, which are shown in the graphic here. The original Tyros included 300 styles and the latest Tyros3 now includes 450 styles. The Styles | Yamaha section of the PSR Tutorial shows you exactly what styles are included in each category for these keyboards.

Selecting A Style

When you start up your keyboard on the Tyros3, the initial style selected is EasyPop. The "STYLE" cell is on the MAIN screen right next to the "D" button. That cell tells you what style is currently loaded and ready to play. It also shows you the time signature (4/4) and the default tempo (110 for EasyPop). If you followed the VOICE lessons, you know how to select an alternative voice for the right or left hand. Selecting a different style is going to work the same way.

If you press the button associated with the STYLE cell from the MAIN screen ("D" for the Tyros3), you will open up the STYLE display screen, which will show you the Pop&Rock folder in the PRESET styles with the currently selected style, EasyPop, highlighted. If you want a different Pop&Rock style, just press the corresponding button ( [A]-[J] ). There are more available Pop&Rock styles as you can see from the pages at the bottom of the screen ([P1], [P2], [P3], [Next]. To see the next 10 available styles, press the upper [#2] button to go to [P2]. Styles 21 to 30 would be accessed by pressing the upper [#3] button. If you press the [#4] button for [Next], you'll see that there are three more pages of Pop&Rock styles available [P4]. [P5], and [P6]. Of course, if you have one of the other keyboards, there won't be as many Pop&Rock styles so you won't see as many pages as there are in the Tyros3.

Like the VOICE display screens, notice that there is an [UP] button at the far right side of those page buttons. Pressing the upper [#8] button moves the display up to the parent folder. In this case, you would be going up one level to see all the available style folders. Pop&Rock is the first folder listed. There are 11 category folders in the Tyros3 and this first page shows 10 of them. If you went to P2, you would see the 11th category (World). The "User" category is a special case and styles there are saved in the USER area. You would use the [NEXT] Tab key to move to the USER area. In time, you will see that you can also have styles stored on the hard drive or your flash drive. You would use the Tab [NEXT] and [PREV] buttons to move back and forth among the four style tabs (PRESET, USER, HD1, USB1). If you have a 3000, the tab choices would be PRESET, USER, CARD, USB. If you have a 2000, the tab choices would be PRESET, USER, FLOPPY.

Tab back to the PRESET styles. If you want to examine the available styles in the Swing&Jazz category, you would press the "D" button next to Swing&Jazz to select that category. As expected, you see the first 10 Swing&Jazz styles. In the screen shot here, the ClassicBigBand style has been selected for use. From the MAIN screen you could have jumped immediately to the Swing&Jazz Style screen by press the Swing&Jazz style category button. To look at another category, just press that category button. Try it now. You see how you can quickly look at any of the 11 categories. You still need to press the number buttons below the display screen to look at different pages within a category.

Now that you know how to style, in the next lesson we'll take a look at the STYLE CONTROL section and the various parts of a style.