7. Playing with accompaniment (Arranger)
7.1 What is an Arranger?
Think of the Arranger’s Music Styles as your backing band. The following illustration shows that this suggestion is not as preposterous as it may sound because your
You are the band leader, which means that you have to tell the members of your band what to play. In other words, you must explain how many bars there are to each song part and how the melody and/or solo should be accompanied.
There are two main levels: Basic and Advanced, each consisting of two divisions called Original and Varia- tion.
As its name implies, Basic is the “normal” accompaniment level, with only the basic ingredients of a professional sounding accompaniment. The Advanced level, on the other hand, may contain another version of the selected Music Style or just a more elaborate one. On either level (Basic and Advanced) you can choose between the Original accompaniment or an alternative (called Variation). The latter usually adds one or two parts to the current accompaniment.
As the leader of your band, you have to tell the musicians what to play and when to play it. If you want the accompaniment to become more complex as the song evolves, here is a useful sequence:
Typical song structure
1st Verse | 2nd Verse | 1st Chorus | 3rd Verse | 2nd Chorus |
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Basic | Basic/ | Advanced/ | Basic/ | Advanced/ |
Original | Variation | Original | Variation | Variation |
Other elements help you refine the accompaniment. Instead of abruptly changing to Advanced/Original, you may want to play a short transition to announce a new part of the song. That is what Fill In [TO VARIA- TION] and [TO ORIGINAL] are for.
See “Switching Style arrangements (divisions)” on page 26 for other Music Style divisions and functions you can use to create a professional sounding accom- paniment.
Each accompaniment (or Music Style) can consist of up to five parts:
Rhythm— This part takes care of the drums and per- cussion.
Bass— This part plays the bass line of the selected Music Style.
Accomp. 1~3— These are the melodic accompaniment parts. Depending on the Music Style you selected, only a few of them actually play something, which can be anything from a piano line, a guitar line, an organ line, etc., to a synth pad line.
The bass and accompaniment parts rely on the chord or note information you play in the chord recognition area, i.e. the keyboard zone you have assigned to the Arranger (originally the left half of the keyboard).
Also note that you can use the drum patterns of a Music Style in other One Touch Program modes (Piano and Organ). These patterns can be started in the same way as entire Music Styles (with bass and melodic accompaniments). See “Starting and stopping Styles” on page 24.
SettingsPress the One Touch Program [ARRANGER] button.The
•The Sync Start function is turned on. This means that the Arranger will start as soon as you play one or sev- eral notes with your left hand.
•The Intro function is activated so that Style playback will start with a musical introduction.
•The keyboard is split at F#3. Use your left hand to “transpose” the accompaniment pattern(s), and play the melody with your right hand.
•It selects a suitable (preset) tempo as well as an Upper Tone for the selected Music Style.
■ Additional notes•Feel free to change the split point “Lower Tone on/off and split point” on page 42.
•As in Split mode, the
•See “Auto: changing the Arranger defaults” on page 42 if you don’t want the
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