Peggy Sue – inspired by a STYLE from Chris

[⚖Hugh Wallington]

Peggy Sue – inspired by a STYLE from Chris
 
Chris has been putting up Large Sheets together with Yamaha STYLES to go with the songs. This one caught my eye, so I have downloaded the sheet music and the STYLE Chris had put up to go with it.
 
https://chellos-keyboard-players-club.co...RGE-SHEETS
Buddy Holly sang this song in the key of A, and Chris’s sheet music is in G. I much prefer playing the song in G. These are the chords I play:
 
PEGGY SUE
 
VERSE
/G - - - /G - - - /C - - - /C - - - /
/G - - - /G - - - /G - - - /G - - - /
/C - - - /C - - - /C - - - /C - - - /
/G - - - /G - - - /G - - - /G - - - /
/D7 - - - /D7 - - - /C - - - /C - - - /
/G - - - /C - - - /G - - - /D7 - - - /
 
CHORUS
/G - - - /G - - - /G - - - /G - - - /
/Eb - - - /Eb - - - /G - - - /G - - - /
/C - - - /C - - - /C - - - /C - - - /
/G - - - /G - - - /G - - - /G - - - /
/D7 - - - /D7 - - - /C - - - /C - - - /
/G - - - /C - - - /G - - - /G - - - /
 
Now I have been talking to Chris Harding (not the same Chris) who said to me that he always checks out what is in INTRO I, II and III in a STYLE, as sometimes one of them isn’t an ‘INTRO’ at all .. but is a ‘break’ in the melody where eg. the guitarist does an amazing bit of improvisation. This can then be inserted into your song as an ‘interliude’. And this is what we have in this Style.
 
Listen to the below.
First, INTRO I (clearly an intro); then III (a longer intro); and finally II which as you can hear is a very clever bit of guitar work to go in the middle of the song.
 
https://app.box.com/s/z1gdf9hgwivwari8655kkmt66r7ne4vp
To decide on how to play any song I would first listen to an original version of it.
This version below is an ‘enhanced’ video of the song, and sounds far better than the original black and white version from the Ed Sullivan show.
 
NEW Buddy Holly Peggy Sue (Stereo) (In colour)
 

 
And here is another video with something completely different for the ‘break’ in the middle. More of a guitar solo than just a ‘rhythm guitar’ break. And the pianist gets a look in too!
 
WAYLON JENNINGS - Peggy Sue
 

 
And I came across this one too with some interesting ‘behind the scenes’ information.
 
Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue" - How they got that Sound!
 

 
I always set up a REGISTRATION BANK for playing songs, mainly because I like to use a selection of STYLES in a song and not just stick to one STYLE with it’s four VARIATIONS.
 
Peggy Sue REGISTRATION BANK
(MULTI PAD; RIGHT2; RIGHT3 ... not used anywhere)
 
REGISTRATION MEMORY 1
Chris’s Peggy Sue STYLE, VARIATION B, INTRO III
Left Hand Voice not selected
TEMPO 140
(INTRO only .. song starts with Registration Memory 2)
 
REGISTRATION MEMORY 2
STYLE: 60’sGuitarPop, VARIATION D
RIGHT 1: VintageAmp
LEFT: AnalogPad
 
   

REGISTRATION MEMORY 3
STYLE: BubblegumPop, VARIATION C ... for 4 bars (ie. 16 beats)
RIGHT 1: Organ 8’ 4’ 2’ 1’
LEFT: AnalogPad
 
   
 
REGISTRATION MEMORY 4
STYLE: Peggy Sue3, VARIATION B
RIGHT 1: Organ 8’ 4’ 2’ 1’
LEFT: AnalogPad
 
   
 
REGISTRATION MEMORY 5
STYLE: Peggy Sue3, VARIATION B
RIGHT 1: VintageAmp
LEFT: AnalogPad
 
   
 
REGISTRATION MEMORY 6
STYLE: Peggy Sue3, VARIATION B, INTRO II
LEFT: Not selected
Triggered to play the INTERLUDE
 
REGISTRATION MEMORY 7
STYLE: Peggy Sue3, VARIATION B, ENDING III
LEFT: Not selected
Triggered to play the ENDING
 
REGISTRATION MEMORIES are triggered in this order:
1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 5, 3, 4, 7
 
Note that I have made some changes to Chris’s Peggy Sue STYLE, and named it Peggy Sue3.
In my next post I will detail the changes I have made .. the BASS PART in VARIATION B; the Bass Part in INTRO II; and the Bass Part in ENDING III.
 
Have a listen to how it has all turned out:
 
Peggy Sue
 
https://app.box.com/s/cidpg02pkjhvxibtpi1a3eq4lm9hvz7g

[✪WilliamD]

Hi Hugh,

A great arrangement and recording of that classic Buddy Holly number, the voices you used really suited the tune as did the style

Brian

[⚖Hugh Wallington]

I have made some adjustments to the Peggy Sue STYLE. The BASS PART in VARIATION B; then the Bass Part in INTRO II; and finally the Bass Part in ENDING III.
 
I have put the Peggy Sue STYLE into USER, selected VARIATION B (so it is lit up) and loaded it into STYLE CREATOR.
 
Note from the red arrows that the screen is showing what I am expecting to be working on. Also note that the PATTERN LENGTH is 2 ie. 2 bars .. (or 4 ‘beats’).
Also that the ‘default’ is to be recording into RHYTHM 2 .. which is not what I want so I will have to change that to recording into the BASS Channel.
 
   
 
Press and HOLD REC CH (as indicated by the blue arrow) and at the same time press the bottom of the BASS Channel.
You will be told you have to DELETE the Bass Part that is already in there .. so say YES when asked.
 
   
 
The page is now set up ready for you to RECORD in the BASS Channel.
 
   
 
Pressing the top of the BASS Channel will will show you what instrument is currently selected for the BASS PART .. which is FingerBass, in the GM&XG Category. You can check this out by pressing the UP (indicated by the red arrow).
 
   
 
   
 
I prefer a ‘deeper’ bass so press the BASS Category of my Tyros 4 and select MiniSub from Page 4.
I have used this one before.
 
   
 
MiniSub is now in RIGHT 1 ready for doing the recording, and it’s VOLUME can be checked (and altered if deemed necessary) by pressing BALANCE. 

   

I have set my VOLUME to 90.
 
   
 
To get back to the STYLE CREATOR screen to do the recording press the EXIT (maybe a couple of times).
 
I have done a DEMO here so you can listen to (i) the current BASS part in the Peggy Sue STYLE (Variation B); (ii) the BASS part I am replacing it with; and (iii) the current BASS part in INTRO II in the Peggy Sue STYLE.  That last one is too ‘busy’ for me so I am replacing it with the basic pattern I am putting in for the rest of the STYLE.
 
https://app.box.com/s/h5liblm4nt5l0zxmub898hnrkzu2qzt9
The ON switch for doing the recording is the SYNC START (which you must press so the START/STOP is ‘flashing’).
 
   
 
As soon as you play a note the recording is activated. So get the METRONOME going first so you can get a feel of the pace of the piece (although it must be said that you can change the TEMPO for doing the recording at this point if you so wish); and more importantly listen to the METRONOME to come in on the first beat of the bar (the Metronome emphasises the first beat of the bar with a ‘clang’). This is assuming your recording does come in on the first beat of the bar. If not, press the flashing button to the right of the SYNC START ie. the START/STOP button, which will set the recording going immediately .. and come in with your first note where you want it to come in.
 
I didn’t mention a STOP .. because you don’t actually STOP the recording while you’re doing it as the program ‘loops’ round and round the PATTERN LENGTH. When you have had enough of listening to it you do have to stop it ‘looping’, and you do this by pressing the START/STOP.
 
For the Peggy Sue STYLE, VARIATION B the PATTERN LENGTH is 2 ie. 2 bars (or 8 beats) as you have heard in the DEMO above .. and then what you have recorded ‘loops’ round. And remember, everything has to be based on the key of C. Not much to record then! You just play the bass pattern twice.
 
C – G G; C – G G (the G is the one below the C).
 
If you are happy with the bass you have recorded press EXIT ..
 
   
 
.. which will give you a screen where you can SAVE what you have recorded and give it a name (blue arrow).
 
   
 
All the information on this screen is telling you what it is you have just been dealing with.
 
But as I said at the start of this Thread, I also want to change the BASS PART of INTRO II .. and ENDING III. So I’m not going to press the SAVE just yet. I shall add these other two BASS recordings one step at a time.
 
Move the highlighted SECTION on the left down to INTRO II.  It will tell you the PATTERN LENGTH is 12.
 
This is NOT a NEW STYLE .. so don’t press that! It is still the Peggy Sue STYLE.
 
   
 
Press and release REC CH and your screen will be set up ready to continue what you are doing. Note that we are back to square one with RHY 2 being the ‘default’ for recording into.
 
   
 
We now have to do everything we did above again .. press and HOLD REC CH and press the bottom of the BASS Channel. Say YES to DELETING what is already in there. By pressing the top of the BASS Channel choose the VOICE you want to use (MiniSub again). Make sure the SYNC START is lit up and the START/STOP is flashing. Get the METRONOME going .. and off you go with recording the C – G G.
 
This time the PATTERN LENGTH is 12 (or 48 beats); and then the pattern will repeat itself.

STOP the 'looping round' of the recording by pressing the START/STOP, as before.
 
Press the EXIT.
 
Not finished yet. Move the highlighted SECTION down to ENDING III.
This time the PATTERN LENGTH is 6.
 
   
 
Repeat all the steps above, starting with pressing and releasing REC CH to get the BASS Channel ready for recording into.
When you do the recording, as this is an ‘ending’ do not press those last two Gs .. just hold the C down for the length of that final bar.
 
Press the EXIT and this time press the SAVE. I have named my STYLE Peggy Sue3.
When I tried to leave STYLE CREATOR by pressing the EXIT after doing all this it told me I hadn’t SAVED what I had done and if I left the program I would lose all that I had done. So I SAVED it again, over-riding the Peggy Sue3 that was already there. Seemed happy for me to leave the program second time round. Is this a ‘bug’? Or just my Tyros 4 playing up?
 
I have used INTRO II as an ‘interlude’ in the middle of my song (Peggy Sue).
To hear the difference between INTRO II with the ‘original’ BASS PART (in Peggy Sue.sty from Chris) and what I have replaced it with (in Peggy Sue3.sty) click the below.
 
https://app.box.com/s/33vbpm7fxq9d96ofmr0fq4qxggeew73o
If you can’t hear the difference, you can see it below.
 
   
 
If you are a bass player you would probably not be happy at all that I have changed the original bass pattern in the STYLE to something a lot simpler. But I prefer the backing not to be over busy. And I hope the above has also shown that you can change patterns in Intros and Endings etc. as well as changing the PARTS of the MAIN VARIATIONS in a STYLE.
 
Everything I do with STYLES I do ‘hands on’ ie. it’s all done on my Tyros 4 and ‘patterns’ are put in physically playing notes.
 
With early keyboards you just switched them on, chose a sound .. and played them. With an ‘arranger’ keyboard you, as the musician have complete control over the sound of the instrument being played, which Members of the band play along with you, and what they play.
 
More to come ...

[⚖Hugh Wallington]

When we set up a REGISTRATION BANK to play a song we are all ‘ear players’ to a certain extent. What I mean by that is that we listen to the sounds we have put together and ‘tweak’ them until we get an overall sound that is pleasant to listen to (in our opinion anyway). One obvious consideration is the BALANCE between the STYLE and the VOICE we are using to play the melody. Don’t want the ‘band’ drowning out the soloist! But we also want to hear what the band are playing as they are a significant part of the song!
 
You can adjust the VOLUMES via the BALANCE button ...
 
   
 
.. or by pressing the MIXING CONSOLE (once)
 
   
 
   
 
You can see the VOLUMES I have set for the STYLE, RIGHT 1 and the LEFT HAND VOICE at the beginning of this Thread, where I have put screenshots of my REGISTRATION MEMORIES. Yes, we all do this?
 
Next ... the voices themselves. When we choose a piano, or a guitar, or a saxophone etc. we have several to choose from .. so we will choose one that best fits the song.
 
Now you can choose one of those and play it with the ‘default’ settings given to it by Yamaha .. which may or may not be the perfect sound to your ear. But did you know that with these Arranger Keyboards you can refine the sound and make it your perfect sound?
 
In Peggy Sue the two VOICES I have used in Right 1 are VintageAmp and Organ 8’ 4’ 2’ 1’. The organ voice I set up myself using the drawbars and SAVED this to USER. This voice also has a footswitch set up to toggle between FAST and SLOW rotary speakers.
 
The PRESET VintageAmp from the GUITAR section (Page 1) is OK, but to me, lacks depth .. and is a bit uninspiring. So I have set about altering the parameters of this voice to make it sound as I want to hear it.
 
   
 
To see the choices Yamaha have made for this voice press VOICE SET.
There are several tabs for you to look at, but the main tab for making changes is the third one .. SOUND.
 
   
 
Yamaha have set all these to zero.
Whilst listening to the VintageAmp guitar as I made changes, I reckoned I rather liked the sound of it with the settings below.
 
   
 
Clicking COMPARE (indicated by the blue arrow) will switch back to the ‘default’ settings of the PRESET voice (the one with all the zeros) .. and clicking again will bring you back to this page. Play a few notes whilst the relevant screen is showing and you really can ‘compare’ the two sounds by listening.
Note that there is a SAVE on each of these tabs (indicated by the red arrow). When you have made all the adjustments you wish to make, SAVING from any one of these tabs will save all the changes you have made.
 
Changes in the other tabs ...
 
COMMON
 
   
 
.. to ...
 
   
 
EFFECT/EQ
 
   
 
.. to ..
 
     

Was it worth the effort of changing this voice to something I liked the sound of?
Click the below to listen to (a) the PRESET VintageAmp followed by (b) the one resulting from my changes.
 
https://app.box.com/s/9tcogde2jecoz0egdqj9eusauw205fn4
Having made all these changes to the VintageAmp VOICE I could have saved my setup to a REGISTRATION MEMORY and the Registration Memory would remember the changes I had made. But .. the REGISTRATION MEMORY is LINKED to the PRESET version and if I were to press RIGHT 1 (button F) the keyboard would immediately revert back to the PRESET version of this voice.
 
So I have pressed a SAVE in one of those tabs and SAVED my adjusted voice to USER. I have left the name the same .. VintageAmp (maybe I should have called it VintageAmp2). And I have selected the USER version of this voice for the Registration Memory. The REGISTRATION MEMORY is now LINKED to my version of VintageAmp in USER.
 
   
 
And by the way, if you press VOICE SET for this voice in USER it will always show the changed settings. If you press COMPARE on any of the pages it will show you the original settings of the PRESET version.
 
Note that I already have 5 pages of VOICES (indicated by the blue arrow) and choosing one of these means my Tyros 4 will not sound like anybody else’s as these VOICES are all my own adjustments to PRESET voices.
 
Moral of this story: it’s always worth pressing VOICE SET on a VOICE and experimenting to see if you can improve on what you hear.
 
You have already listened to the song Peggy Sue, but if you want to listen again and take note of that VintageAmp sound then click the below.
 
https://app.box.com/s/cidpg02pkjhvxibtpi1a3eq4lm9hvz7g
Next thing I want to talk about is the ‘band’ accompanying the song. You know I have changed the BASS PART, calling the STYLE Peggy Sue3 .. but what else have I done to make that backing sound as it does?
 
More to come ...

[⚖Hugh Wallington]

When you use a (Yamaha) STYLE it is made up of 8 PARTS .. Rhythm1, Rhythm2, Bass, Chord1, Chord2, Pad, Phrase1 and Phrase2. 
These all blend together to make the backing that accompanies you.
 
Now you can turn any of those parts to OFF if you don’t want to hear them; but more importantly you can alter the volume of each channel thereby changing the ‘balance’ between the various PARTS, and as a result, how the backing sounds. So eg. in the INTRO to Peggy Sue I have upped the VOLUME of the drums considerably as there is no melody being played and I wanted the rhythm to stand out.
 
You do this via the MIXING CONSOLE. Press it twice to get access to the STYLE PARTS. Any VOLUMES you change can be SAVED to a REGISTRATION MEMORY. The Registration Memory LINKS to the STYLE in either PRESET or USER (or on a Memory Stick if that’s where you’ve got it) and picks up the changes you made. It does not make any alterations to the STYLE itself, which remains as it was. This means that one can make different changes for different parts of the song.
 
In the screenshots below I am showing the volumes of the original STYLE; followed by what the volumes have been changed to in a particular REGISTRATION MEMORY ie. what the volumes of the PARTS are when the STYLE is being used to play the part of the song using that Registration Memory.
 
STYLE:  Peggy Sue Variation B
Original settings:
 
   
 
REGISTRATION MEMORY 1 (INTRO)
STYLE PEGGY SUE3 VARIATION B
 
   
 
Click the below to hear (a) the INTRO with Chris’s original Peggy Sue settings, and (b) the INTRO using the Peggy Sue 3 STYLE with adjusted Volumes for playing the song from the Registration Memory.
 
https://app.box.com/s/yy4a461wlxktbju8ikcoexpm9kqw8nx7
REGISTRATION MEMORY 6 (INTERLUDE – INTRO II)
STYLE PEGGY SUE3 VARIATION B
 
   
 
Click the below to hear (a) the INTERLUDE with Chris’s original Peggy Sue settings, and (b) the INTERLUDE using the Peggy Sue 3 STYLE with adjusted Volumes for playing the song from the Registration Memory.
 
https://app.box.com/s/33vbpm7fxq9d96ofmr0fq4qxggeew73o
REGISTRATION MEMORY 7 (ENDING III)
STYLE PEGGY SUE3 VARIATION B
 
   
 
Click the below to hear (a) the ENDING with Chris’s original Peggy Sue settings, and (b) the ENDING using the Peggy Sue 3 STYLE with adjusted Volumes for playing the song from the Registration Memory.
 
https://app.box.com/s/zy2z0ajs79wjkufxi6wsj106yyiy8m6h
I hope all this has shown that when you create a REGISTRATION BANK to play a song you really do have to listen to what sounds you are getting when playing the song and make adjustments to the VOLUMES to get the right BALANCE, not only to what is on the MAIN screen but also the BALANCE between the various PARTS of the STYLE.
  
You have already listened to the song Peggy Sue, but if you want to listen again and take note of what the backing is doing then click the below.
 
https://app.box.com/s/cidpg02pkjhvxibtpi1a3eq4lm9hvz7g
For anyone who has a Tyros 4, if you download the attachments below and put them all into USER, the REGISTRATIONS should LINK to all the components OK and enable you to play the song.
 
Hugh

[⚖Hugh Wallington]

You may or may not have noticed that ENDING III in the Peggy Sue STYLE has a very 'short' chord at the end, making it sound as if the recording has been 'chopped off'. I put the recording into Audacity and extended the length of time that last chord sounded .. and that is what you heard when you listened to the Peggy Sue mp3. The recording no longer sounds as if it has been 'chopped off'' at the end. An explanation of how this was done is here:

https://chellos-keyboard-players-club.co...2#pid33342
I have no idea as to whether one could do something like this on the keyboard itself so that when playing the piece 'live' you get a more satisfactory ending. Maybe change ENDING III so it doesn't end so rapidly?

Anybody got any ideas?

Hugh