Poll: Remove "One man band" styles

Yakubov

StylePlayer
Unfortunately, you misunderstood me. I did not point to any person. I only wrote that the styles in which it is indicated: 1manband.nl, are not quality styles.

StylePlayer

Yakubov Yeah I know, but you said that "I looked at many styles on this site. ... And the quality is very poor. These styles make up about half of all the styles uploaded.".
Did I understand you correctly that half of styles that are currently on this site are poor quality (perhaps you meant half of SFF1 styles)? I just wanted to see a few examples of those low quality styles, so we all can check them out and decide if they are really too low quality that shouldn't be hosted on this site. I am not trying to blame anyone, just want to see examples of the styles we are talking about. I hope that makes sense.

Yakubov

StylePlayer
please look at the screenshot, I meant about these styles: https://ibb.co/mDTtYck

Geoff43

Geoff43

Hi Style Player i am just going to try the styles below from Yakubov screen shot on my Genos2 and see what the quality is like maybe a few other members can vote on the quality.

kaimei19

Yakubov

Thanks for posting the screenshot - I'll take a look tomorrow - not possible today as no power to house and limited net access :-(

aprilla

I still use SFF1 styles, I think a filter for SFF1 / SFF2 / SFF3 (or whatever's next) would be my choice.

But if is to be the ultimate "community curated archive" will people simply not submit their styles as they might not be considered good enough?
I know these 1manband.nl styles being discussed, and have them, though I haven't downloaded anything from this site. But I remember when they were first made available and I was glad to get them, though I don't know when I last listened to them (audition doesn't work for me) and haven't looked for them on my computer. But they will likely sound different on my keyboard than on other keyboards. I have a lot of styles, various quality no doubt (I've not listened to them all) so they might be styles I'd submit. Do I need to listen to each before submitting? Run them through the PSR Style Database (excellent program) for certain informations? Determine quality? I wouldn't consider myself a great judge of quality so that puts me off wanting to contribute. If the site is too difficult it won't be used no matter how good the idea is. Just something to consider, a balance to be found maybe.

aprilla

Replying to my own post.

I've since done a search on my computer for 1manband.nl styles, I know I had a folder with a lot of them but have found only a few. That tells me that at some time, during a search for duplicates, I probably deleted styles copyrighted as 1manband.nl styles but kept the same styles which had that field removed. I wouldn't have done that (I don't change information) but downloaded them that way at some stage. So there's something more to consider, I (or someone) might offer/submit these same files here, but with different information in them, all unknowing.

Anyway I listened to two of them on my S900 through Jørgen's Style Player program. One has good drums, is not too bad and I would recognise the song from it but there's a weird whistle thing going on in all the parts. It might be easy to fix but isn't usable as is. Personally I would attempt the instrument fix if I couldn't get another style for the song and wanted to have it. The other sounded fine in all parts but I wasn't familiar with the song.

It's a lot to think about.

p.s. I am a home hobby player, mediocre at best.

StylePlayer

aprilla I have a lot of styles, various quality no doubt (I've not listened to them all) so they might be styles I'd submit. Do I need to listen to each before submitting? Run them through the PSR Style Database (excellent program) for certain informations? Determine quality? I wouldn't consider myself a great judge of quality so that puts me off wanting to contribute.

Imagine this was a music recommendation site, and someone asked - should I listen to a song before recommending? And determine if it's any good? I have a long list of song names that I never heard, wouldn't be helpful it i just submitted them all and you try to figure out if they are any good, I'm not a music expert anyway? And then say: by the way, this site has too many songs that I never heard and not interested in whatsoever, why is that? 🙂

The idea is to share styles you enjoy playing, not styles that are collecting dust on your hard drive. If you have a huge folder of styles and play only 3 of them I would hope people share those 3.

Just share with others what you want others to share with you. Do you want others to give you styles they like playing, or random styles they never heard, never tried, and don't know what's inside?

My hope was that if someone shares a style it means they like playing this style and think others will enjoy it as well. No matter if it was made in "one man band" or through other tools, the fact that it is shared should speak for it's quality, backed up by the uploader's reputation. Otherwise we will just turn into another "20,000 styles archive" that nobody knows what it contains and everyone just keeps it on their hard drive just in case.

aprilla

The idea is to share styles you enjoy playing, not styles that are collecting dust on your hard drive. If you have a huge folder of styles and play only 3 of them I would hope people share those 3.

OK. That makes sense.

Geoff43

Yakubov screen shot links found & i have posted the links for members to vote on

StylePlayer

Geoff43 Oh wow that must have taken a lot of time, thank you!

You have 2 posts with the style lists, only the second list is from one man band, right? The first one is just SFF1?

StylePlayer

Btw looks like I uploaded all those as a part of the initial seed content, so I have only myself to blame for low quality content on this site lol 😂 And I was making proclamations how you are supposed to share only high quality content that you enjoy playing yourself haha

There were not many non-factory styles at the beginning so I was uploading what I could find just so the site is not empty. To me they sounded very basic but kind of ok to have fun with (and they were from nice popular songs).

Oh well, at the beginning we needed quantity more than quality, now we can afford to be picky and clean low quality content as we have lots of better options to choose from thanks to you.

Geoff43

Hi Style Player i have tried them out on my Genos2 they are workable styles some of the instruments needed changing a bit to improve the sound but the basic style was o.k. just looking at the styles downloads it seems like a lot of these styles have been downloaded so members with older keyboards must use them,all the SFF1 styles i first found were also workable they just had a low rating but only a few members had bothered to rate them.i see they were all either Tyros 3 or 4 styles

Yakubov

Geoff43
Hi!
Yes! I meant the word "low quality styles", it's like styles with bad sound, some styles don't have all the sections, no OTS (although it's not that important) But, most importantly, these styles don't have the effects that Yamaha and other manufacturers produce factory styles that you can buy on the Internet.
I meant you can't download 1onemanband.nl styles to sit down and play them right away. Today, having a good and expensive synthesizer, you want to play beautiful styles, where beautiful instruments sound. But it turns out that you download a style, hoping to listen to a beautiful sound, but unfortunately this is not the case. I understand that you need to revoise the style, spend time on it.
When I found out about this site, I was very glad that you can get beautiful styles here. But I was disappointed.
You, Geoff, post high-quality styles that you can play right away and enjoy. Thank you for that!
Best regards, Yakubov

StylePlayer

Yeah I also think they are not that horrible, though maybe the topic starter had other styles in mind. That's why I wanted to get examples from him of the exact low quality styles he is referring to.

I think if people started using the ratings more actively that would be a pretty reliable indicator of the style quality. Instead of avoiding styles made by a certain tool it would make more sense to avoid styles with low ratings. And we can (and should) add a mechanism of auto removing styles with too low ratings (like if the average rating is below 2 and more than 10 people voted it gets auto removed).

kaimei19

StylePlayer

I've just auditioned at least a dozen of the styles in Geoff43's second list and firstly, what a good thing is the ability to preview! I can load a style and be ready to play in just a few seconds.

I found most of them average - but they're not altogether bad. If I were to want to keep them I would re-voice and re-balance them - some of the intro's and endings are quite OK. In time, with users being encouraged to rate styles, I think it will sort itself out. There's more, but I will open another thread.

Geoff43

Hi Style Player i'm going to try to use some of those SFF1 styles as a basic starting point and try to make them workable with newer keyboards,i.ve had a bit of fun with the Clapton-Tears in heaven style so when i'm happy with the outcome i will upload it to the site,as you said you uploaded these at the start of this amazing project so maybe just keep them for the time being.

aprilla

It's really subjective, and there is a wide variety of opinion, and need/want for the different ways we use styles. What's low quality, or sounds bad, to one might be a nice style for another or on another keyboard, and it is hard to judge for other machines or tastes. Then the availability of styles for any particular piece can change what might be acceptable, maybe a close enough style can be improved if it's all that can be found for a song. Tweaking for personal taste will always be possible.
Avoiding styles made by certain tools won't work well, my style made with that tool might be excellent, yours not so great. The tool isn't what makes them good or bad. I found my folder of 1manband styles and there are over 3,000 so there is likely to be a lot of variation, good and bad.
It's early days yet. Filtering should show the best styles for each, then preview will let people judge if a style will suit their need, or not. The ratings should help to bring the best to the top, the not so excellent styles will help to populate for a while and in time can maybe be culled or not shown by only choosing to view highly rated styles if that feature exists. Perhaps use a 1 star rating for culling initially and as the site becomes populated and there are more and more good styles then use 2 stars as the threshold. But it's still basing their worth on the opinion of those who vote. It's difficult, but in time it should work well if people are happy to contribute opinion as well as styles.

jenygard

aprilla I agree with you completely. I try to do some voting on styles that is not preset on my keyboard (Genos2) and I am very aware that I have high expectations, which leads to low scores for most of the styles. (That also is why i prefer to use factory styles from Genos and maybe SX-series keyboard, instead of older, but tailored song-styles.) For a user of older keyboards, that could be the best style they will know, and then rate it high. A Genos factory style may sound bad on an older keyboard, and the get a low score. The best would be to keep votes for different keyboards separate.

Then, it is how the star-rating are used. There will probably be no agreement on that. This is how I think about it: For Overall quality I use the 5 stars only for factory styles made for my keyboard. 4 stars could be used for factory styles adapted from other high-end keyboards. 1-star I would give to a style that is not worth it at all (on my keyboard), 3 stars and 2 stars for more or less useful or adaptable styles.

For Fits songs I would give a 5 stars only to a factory style made for a specific song, 4 stars to factory styles that fits song good without being tailored for it, 3 stars to good sounding styles in alternative genres to the original (or most popular) version of the song (cover versions), 2 stars - "there must be better fitting styles than this", 1 star - "cannot understand how this style fits this song" (rythm, tempo and so on, way of the original).

StylePlayer

jenygard You are free to use any criteria for stars you see fit, but I think giving only factory styles 5 stars is not the best approach.

Factory styles already can be clearly separated, giving them all 5 stars serves no purpose. I would give overall 5 stars to styles you think sound the best. Don't you have you favorite factory styles that you think are the best? I would give them 5 stars. Rating factory styles kind of doesn't even make much sense probably as they are factory, we know what to expect. It's custom styles where we need the evaluation.

Giving 5 stars to factory styles under "Fits songs" makes even less sense I think since factory styles are not made to fit a single specific song perfectly, they are made to be generic enough. Often the same factory style fits 10 songs, I would give 5 stars to those songs that it fits the best, and less stars for song that would be kind of a stretch to use with this style.

So overall rating is more relevant for custom styles, and Fits Song rating is more relevant for factory styles, if it makes sense.

But again feel free to use your own criteria if it makes more sense to you. At the end I think the exact rules you use shouldn't matter that much, everyone will have slightly different criteria in any case. Just as long as everyone gives higher ratings to better styles and lower ratings to worse styles it should work out on average.

Maybe we would be able to come with some better rating system in the process...

aprilla

jenygard You raise interesting points to consider. I tend towards song specific styles, and so look for them before I'll test factory styles to find something suitable. With the 'Fits Songs' feature that will change how styles are found, so will bring factory styles forward along with those created by other style makers. Auditioning will allow them to be judged side-by-side so, in time, all styles will be judged equally by those judging them. My first thought was to separate factory/other styles for rating but I'm not sure now, the way this site is set up that's probably not really necessary. The more populated, and the more used this site is, the better it will get, it has been thoughtfully considered.

I would presume on the basis that people will not submit bad styles, not styles that they consider bad anyway. Anyone looking for styles will have a certain level of 'good' they consider suits them and we will always want better.

« Previous Page