

Much smarter algorithms could dictate quite clever re-voicing to make a player's voicings always appear to move to the nearest 'good' note for the chord, with correct voice-leading etc. Whether it was simple transposition of the entire chord - the simplest was to transpose in parallel, up until a certain key, then wrap over to transpose down. There were some rather sophisticated algorithms & different rule-sets which dictated which note went to where on transposition, & these rules could be set per track/instrument by the programmer. Using C Maj7 as the base data gave each note a 'function' from which the ABC could be calculated. The note function & movement was then re-calculated live during playback. So, my information is 20 years out of date, but these styles were always actually made in a static C Maj7 chord. Lower models would be handled by another team, who trimmed down, re-voiced & re-edited from the data we made for the top models.

I was part of Yamaha's writing & mixing/editing team who made the internal styles & a lot of the first release-cycle of the then-known 'disk styles' you could buy, initially for the high end products such as the PSR-6700, right up to the last before I left, the PSR-9000 & Tyros. I used to, in the 90s, actually make these things for a living -) I haven't worked there for 20 years, but I don't think that has changed in the intervening period. As far as I'm aware, Yamaha themselves never released a style editor to the public.
