Starkeeper, it may be a bold statement but with some effort it can be done. I may be wrong by using the word 'free'. I should have said at very low cost.

Here is how I did it for the accompaniment. I bought the sYnerGiGS Wavetable for $19 and 9 CDs of free soundfonts from the Soundsite before it went down. These 9 CDs cost me $49 for him to buy, burn and deliver them to me. Within this set of CDs you have to spend alot of time to find the pearls but they are there. These soundfonts were collected by him from all over the internet and other places. I use some of them as replacement instruments in the sYnerGiGS wavetable.

In addition, I got the Giga GM500 with GigaStudio and have converted them to soundfonts using CDxtract. These provide some very good piano, string, vibe, etc. sounds for my sYnerGiGS wavetable. At this point my modified sYnerGiGS 128 mb wavetable sounds very good for the accompaniment - better than any of the top of the line arranger keyboards. If I wasn't so old and lazy I would do the drum conversions to GM and use the Drums From Hell. This would again increase the quality of the accompaniment another order of magnitude - well above any keyboard out there.

Well how do I rate the virtual acoustic instruments in my modified sYnerGiGS, Tyros, Motif or any other keyboard? At best from mediocre to modest. These instruments are nonetheless amazing given the size of the wavetable and certainly are more than adequate for live performances. However, it is for this reason that I made the heavy investment in lead/melody virtual acoustic instruments.

Starkeeper, as you can see there is a range of possibilities that you can implement. You can always progress from any point at your own chosen speed. For example, at some time you may wish to have a very high quality guitar sound then you may have to spend $200 and get it. The good news is you can do it.

[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 01-26-2004).]