Good grief, genesys...! What a load of tapdancing to get around the fact that it is obvious that you cannot make styles as good as the closed ROM ones. NO-ONE said to make them the same. Of course that is bloody stupid. As, in all fairness, that is just thinking that's what anyone would do. No-one wants to make them the same. They simply want them to sound AS GOOD. Whatever they DO make.

The point is, the factory styles, if you use them AT ALL, set a standard for excellence. The drums sound like drummers played them, the guitars sound like guitarists played them, the basslines sound like bass players played them, etc., etc.. Perform a song on one of those, and then go to a style you have made, and if your drums sound like a keyboard player programmed them, your guitars sound like a keyboard player programmed them, everything sounds a bit half-assed compared to your previous song. Now, I don't know about you, but most people I know care about not sucking every time they go to a user created style.

And, with all respect, I am afraid I cannot really take what you say seriously if you refuse to illustrate your point. You see, if I were castigating the forum for NOT using conversions much or creating their own styles, while everyone was telling me how difficult they are to do, if someone asked me to show how well I was succeeding at the task they fail at, if I thought what I had done was any good at all, I would post it. Because. if I didn't post it, I would expect everybody to assume I am secretly aware that, in comparison to what most people use, they SUCK...

Now, maybe your styles DON'T suck... but you have hardly given us any reason to think otherwise. Maybe your sense of creativity allows you to consider that a style that you created, no matter how bad, is better than a great ROM style that someone else created. Fair enough, but don't expect many to follow your example. I would be interested to hear HOW you use your styles... Do you, for instance, play in public..? Do you hold down a gig playing as an OMB or small combo where the arranger does much of the backing? Do you play Western music, or are you one of those players from smaller ethnic markets that don't HAVE good ROM styles to set a standard for?

Or, are you simply one of the myriad that has decided to champion the MS, but only in the theoretical sense? For three or four years now, countless posters have pointed out the MS's 'potential' advantage over closed arrangers, while posting absolutely nothing to show they have managed to unlock it whatsoever. Little has been posted that even rivals a MOTL closed arranger, let alone something that lives up to the hype that is bestowed on it.

I am sorry, but until you can SHOW that what you do is up to the standards that most of us here EXPECT to use in a style that is backing us, you have no right to lecture us on whether we NEED the style editing tools or not. Even polishing a conversion from something else takes all of them they can provide. There is no contradiction between saying on the one hand that doing the task is hard, and creating your own styles so they don't sound like amateurish messes is even harder, and saying that, for what little we DO use them for, they should be there.

I am sorry, but every time I hear such lame excuses as to why someone CAN'T post something to illustrate their points, merely shows you are ALREADY aware that what you have managed to create is not to the standards that we prefer. And me, I don't want to have to go to using lame styles, just so I can say I created them! That's like playing with BAD musicians, just so you can say you prefer to play live!

Most people NEED editing tools to make their conversions and assembled styles sound a bit better. But few if any (no-one has posted ANY totally user created styles here that I consider very good) need them for ground up creation. But the same tools are needed for BOTH tasks.

So forgive us when we bitch when they aren't there...