Modern arrangers have come a long way from the mechanical, repetitive stuff we started with. Guitar parts are FAR better now, more authentic than ever, drums have dynamics, changing timbres with those dynamics, higher quality sounds and higher quality effects, SA/DNC phrasing makes for realistic legato and performance effects, and styles are often made by real musicians playing MIDI guitars, drums, etc..

In all fairness, if you need to somewhat swamp the backing to disguise this 'repetitiveness', perhaps we shouldn't be playing arrangers? Particularly now that most arrangers have Mark/Jump SMF features, if repetitiveness is an issue, maybe SMF's and M/J to allow restructuring is the answer.

Personally, as long as you don't use the FULL style backing all the time, and play as much as you possibly can, there's enough control over styles to mitigate most of that repetitiveness.

But only on styles that were written (or heavily edited) to use these latest features. Many of us use legacy styles from so far back that these repetitive claims are still true. Stiff, undynamic drums, guitar parts that barely suggest a real guitarist, comping chord parts that jump about. But it is more a function of the style, not the arranger it is played through...

I'm a big fan of the Roland feature (dropped from the BK series, of course - Roland are on a charge to drop every last great and unique feature they ever invented!) where the dynamics (the MIDI velocities themselves) are offset to match your own playing. When this is tied to drum parts that change timbre as you get louder, it's quite amazing how effective this is. This leads me to always want my backing loud and proud! If it sucked, I wouldn't use it in the first place!