What do you guys consider the best way to have fills triggered on your arrangers?

I'm especially talking about the most efficient way, while you are playing, to select from at least four variations and maybe 6 or more fills. I know some keyboards give you separate buttons for the variation AND fills, but to my mind it always seems too many button pushes. Some arrangers allow you to just select the variation, and a predetermined fill will play to bring it in, but this way you lose the choice of fill........ I'm also especially interested in 'hands free' choices (I play a lot of LH Bass)

So, everybody, what do you prefer, what systems have you seen on other arrangers that you thought, 'hey, that's a good idea'? Anybody got some good ideas for how arranger manufacturers might improve their systems?

I'd like to hear your thoughts........

Hi Diki
I have the standard Wersi Swell/Volume pedal on my Abacus, which has 2 assignable Kick switches attached, and so if my hands are doing other things, I assign the functions I require to the kick switches, if I need more operations I save the kick switch settings in a preset, assign other functions to the kick switches, and then store the new assignments in another preset, making it easy to switch between the 2.
Professional players can also add a further 5 switches to the keyboard for greater flexibility.
Hope this helps

Bill


[This message has been edited by abacus (edited 09-08-2006).]

I personally thought the old Korg i3 and its immediate relatives had a good system.

This had four main variations (with six possible chord related patterns under each one - maj,min,7th,dim,etc or whatever you wanted) - plus two fills (with four distinct chord related patterns each).

The four main variations and the two fills all had separate, very large, light action buttons for manual triggering. You could therefore trigger any fill, or invoke any main variation instantly with a single button push (plus simiar dedicated buttons for two intros and two endings. Just to gild the lily, if you hit a fill button again whilst the fill was still playing, the fill would go into endless loop mode until you triggered something else.

The size and weighting of these buttons was just about perfect. Light enough to trigger with the most glancing tap, but with a positive click, so you would never trigger one by accident. Plus, they had the good sense to allow some physical panel space between each button so you could hit them quick without any risk of getting two at once. I also liked their location, sprawled over a big area right across the centre left of the panel, so you could use either hand to get at them in a hurry. Great ergonomics - best I've seen on any arranger, including Korgs later and current ranges.

However, so far nothing too revolutionary here - just good design. But read on - it had another trick up its sleeve.

The really clever bit was in some user settings within the operating system, where any fill could take you to any main variation destination. It could go straight back to the same variation, go up one, down one, jump from (say) two to four, or three to one (or any other combination), escalate from one through four, or back down, or do a back and forth toggle between any chosen pair. Each fill button had the same routing options available, but your choice was independent for each fill button.

Better than that, none of this was "global". These settings were available to save for each "performance" (Korg speak for a UPS, panel preset, or whatever), so the choices could be different for two songs in the same set, even though they might use the same underying basic style selection.

For added convenience, there was a simple automatic global "stay put" default for the fill routings, so you didn't have to bother changing these if it wasn't needed - either when creating a new performance from scratch, or when doing something "on the fly". So no nasty suprises as a hangover from something you might have been doing earlier with an unrelated song.

The final refinement was to make the actions of the front panel buttons available on an assignable multiway foot switch. So hands free possible as well.

Great system - very "musical" to work with. I miss it enormously since moving on from my old i3. I've not come across its equal from any manufacturer - not even Korg themselves where their ergonomics have gone to pot since this superb early effort (not bad for 1992/3 or whenever it was that it came out).

- By the way, did I mention that the fills for a style could be anything from half a bar to 32 bars long without repetition? Or be in a different time signature from the main style variations? Pile of old crap really. Don't know why I put up with the thing for so many years..... ;-)

Regards - Mike

[This message has been edited by MikeTV (edited 09-09-2006).]

[This message has been edited by MikeTV (edited 09-09-2006).]

(sorry - repeat posting in error - since deleted)

[This message has been edited by MikeTV (edited 09-09-2006).]

(sorry - repeat posting in error - since deleted)

[This message has been edited by MikeTV (edited 09-09-2006).]

A multi pedal unit would work for fills.

I use an FC-7 footpedal with my G70, usually with Auto-Fill ON, so hands free, I get where I want to go, but I confess that sometimes I want more choice of fills. As I play mostly LH bass and only use my arranger's drums, it's not quite so important that the fill match the variation level so accurately (but if you are using full arranger mode, it's more important that they match).

I have often wished that you could use a two-tap process if you wanted a fill to go to a variation it is not usually destined for; 1st tap (of button or FC-7) starts the fill of choice, with it's usual destination if not interrupted, but if you quickly hit a different button, that should change the destination variation, BUT NOT THE FILL......

I also wish that arranger manufacturers weren't so lazy in their choice of fills - in other words, why not have a dedicated fill for each and every variation destination, rather than the limited choice they now give you, This means (with four variations) 16 fills, if you count fills that return to the same variation, and 12 if not. There is no technical reason why they can't do this, just a desire to spare the style programming effort, I guess. Roland give you only seven fills, so you can see they are getting close, but stumbling before the finish line.........

Another area I would like to see improved is how arrangers deal with break/mutes, and especially how they deal with fills DURING breaks......... One of my beefs with the G70 is how they dropped the dedicated Break/Mute button in favor of (after many pleas to have the feature at all!) putting it away from the variation buttons with the Assignable switches. It needs to be right next to the Variation buttons, preferably where your RH or LH can get at it...... NOT way off to the LH end of the keyboard.

I would also like to see (maybe as an option, but it would be OK as the main behavior) that if you trigger a fill AFTER you have triggered a Break/Mute, ONLY the drums play the fill, just like what happens with a real drummer - when the band makes a stop, the drummer will often play a little 'pickup' at the end of the bar, to bring everyone in on time. Currently, you trigger the fill during the break, EVERYBODY jumps back in (at least on Rolands), ruining the effect.

So...... here's a few ideas for improving what we already have. Any suggestions or comments?