I have a Q or 2 (or more) about the PA80 I'm hoping you'll help me
with. I don't know if it's the PA80 or a Motif I will be spending my
paycheck on soon. (I've narrowed it down almost to these two.) I'm
sorry for asking so many Q's but the salesman didn't really know how
to answer me. I will be purchasing something very soon. I wish he'd
have just given me the manual to read. I'd be grateful for any
answers you can provide me. These Q's are not capricious I really
need certain features for the kind of gigs I do. Soooooooo... to you experienced users...
ok, here goes...
When playing live with a band can I use the auto accompaniment but
mute or deselect any of the backing instruments included in the auto
backing? (for instance just have bass and piano but NOT the drums and
others so the REAL drummer can play along)
Or... are these instruments fixed and allow no editing?

Can I send out to the drummer (on a separate output so it can go to
his headphones) ONLY a click or metronome of the song tempo while
still sending all other sounds out to the main speakers?
If so will this click I send to the drummer be a single drum sound of
my choosing ( i.e.. a cowbell) or... is it just a click or... will it
have to be the whole drum set?

Can I "turn off" the auto accompaniment feature and just use the
keyboard as a regular synthesizer?
If so can I then split the keyboard in this mode and ..let's say..
have bass on the left and organ on the right?

Is the jogwheel the only way to choose the patches in this kind of
mode?
(When I demo'd the PA80 I could only choose patches when in
the "Program" mode [ i think]. In this mode I could only play the one
patch I had dialed up on the screen.. with the jogwheel.)

When playing a Standard MIDI File can I also play along with it and
can I choose the patch I want to play with it?

and finally...

Can I use the PA80 in my home studio, when not playing out, as a
master MIDI controller (MIDI out to other sound modules and sync it
with my computer sequencer (Cakewalk, Digidesign, etc...) just as I
would with an Roland XP-60 or a Yamaha S80 etc...?

I'd better stop there! I don't want to be greedy.
The next store I went to showed me the Motif and seemed to think it
could do most of what the PA80 could do for me... but in a differant
way.
I DON'T KNOW WHICH ONE TO GET (can 0nly afford one)!
I thank you for trying to help me out. If I end up with the PA80 I'll
be active in this forum.
Carlo

Boss,
The answer is YES to all your questions. You can mute whatever tracks you want to and send whatever ones you want. You can put whatever sound you want to send to the drummer on one of the tracks and send it out anyone of the four outputs.
The only one I'm not sure about is playing the midi file and then playing over the top of it, I think you can on this one.
About the patches and selecting them, you could work that a few ways, if I understand what you're trying to do correctly.
1. You could take an existing style and put up to 4 voices (patches) in it and just mute or un mute as needed. In this mode you could actually put together 4 STS (single touch) templates if you will with 4 different leads voices in each for a total of 16 and switch between them and then save it as a user style.
2. You could put together a list of your favorite voices into a user program bank and just go down the list gig night.
3. You could also put a performance patch together which could have at least 8 voices on it.
Finally about the use as a controller...I use it to control a Triton Rack and an EMU Planet Earth without a problem on either. The cool thing about the T. Rack too, is that you can access the arppegiator, so you wind up with the abilities of an arranger and a workstation.
By the way, you said something in another post about sitting on the fence re: a PA....not me I felt it was the best all around arranger board, when I tried them. I like mine very much. Of course I hate Korg and their total lack of support...but like the board. (They have put up a seperate site for the PA by the way, so there's more support on this one then I have seen them provide on anything else.) It's not to say the others are junk, they're not I just thought the PA 80 won my taste test. You're also choosing between it and the Motif, which is a great keyboard too (I just traded mine in for the PA). These are really 2 different animals though, with 2 almost diametrically opposed feels to them.
Terry


[This message has been edited by Jocko (edited 11-21-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Jocko (edited 11-21-2001).]

Thanks Jocko ... Double thanks !!
Is all of this in the manual (and relatively easy to find) or is your experiance you're drawing from?

Boss,
A combination of both. Interestingly enough, I think the PA is straight forward enough, that I only have to go to the manual on occasion. It' pretty easy to get, just sifting through the screens.
Terry