This is why I sometimes say that it's better to play more manual parts and sequences of particular songs. The "generic" flavor of styles HAS to get boring after a while ..... no one plays the same exact succession of notes every night, every song.

I'm a firm believer that arrangers can be overused at times, so I make a practice of shutting it off alot. There is no need for a 12 piece band on every song .... in fact, it's overkill in many situations. Last night I had the arranger off for almost two hours. I was playing swing tunes, latins, pop/rock and broadway stuff.... all with manual bass and piano. It's more interresting for ME, and more diverse for my audience. The times when I turn the auto guys on just adds to the total package.
Didn't any of you ever play in small combos? Don't you miss that 3 piece rhythm section groove? It's so cool when the bass, drums and piano are in sync - poppin' and grovin' together. It's the heart of the arrangement, so why not FEATURE it more? Just my thoughts. I miss some of those old trio and quartet days.

This is the reason of my option to Yamaha Kbs.
I like to perform always with the same voices and the same yamie not complicated styles ; so, my personnal performance goes to create my trade mark .
If I play complicated styles with specific intros, fills and endings, the trade mark goes to the kbd and NOT for me.
Chico

I could use more styles but at the expense of the ones I'll never use. The PSR-740 has 160 styles and three user styles. It would have been better to have 3 styles and 160 user styles so you could load the ones you want, which in my case is swing, jazz and ballroom. I will say this though. If you speed up or slow down some of the other styles quite drastically you can find a lot of hidden treasures.

Like UD, I don't really have to go outside of the internal styles in my i30 (basically the same style set as the PA80). And I'm sure that Uncle Dave will agree that it's the eight and sixteen-bar loops in a lot of korg styles that make the styles themselves interesting. That's always been my biggest disappointment with Yamaha, those boring 4-bar loops.

Red,
The Tyros has 32 bar loops in it.
Terry

Pilot, I concur. The Korg PA80 allows you to WRITE OVER the factory styles with your own custom styles. I WISH the other arranger manufacterers would follow suit.

Personally I find that quality wins over quantity when it comes to styles. Compare this discussion to the one about sounds.

It's one of the things about the PA80 that I like best Scott. Then they go and mess it all up by giving us only two fills for four variation styles. Go figure. Still, in spite of that "flaw" ( and a couple of lesser ones ), and even with the advent of newer models from other manufacturers, this is among the features that the PA80 has that the other models don't, so I'm not willing to trade it in for any of the other current models. The other main feature that makes me want to keep it is the voice / patch editing power, so far unmatched by any of the other models I've tried.

AJ

Hi AJ: If Korg would implement jazz pianist type 'rootless' chord recognition as Technics, Yamaha, and Ketron have, then I might have given the PA80 some serious consideration. Perhaps in a later reincarnation. I wonder if anyone at Korg is listening.

I'd venture to surmise that I've got more styles than anyone else. Big deal! I've been collecting them for many years, using ones I've acquired to get new ones.

One benefit of this activity, aside from fulfilling what has now obviously become a collection compusion, is that I've been able to make many thousands of styles available to the PSR user community thru styles conversions.

I really enjoy playing new styles. I record "live" playing along with them as I listen to them on each original audition. This gives me the feeling of playing along with a "live" band as I'm never quite sure what "the other guys" are going to be playing It is also lots of fun and a bit challenging.

Yes, if I were doing live gigs for an audience I'd certainly cull these many thousands of styles down to a very practiced few that are superior.

As things stand I'll never get to play all the styles I have as new ones keep arriving before I've tried all the ones I already have.

Cheers,

Bob