Nick G, I sent you an email and a couple of styles.
Bebop

George's post about Chris Halon is reasonably accurate. There is a team of people who engineer these products. Chris' official title is National Product and Marketing Manager for Roland CK. His job at Roland, similar to what his job at Technics was, is to input the US's requests for product development. He is very influential in the design and engineering of products that make it to the US market.
Bebop

I found the 284 page manual, about 20 MB if you want to read/study it. You can read it on line or download and save it. It is a pdf file.
Go to: http://www.roland.co.uk/arrangerkey_room_catdet.asp?ID=E80
click on manual.
Bebop

From our experience with Roland over at the Danish G70 site, I'm afraid that Roland doesn't put a LOT of weight behind what US arranger customers want.

After all, the workstation is king over here, arrangers (despite recent Keyboard mag articles) are still a much smaller segment of the market than Europe. You only have to look at the 'banishing' of arrangers from Roland's regular music shops to the gulag of the CK 'Mom and Pop organ store' limbo they currently languish in to see their 'commitment' to arrangers in the US! If an E80 isn't good enough to display on a shelf next to a Fantom, where do you think their priorities are?

The style selections are another area where it is easy to see Roland's geographical interest. Countless schlager and schlock, very little R&B, Country, Alternative, or styles in any way recognizably American... Until Roland decide quite consciously to start being more aggressive in the US market, marketing AND style-wise, I personally don't see much weight being attached to OUR needs.....

Diki:
Is there anywhere that the above American type styles can be downloaded or purchased that have been created by E 80 owners, etc.?
One place that the Roland Sales Manager, Travis Mitchell told me about is:
cybermidi.com
I am told there is a membership fee of 40.00 but then you can download all the midi files there that are done by professionals, and there are lots of them.

Bebop

Pretty much all the major style houses are European, so once again the same slant on styles (IMHO).

SMFs of US tunes are abundant (or relatively so) but styles are another thing...

While ALL the major workstations have arpeggio patterns in them that scream 'USA', the arrangers have very few (IMO) that feel particularly American. Lots of house and disco, very little hiphop. Lots of schlager, very little 'alternative'. Lots of Latin, very little reggae. Lots of polka, very little Cajun. You get the point.....

Styles aren't everything......these KB's have the ability make your own styles ...but few do it......play along ..use SMF, Mp3's mix it up make it fun its all good !!

After visiting cybermidi, all I found were SMFs. No styles. And nothing model specific... just generic GM SMFs.

As most of the E80/G70 sales are in Europe, most of the styles from users are coming from there, too. So back to square one. I still feel that unless Roland themselves make deliberate inroads into US styles, it won't matter a bit what 'features' their hardware has. Unless musically they address US players, they are going to paint themselves into a corner, with just older players playing older styles. Not exactly how you would go about building a market....

I am pretty sure I was told you can make styles from the midi files you play in this keyboard. You can also remove a track in a midi file that you want to play yourself.
I have just printed up the 287 pages of the manual and will now begin to study it so I will know what I am talking about and maybe even how to turn this keyboard on when it gets here next Thursday
PS: I have had one offer for the Tyros 2 so far that would just about cover the sales tax and freight Anybody have any interest in it and/or the PSR9000 both loaded with everything.
Let me know
Bebop

Hi Bebop,
Technote have redone their Technics style range for Roland keyboards if they're of any interest to you. SD card with 300+ of their styles available for 99uk pounds.

Just out of interest, with my VA7 a few years back, roland included hundreds of their earlier styles on zip disk ( I think), do they include all these earlier styles with the E80 as an added bonus?

best wishes
Rikki
[QUOTE]Originally posted by BEBOP:
[B]