Ah!
I see, said the blind man, as he saw

:-)
Lee

Patience my ass... Donny wants to BUY SOMETHING!

How about that new Electro3, Donny? Nice and light...

Reports of layoffs at Roland Italy's manufacturing plant don't seem to bear out hopes of anything major for a while... Given the economy, probably a wise choice. The way things are going, Ketron's decision to ONLY field a $5000 arranger as any kind of new product doesn't seem wise. Personally, I think that Roland's down-market move with the GW-8 seems about right, and perhaps allows them time to reconsider what an arranger needs to be... There's far too much innovative technology on WS's and laptops missing us completely.

Better to come out with something groundbreaking than try to play 'me too' in a field of keyboard sales that is already diminishing fast...

I think the REAL future of arrangers has little to do with us old geezers. We just (apart from Donny!) don't buy enough of the things... I think the WS needs an infusion of the arranger's ease of use, and the marriage of arranger and loopstation technology, and let the next generation of players guide it's path. But they have to find a way of doing it more affordably than the Audya or MS/Wersi's (and voiced better than MS) because times are going to be hard for a while.

Perhaps this is just what the industry needs... lean times to get sharp and hungry again, rather than stamping out carbon copy models year after year. Times get hard, you have to concentrate on what your customers NEED, rather than what you feel willing to give them...

Well, its taken a while but I have found one GLARING issue and difference. On the Korg songbook you could set up playlists using ANY resource...Style, Mp3, SMF, and on the G70, Playlists can ONLY contain midis....You cannot even link data from the Music Finder.

I am only finding this out now, because I am trying to set the thing up for gigs, and I guess I just ASSUMED that with a Playlist function you would be able to assign any resource.

Using the UPG's in this case is very clunky, not to mention slow, between songs.

Dennis

The playlist feature on the G70 is NOT a 'songbook'. It's a jukebox for unattended playback of SMF's.

The Music Finder is more what you need. Simply use the sub-headings in it to organize lists. Alternatively, using a computer, it is possible to create UPS's very quickly using the Session Manager software (drag and drop), and use the UPS as a sort of Gig Disk. There's no limit to how many UPS's you can have (I think) and they load very quickly.

Thanks Diki, but unlike the Korg, the Roland has no "filter" on the Music Finder.

I had thought of that workaround, by simply naming a "genre" or "artist" set 1, set 2 etc but it still lists EVERYTHING in the Music Finder. So its probably the slowest option of the lot.

I will investigate further the UPS path you mentioned as I do use a PC at gigs.

I use a combination of MP3(my own) SMF, styles and solo keyboard, so I DO need an efficient way of arranging sets, as sometimes I may have all 4 methods in 1 set.

OK, give Session Manager a try. Remember, a UPS has 144 or so entries, so one UPS could contain multiple versions of the same list, or one dance list, one slow list, one background list, etc.

Thanks, will do.

There is also the fact that I can select user programs via midi... So what I could do is set up dummy smf's with just the 00/32/pc # embedded and have these in a seperate songlist using a small midi player that can have playlists set up..

Hmmm...Okay..I will advise how it goes.