I'm sorry, but these numbers are just staggering. Over 1000 separate elements to make one style?
Can we just step back a bit here, and pretend we are in the real world? You know, the one where the vast majority of arranger PLAYERS can't even put a simple MIDI style together that rivals the ROM styles... You see, this is a forum for arranger PLAYERS. I don't know if there is one for the professionals that design the styles for the manufacturers and TOTL style houses, but it ain't here!
(wish it was, mind you
)
Most of us have lives... most of us have families... most of us have JOBS. Where is the time supposed to come from to make ONE of these styles, let alone the hundreds that you need to gig?
When the Audya was first released, I posted a fair bit about their claim that the guitar section was going to to be all audio. I felt at the time (and have since been proven right) that the sheer quantity of loops necessary to make even ONE style that covered sufficient chords to be usable for any song was daunting to make. Even with time stretching and pitch shifting (which introduce artifacts easily noticeable when taken past a certain point - to the point that even Ketron had to have TWO completely different sets of loops to cover a decent tempo range), you are looking at hundreds of different loops to cover just the main chord types and their popular extensions.
Unfortunately, the MS has no special way to add MIDI guitar notes to basic chords to extend the range they can (albeit halfassedly
), so you are back to HAVING to find these chord loops. Let's just look at the major chord, shall we?
Maj, Maj(no 3rd), Maj(add2), Maj(b5), Maj6, Dom7th, Maj(maj7), Maj(6,9), Maj b9, Maj7#9, Maj 11, Maj 13, and so on and so forth.
Now lets think about the minors. And then the diminished. And then the augmented. And then the sus. Half diminished.
Where does one even GET a well recorded library of ALL those chords, let alone in four or so variations and several fills (and someone explain to me how Intros and Endings can have whatever you want on a real guitar in them), and hundreds of different styles in just about any genre you can think of?
It is the sheer scale of the work involved to do this task that many don't take into account. Ketron sure couldn't manage it, and they have gobs of money, talented players and recording facilities that none of us do. They ended up with a system that does maj, min and some (but not all) 7ths. It's all very well to say you COULD do something. Heck, we all COULD be astronauts
If only... we were astronaut material, and dedicated our whole lives to it..!
But back in the REAL WORLD, most of us haven't the time, skill, patience, chops, creativity, technical skills, recording skills, and sheer bloodymindedness to actually do this. Not for the quantity we actually NEED, if even for ONE style. What got our juices flowing (and then dried them up
) was Ketron's announcement that THEY WERE GOING TO DO IT FOR US (and subsequent inability to do so).
Look, IF you had ALL the skills necessary to style up an MS to it's potential, I'm sorry, but you would already BE a top player and recording artist, engineer, whatever... and you wouldn't in the slightest be interested in wasting your time on a bloody arranger!
You'd be playing with the best people in the business, making more money than the arranger industry can afford. How do I know this? Because this is EXACTLY what has happened..! Dom can't afford to hire people to do this task for us, Ketron couldn't afford to hire people to do this task (in it's entirety) for us, and nobody, including ALL the MS cheerleaders on this forum can't do it for us. What on earth make anyone think we could all do it for ourselves?
Sure, make little half-assed audio styles that don't play many chords, and take forever making them (not to mention the cost of purchasing the loop libraries they use), and you can CLAIM it can be done. Now, go away and come back when you have a couple of hundred styles, all capable of playing ANY chord the user wants, in any style the user wants, at any tempo the user wants. And then tell us how much it costs...
If Dom can't afford it, if Ketron couldn't afford to do it, how are WE supposed to...???