Today I had a "theme" gig at the local retirement community. It's cruise week and today we were in the Caribbean. The gig paid well for an hour of entertainment. I'm normally a duo but my wife was working her day job.

I took my normal set and modified a few of the songs I normally do into Latin styles. The Korg Pa4X did a great job! I played "Let's Twist Again" with the Mambo Party style... single finger chords in the left and steel drums in the right. Worked like a charm!

A classic cha cha for "Under the Boardwalk." Even "My Way" got the Latin style treatment!

I worked the rest of my normal songs into the "cruise" theme ending with "God Bless the USA."

I normally sequence everything… Play them back as an MP3 and play piano over top while singing. Using the style is now a tool for me to use when I need to come up with something quickly.

Are you talking about using a korg "backing sequence" feature using a style & playing piano on top or a seq song made from scratch multitracking each part to get the desired arrangement?.that said auto styles give you much flexibility at a gig to a point but can become repetitious at times,.....

That is the beauty of an arranger KB for a OMB ... the ability to 'mix it up' ...

We have several songs that we can play as boleros, cha-cha-cha, merengue, bachata, tango, salsa, nortena, or cumbia. It's great to be able to change the style of the song on the fly depending on the crowd.

It's all about the timing!

OMB-101. Class is now in session. Professor Shuey will now take your questions!