I promise I have read the manual but I may have zoned out in places, so why can’t I get my BK9 & BK7m to save the settings I want for boot up?
Most irritatingly, I have not found a way to make sure it boots up with the Arranger Setting/Tempo/ set to Auto. Whatever I do, it always offers the more limiting Preset.
So if I start flicking through Styles to find which might suit a certain song, I am regularly having to remind myself to scroll through the menus to change this one setting, usually only remembered after I’ve started the auditioning process.
Surely Auto should be the default setting?! (BK9 OS 1.06/BK7m OS 1.07)

I think I’ve saved a default patch, and the sounds are what I want, but never the Style. The units insist on booting up with the same Style they always have. I guess that an OTS setting would add just two button presses to getting to where I want to be but I’d love them to just start up ready to go.

The place to setup your Startup setup is first to create a Performance (including the style), edit it how you want in the Performance Edit, then do a ‘Save as Default’. However, you can ONLY use ROM styles in that Startup Default setting. I guess this is so that the keyboard will boot if you don’t have your USB stick in the slot. You have probably tried to use a User Style, right?

But no, unfortunately, the Tempo parameter (in Arranger Settings) is not memorized. Despite several models having the same issue, it has not been changed despite many requests. I guess there are two ways to look at it...

For auditioning similar styles at the same tempo, you probably need Auto. But auditioning styles of different types, you might want them at the preset tempo (so a polka after a ballad doesn’t crawl!).

I have my startup default setup ready to go, and changing that setting is the ONLY thing I need to remembered do, and even that doesn’t need to be touched if you use Performances and aren’t auditioning styles.

No doubt if the default setting was Auto, the people that want the style’s default tempo would be the ones complaining..! It’s simply one of those ‘You can’t please all of the people all of the time’ things!

But yes, the parameter SHOULD be stored in the default setup...

Thank you, Diki.
I appreciate the advice.
Tempo Auto does choose the Preset tempo if the Style is stopped, so for those wanting to audition styles across genre, Auto would still be suitable, presuming there aren't many songs that mix such eclectic styles in the middle, you would stop the previous style before selecting a new one and Auto would then give you the Preset tempo. But that ship has sailed, obviously.

Yep... Bon voyage, Roland!

I predict, just like Technics, that soon we will all be looking back fondly at the sounds and features that were forward thinking while we conveniently forget some of the little niggles!

I do have a sneaking suspicion that sooner or later, we all may be facing a lack of serious progress with arrangers. The thing is, almost without exception, an arranger is based around the ‘engine’ of that company’s top workstation, but more and more, those workstations are morphing into synths with little emphasis on the ROMpler real instrument part. And without much progress there, there’s little room for progress in the spin-off arranger.

While Yamaha have made progress leveraging the vastly improved insert effects architecture of their newer engine, to be honest little significant progress has come with the sounds with the exception of the few round-robin drum kits. And Korg is still stuck with largely the same limitations that the Triton engine imposes on it, decades old tech.

I have a feeling that, unless future keyboards move back towards a more real instrument emphasis, the arranger is going to struggle to match the pace of workstation innovation. I wonder who the next company to join Roland in abandoning the segment will be..?

To my way of thinking, an "arranger" is style pattern transformation based on real-time chord recognition. Maybe the definition includes RH harmony, or even vocal harmony driven from those same recognized chords.

If this is true, why can't Roland or ANY manufacturer put all of this in a "black box" (aka module) which could be connected via MIDI to ANY tone and effect generator: VSTs, a Ketron SD1000, or a Roland MC-80EX? Sure, more nuanced ROM samples are great. But the core arranger functionality hasn't changed much since the RA-800 of 1996.

Well, there’s nothing to stop you hooking up a BK7-m to a VSTi rig...

For me, the future may very well be something like Groovyband software, especially as the small development team and lack of corporate inertia allows them to reinvent the wheel, and move towards things like far more Variations and fills, or pseudo random note changes to move away from the repetitive nature of styles.

Pair that with a decent software collection of VSTi’s, you’ve got something that ought to move the bar higher by quite a margin.

In truth, I’ve pretty much abandoned the style engine part of my BK-9, I don’t find it as realistic as audio tracks (which often have real guitarists and drummers etc) and my goal has always been to convince ME (not the far easier fooled audience!) that I’m back playing with a great band...

Most songs, the chords are the chords. If I feel like making a substitution, I can usually pull that off without changing the backing (particularly if it’s reasonably sparse). But most of the time, the only thing I want to mess with is structure, extra solos, stuff like that. And I still struggle with the necessity of inputting chords rather than play like I did with bands, using my left hand for all kinds of things, not rote constant chord input!

So, more and more, the style section is less and less important to me. Fortunately, I think Roland went out on a high note with the BK-9, although it may not be the world’s best style keyboard, I honestly think it’s the world’s best gigging keyboard, light, great sounds, and designed with everything the gigging keyboardist needs. A great piano, a great (especially by arranger standards!) Hammond, killer guitars, brass etc. and a good 76 action.

If I had been stuck with my 45lbs G70 as Roland’s swan song, I am positive I would never have been as satisfied (no audio, no decent Hammond, no SN guitars, far less insert MFX etc). So far, at any price and at any weight, nothing even remotely tempts me to migrate...