Even after all these years, you can still learn something new!

I use several Performances per song if doing something quite complex, or playing with a live band and need different setups for different parts of the song, if it’s just two, the normal DEC/- and INC/+ buttons toggle between them quite well. But increase that to three or more and it gets tricky, plus if going from say 1 to 4 for example, you have to step through 2 & 3 to get there, which if there’s any MFX changes or layout or volume changes can sometimes give you little glitches.

But if, while in the Performance List display you press the Favorites button, the 1-8 buttons directly select the current 8 Performances in the display.

Neat..!

There’s one catch though. The Performance List scrolls up or down in increments of eight, and this seems hard wired into the selection buttons, so if a group of three or four Performances go from the bottom of one page of the List to the top of another, the Favorites can’t be set so they are all on one page. You can still use the DEC/INC buttons to change pages (and if still in Favorites mode, that next eight are now directly accessible), but short of rearranging your Perf. List you can’t get them all to display at the same time.

Plus, of course, every time you add a Performane to the middle or top of the List, it’s going to shuffle all the subsequent entries down one (I like to keep my song list in alphabetical order). But if this is a function you REALLY need, I guess you could get round this by always adding songs using only either four (or eight) Performances per song even if unused, and that should keep all for each song always grouped where the buttons can access them (plus give you room to grow if you find yourself wanting to add something later). With 999 entries, that’s still 250 songs, more than enough for any occasion or band’s complete song list..!

I’ve just started playing with a live band again, this technique will be a lifesaver trying to cop a lot of sounds per song with just the one keyboard!

So, apparently you CAN teach an old dog new tricks!

I found that feature awhile ago and although I don't use it for someone doing what you do it's great. Roland surely thought of the live performer with the BK9

The feature would work better if that hardwired eight performance paging system was more of a normal scroll, but yeah. There’s just so much for the live player in a BK-9…

Not only Keyboard Part volumes on the sliders, but programmable access to two Tone programming values, and two MFX parameters really gives you a lot of control while playing live: adjust an attack value on a pad sound in real time, squelchy filter resonance control for synth solos, adjusting the drive on an amp sim on a guitar sound, deepening a tremolo or phaser on a Rhodes, tons of things you can do with the sliders.

The D-Beam has a huge variety of things it can trigger, from sound effects to mute groups for backing (I love using it to strip a style down to just bass and drums in real time!).

Two control pedal inputs (in addition to the sustain) allows for all kinds of foot control even if you need expression and sustain all the time. Filter sweeps, Leslie on/off/brake, hands free switching between UPR1 & UPR2, that extra control input can be a life saver, live.

And the 4 Assignable Switches are great for a ton of stuff..!

So frustrating that Roland, having finally got everything darn near perfect, decided to quit making pro arrangers. 😢 But they went out on a high note. It might not be the world’s best arranger (but it’s darn close!) but as a live performance keyboard that can ALSO do styles, I don’t know anything better, even ten years later…