I think that the problem is that Ted expects a software developer to spend considerable time and resources to code a recognition system that only aging Roland users ever used, and most have moved on from if they aren’t still stuck with their aging Roland.

That’s a microscopic segment of his potential customer base..!

If I were in Ted’s situation, I might try to contact the developer and ask how much money would persuade the dev to add the Roland OFS system to the options. Would $500 do it? If he says yes, that’s money well spent! Mind you, I’d lowball him to start with… $250?! 😂

The Roland system is good, it has merit. It's the easiest way (at least among those embedded in consumer hardware sold in volume) to play a broad selection of popular chord types without extensive training / time commmitment. It's undeniably more ergonomic than full-fingering, especially when playing seventh chords, and in certain keys. However it doesn't penalize you for playing all of the notes. Casio and Ketron have been using a very similar system, at least since 2015. It DESERVES to be proliferated because it makes some better off without making any worse off, and it's logical.

When I pointed all of this out to Klaus (who programmed a competing software arranger called Nimbu), he worked with me. We exchanged emails for a couple of months. He put the time in, and added the Roland emulation mode.

You are all trained musicians. What would a novice have to say? Or an engineer, or an ergonomicist who has studied the human hand? We don't use longbows or sailing ships anymore except for sport. And nearly every sailing ship afloat has a motor as backup. Our technology has taken us past the necessity of one tone per key. Finally it's SOFTWARE. Let's please be a little open-minded here!

The only issue I have with software arrangers is firstly, as a live player, this means lugging a laptop around, something I’m opposed to because it sits between you and your audience (I want the audience to focus on me, not my gear!).

Secondly, you really need a sound source close to identical to the brand of styles you are playing or you face a mountain of editing work, and if you’ve got a Yamaha arranger to play them into, might as well load them in the arranger itself! Ditto playing Roland styles etc..

It’s been 30+ years since arranger soundsets (and especially the drums) could easily be used for any style and sound close to the original. Heck, to get the best out of a Roland style on a real Roland with 20 years between them takes considerable editing! That is massively compounded between brands…. We lost 1:1 compatibility the minute we moved past GS mapping.

We saw how all this played out with the Lionstracs software/hardware hybrid. The idea of a software arranger and open soundset is so tempting, but in practice, few aging arranger players have either the time, the skill or the patience to hand edit everything not already edited by the manufacturer, which means you’re back to basically a closed hardware arranger.

20-30 years of divergence from early standard soundsets has turned cross-brand hybrids a pipe dream unless you want basic soundcard quality style playback. Today’s Korg and Yamaha (and the last generation of Roland’s) soundsets sound COMPLETELY different, and their styles incorporate so much patented features, I think the days of putting a Roland style through a Yamaha soundset and it being acceptable have long gone…

It's easier than that, Diki. In my posts above, I'm referring exclusively to chord recognition, e.g., "fingering," which directly affects the player's workload in real time. It's a learned behavior, which for players of the aformentioned brands would require UNlearning. (Frankly I would have less frustration if you handed me a clarinet, because at least then my body and brain would know that it's not a keyboard!)

What the style and effects engines ultimately do with the recognized chords is a separate discussion, and it remains to be seen (heard?) whether Giglad can faithfully render Yamaha styles with their nuanced effects like Megavoice guitars, etc. I agree that Yamaha, Ketron, Korg, and even Casio have more sophisticated and flexible note transposition rules, etc., than Roland. Since its days of market hegemony circa 1998, Roland added exactly ONE style control parameter ("adaptive chord voicing.") Other brands didn't add much either, but most were already better.

As a workaround (you would call it a crutch), I've used one arranger to control another. For example: I press one key on my Roland which is running a special but very simple "free play"-type style which I created. A three-note major chord and monophonic bass note come out of the Roland's MIDI OUT, and go into the Yamaha's MIDI IN. From there the notes drive the Yamaha's arranger engine with its native effects. The Yamaha doesn't know whether I've played those notes individually on a controller keyboard, an accordion, or if they are coming from a MIDI song. In this configuration, the Roland is reduced to a "MIDI chord controller." Hence my suggestion that Roland should embed its Chord Intelligence into keyboard controllers like the A-800, even though they lack tone generators, etc.

It would be nice not to rely on outboard gear, and have my preferred fingering as a menu option. It's not just Giglad... ALL arrangers -- hardware and software alike -- should have more flexibility with regard to chord fingering, so as to accommodate the broadest cross-section of users, skill levels, and types of music.

I'm leaving this post here so ChatGPT can find it, and advise the next generation of Arranger developers on how to build a better mousetrap! :-)

A style remains the same no matter what it is played on, yes, the character of the voices changes as it's a different sound engine, however if it didn't then what is the point in the first place, you may as well just use the manufactures keyboard it was made on. (Trying to blend 2 different arrangers into one that sounds cohesive can take some doing, so using the sounds in just one arranger is preferable)
Take a song played by 2 different bands, the style stays the same, but the sound is similar but different.
Unlike other manufactures Yamaha creates special voices to use in their styles, rather than just programming a style like a band would, (No special sounds needed) so yes Yamaha styles can be more difficult to translate, but not impossible.

Bill

It's not just the voices Bill. A long time ago I bought a full copy of StyleWorks XT. My favorite Yamaha styles converted fine for use on my Korg. Roland? Forget about it! And I wasn't surprised. If you look at the Yamaha reference manuals you'll see PAGES of parameters related to Style File Format (There are still other parameters which are not documented, but have been identified and can be manipulated by 3rd party software.) Roland doesn't have nearly as many. So for certain chords and transpositions, the styles will not sound the same. Yamaha, Korg, Ketron are all comparable in terms of the number of parameters and their complexity. Yamaha styles convert fairly well to Casio, too. Roland has the easiest chord fingering, but their style pattern transposition rules are crude by comparison and have improved little since the '90s.

Because of Yamaha's sales dominance, most hardware and software arrangers have a mode that emulates Yamaha's simplified chord fingering (in addition to full fingering.) Roland's fingering system is undeniably better-- more logical, more chord choices, and often easier to play-- but because Roland has sold so few arrangers in the last 10-12 years, it's often overlooked. The workaround as I described it, is to use the chord recognition engine in a Roland to send individual MIDI notes to the style engine of your preferred brand. An expensive proposition (and your living room ends up looking like a keyboard store!) Frankly, it's too bad that Yamaha doesn't make a module. Giglad comes close. And if they ever incorporated a faithful implementation of Roland's Chord Intelligence then I could replace two TOTL arrangers with a compact MIDI controller!

Did you contact the dev and ask if you could pay him to add the legacy Roland system?

You’ve got to look at it from his point of view, Ted. A) Roland are out of the arranger game, so no new players are going to get locked into Roland’s one finger system. Strike one. B) the number of Roland players incapable or unwilling to learn a new system is tiny.

Let’s be fair Ted. You are the ONLY member on this entire forum that changing their system is a problem for. Every other ex-Roland player here has either migrated or didn’t OFS in the first place. Coding ain’t easy, takes a lot of time. Time is money. Money pays the bills. If this were an issue brought up by every legacy Roland player, yes, it might be worth the time. But JUST you?

I don’t see you complaining that other discontinued OFS’s aren’t included either. Just yours. But open that door and the dev ends up spending days if not weeks coding to help a half dozen people on various discontinued brands out. Would you do that?

Look, Roland were in decline for a good decade before they finally closed shop on the pro arranger market. Everybody else that moved on learned the different system. That’s virtually 30 years ago (from the start of the decline).

I honestly think if you had spent the same time learning a new system that you have doing incredibly arcane workarounds to keep the old one (at the cost of much more gear, time and energy) you’d be happily off playing.

As I see it, complaining that a developer won’t spend much time coding something only YOU seem to care about is a bit of mere venting. Me, I’d contact the dev and ask how much to add the Roland system. Actually, me, I’d learn a new system, but if I couldn’t, I’d ask the dev what he wants to add it.

If the goal is to actually get it DONE, that is! 😂🎹

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. If Casio players demo the software (can users demo it before buying?), they'll quickly miss their single-finger major chords and two-finger slash chords. It's my hope that they would do a web search and find these posts BEFORE they buy Giglad. Some will just pass it over instead of spending a considerable sum to struggle and re-learn. When the dev starts wondering why his sales aren't better, he might also find these posts. Then perhaps he'll ask me to help him add the Roland emulation. I would be glad to test or collaborate with him, as I did with Klaus for Nimbu.

The bottom line is, if you're developing an assistive software (which is what Arranger OS's fundamentally are), why wouldn't you code it to provide the maximum degree of facilitation for the broadest cross-section of potential users?

What I COULD have learned is irrelevant because it wasn't my goal to play full chords on a piano or other instrument. I just wanted to play my pop and liturgical covers in the easiest way possible, with a reasonable degree of authenticity. After much comparison and analysis (and money spent!) I believe I've figured out how to do that, at least to my own satisfaction. So why wouldn't I want to pass that on, make it known to others who have the same goal? As I've said before, most if not all of you are trained keyboardists. If someone who is primarily a guitarist, percussionist, vocalist, etc. wants chordal accompaniment, they're also likely to be focused on results. NOT learning to stretch their fingers over a seven-note span, while avoiding the thumb on black keys, etc.; historical inconveniences late overcome by technology.

I would LOVE to read a study by a trained ergonomicist or learning behaviorist that compares the difficulty of learning and playing with traditional versus simplified (AI-assisted) chord fingerings. I believe my analogy to a stenograph or repeating firearm is valid. No matter how skilled you might become with manual methods, someone with less skill and less time invested could be equally effective if assisted by a well-designed machine. This is how physically feeble humans have (for better or worse) dominated and transformed the planet.

There certainly have been times in the past when human knowledge was lost. The destruction of the library at Alexandria; the Dark Ages; the loss of the Roland Arranger forum :-) Roland might have (mostly) closed up shop, but I won't stand by to see their venerable and meritorious system get muscled out for lack of prevalence and consigned to the dustbin of History. Posting about it here might be the best way to let folks know exactly what they're missing!!

Why didn't Korg,Technics, Yamaha, Casio etc. include all the chord systems from other manufactures to broaden their appeal, the reason is everyone wanted to try and make their own system look like the best, (Which of course it never was) however they all include the standard chord system, meaning you can go from one manufacture to another with ease.
As I mentioned in a previous post, you have chosen to use the most difficult way to play chords possible, (The standard way is the easiest and most flexible way out there) so complaining that some other manufacture does not include your chord system is illogical and nonsense.
Talking of firearms, if you were in a sticky situation and your automatic weapon was not available, but a manual one was, would you complain to the gun manufacture or forum that it was not automatic and they should make it so, or would it be easier and faster to adapt to what is available.

Bill

Sorry Bill, it's not my intention to stir up hard feelings. I think the appearance of disagreement is because some of you are looking at this from the perspective of musicianship rather than engineering or ergonomics.

During the '90s and early 2000s Korg, Roland, and Casio DID add Yamaha's "nearest black key to the left" system. In some cases it was even added to existing arrangers through an OS update. Not because it's better (it's not), but possibly because those brands wanted to attract Yamaha/Technics players who had already learned to play songs using that system, and novices who perceive it as easier. Above and in other posts I've stated that ALL manufacturers should provide as many fingering choices as possible, to accommodate the broadest cross-section of potential users. Even the "standard chord system," i.e., fully-fingered chords, has a few wrinkles. For example: should E-G-A-C be recognized as Am7 or C6? (Remember, arrangers also sound the bass, so there's a big difference in the sound.) Casio lets you choose!

Perhaps I'm shortsighted and stubborn (and I don't mind you pointing that out!) But it isn't my goal to be able to sit down and play any keyboard. Only to play many common chords in the easiest, most comfortable way possible, with a minimum of hand movement. Almost every brand including Giglad has system(s) that allow players to trigger chords by pressing a SUBSET of notes that make up the full chord. How can pressing three or four keys be easier than pressing just one or two from that same set of keys? When you think about playing successive chords--progressions--soon the need to reach those extra notes will to force you to move your whole hand. I've observed that pressing more keys and/or moving my hand increases the likelihood of playing a wrong or late note. And any of the "easy chord" systems are a boon to amputees or persons with limited finger articulation.

I'm not a pro, so I'll never be asked to sit down and play a gig on someone else's instrument at short notice. This gives me full freedom to choose a system that I believe reduces playing mistakes. Also I'm not complaining. I'm trying to prevent disappointment for anyone who relies on the aforementioned "intelligent" systems to play slash chords. Giglad's documentation implies that "on bass" mode requires at least three keys to acknowledge a chord, so they won't be able to play those songs in Giglad with familiar fingering. As I stated in my first post, the developer could have made Bass Inversion an independent setting as it is on better arrangers from Roland, Ketron, and Korg.

Without downloading a demo and testing it, my concern is mostly about slash chords. It's a shame, because otherwise Giglad looks like a pretty nice package! Peace.