But of course, the problem has become that, with today's multi function keyboards, with hundreds of functions, and thousands of sounds, where you gonna put all them buttons??

You STILL have to spend a fair amount of time staring at the buttons, trying to figure out which bank of functions the buttons are in NOW, and you don't get the benefit of a different backdrop and overlay to quickly let you know you are about to select a Bass sound, NOT select a Rhumba! You usually have to find some little LED to tell you what you are about to do, not easy in daylight or strong stage lighting (whereas my G70 can be read in both)

I'll keep my G70, thank you very much.......... by FAR the most intuitive, easy to use touch screen out there.

Diki,

if you like your G70 (or PA1X)- good for you. However, I believe that the keyboard manufacturers can do better, which is why I have (and will probably continue) to voice my opinion when I see things that where not done right or could be done better.

There is indeed a lot of information that must be accessible, but not all of it needs to be accessible in real time. In your G70 there are thousands of sounds, but they are layered in the banks to support legacy MIDI files (the SC55, SC88, SC880, etc.). I bet you only use a few dozen sounds in your music (if you are playing live), and if not, you could probably get away with this many.

In Windows applications, better programs provide all functions through the menus, but also alternate access for the frequently used functions (either with right-click menus, or key combinations, or both). This stems from the understanding that there is a subset of functions that is more important than others. The same is true for the keyboards. Regrettably, Roland and Korg choose to ignore this fact.

When someone does things poorly and you tell them, they may or may not improve in the future. But if you don't talk about it, they will for sure not improve.

For this reason it is important for us to let the manufacturers know when they missed out in addressing our needs.

Hi Abacus

Very good post, in my opinion. I think the section I have quoted above sums up the issue very well. My own feeling is that the combination of a good touch screen plus a large number of well deigned, sized and placed physical buttons is the best way to go for an arranger.

The screen is excellent for dealing with actions that are more likely to be carried out whilst not actively playing in the middle of a song. Examples would include many actions that you would undertake whist setting up the instrument to play a brand new number (selecting a reverb type, choosing a drum kit, etc) or selecting a song from a large playlist.

The hard buttons suit actions that need to be carried out quickly and accurately and be right-first-time, such as triggering a drum fill, or anything else that you would reasonably do in the middle of performing a song in front of an audience.

Certain actions are best accomplished with a mixture of physical controllers used together with the touch screen. I'm think of things such as where a combination of a screen display, together with some physical sliders and a rotary encoder can make a very effective "virtual mixing desk" within the instrument. This type of functionality is great for getting the overall mix between the various style and live keyboard parts sorted out when first preparing a new song. It lends itself well to this type of function where you would be likely to save the finished result as some kind of user patch for later recall, rather than expecting to be doing this type of operation on-the-fly in the middle of performing.

Interestingly, I think Roland may have provided the two most extreme examples to date of how to do "touch-screen-plus-physical-buttons" right, and how to do it wrong.

Their current G-70 generally strikes a very good balance between functions that use buttons (or other physical devices) and functions that use the touch-screen. It also makes good use of the two interface types together. The touch screen section itself is well done and the whole makes for a generally very intuitive design. The overall result isn't perfect, but the overall control surface that ensues is generally pretty good and it is an exceptionally easy instrument to manage because of this. The G70s main failings in this regard are more to do with the size and positioning of the physical buttons, rather than any fundamental shortcomings in interaction and integration between physical controls and screen.

In contrast, their previous VA series must be the worst thought out arranger ever to hit the market from this point of view. It was so reliant on the touch screen for almost every function, as to make it all but unplayable in any reasonable sense. This was doubly frustrating, because the touch screen implementation itself was actually quite good. The instrument simply had nowhere near enough physical controls to be usuable in any realistic scenario. Judging by the major change of approach represented by the G70, Roland have at least appeared to learn from this earlier ergonomic disaster and have made big steps forward in user friendliness with their more recent designs.

One further observation I would add, is that I get the impression that many arranger users are maybe making life harder than it needs to be by making less use than they might of "user presets" or "user one touch" settings (terminology will vary with instrument). It often seems to be the case that they are trying to change things on the fly in the middle of performing a song that would be better set up as two separate patches, A & B, that would allow instant switching between the two conditions required. An example may be where they are trying to call up a different tone to play a "solo" by using the tone select fuctions, rather than already having the alternate sound previously set up and stored under a different user patch.

I suspect that their reasons for doing this may come down to the old argument where the supposed need for infinite flexibility on a gig is used as an excuse for not setting up a song adequately first, rather than that they don't understand the functionality that is available (that last comment might provoke some argument ;-) ).

Regards - Mike



[This message has been edited by MikeTV (edited 05-17-2006).]