I personally thought the old Korg i3 and its immediate relatives had a good system.

This had four main variations (with six possible chord related patterns under each one - maj,min,7th,dim,etc or whatever you wanted) - plus two fills (with four distinct chord related patterns each).

The four main variations and the two fills all had separate, very large, light action buttons for manual triggering. You could therefore trigger any fill, or invoke any main variation instantly with a single button push (plus simiar dedicated buttons for two intros and two endings. Just to gild the lily, if you hit a fill button again whilst the fill was still playing, the fill would go into endless loop mode until you triggered something else.

The size and weighting of these buttons was just about perfect. Light enough to trigger with the most glancing tap, but with a positive click, so you would never trigger one by accident. Plus, they had the good sense to allow some physical panel space between each button so you could hit them quick without any risk of getting two at once. I also liked their location, sprawled over a big area right across the centre left of the panel, so you could use either hand to get at them in a hurry. Great ergonomics - best I've seen on any arranger, including Korgs later and current ranges.

However, so far nothing too revolutionary here - just good design. But read on - it had another trick up its sleeve.

The really clever bit was in some user settings within the operating system, where any fill could take you to any main variation destination. It could go straight back to the same variation, go up one, down one, jump from (say) two to four, or three to one (or any other combination), escalate from one through four, or back down, or do a back and forth toggle between any chosen pair. Each fill button had the same routing options available, but your choice was independent for each fill button.

Better than that, none of this was "global". These settings were available to save for each "performance" (Korg speak for a UPS, panel preset, or whatever), so the choices could be different for two songs in the same set, even though they might use the same underying basic style selection.

For added convenience, there was a simple automatic global "stay put" default for the fill routings, so you didn't have to bother changing these if it wasn't needed - either when creating a new performance from scratch, or when doing something "on the fly". So no nasty suprises as a hangover from something you might have been doing earlier with an unrelated song.

The final refinement was to make the actions of the front panel buttons available on an assignable multiway foot switch. So hands free possible as well.

Great system - very "musical" to work with. I miss it enormously since moving on from my old i3. I've not come across its equal from any manufacturer - not even Korg themselves where their ergonomics have gone to pot since this superb early effort (not bad for 1992/3 or whenever it was that it came out).

- By the way, did I mention that the fills for a style could be anything from half a bar to 32 bars long without repetition? Or be in a different time signature from the main style variations? Pile of old crap really. Don't know why I put up with the thing for so many years..... ;-)

Regards - Mike

[This message has been edited by MikeTV (edited 09-09-2006).]

[This message has been edited by MikeTV (edited 09-09-2006).]