'This is all well and good, but doesn't seem easily do-able live onstage. I understand well about combining styles to make them more suitable (unfortunately, Roland's don't have multipads, so that option is out), but it seems a non-realtime function'

I dont get it. Who deeply edits styles whilst playing ??????? How many hands do you have ???

On the PA products you can use the sliders to reduce the busyness of a style instantly and in real time whilst you play, you can mute the elements of a style you can save these alterations in performance banks for instant recall at any time in live play . You can trigger multipads that have preprogrammed musical phrases that follow your chords just like another set of arranger patterns effectly giving you yet another variation on the style instantly. You can change the instruments in a style live in real time whilst you are playing if you want !

You can do more detailed event editing offline when you are not performing including substituting individual drum sounds and composing your own personalised drum kits, you can micro edit individual notes of instruments in a style including note velocity, note position , sustain etc for each instrument in each style and then save that as your edited style so that you can have your new self created personalised styles again available instantly as an over written factory style or new style in performance. You can buy sample drum grooves from live drums and import them into your styles to get an even more live feel.

Even if you had the historic function on the roland it is very unlikely that y#the manufacturers idea of 'busy' or over complex in terms of styles will be the same for everyone and for a pro performer i am certain that they will still want to tweak the style to their specification. Afterall a button that changes a full brass band to a small combo might still not fit the bill right ?

I have used only two maufacturers instruments in my short life as a musician but from my view point Korg could not have made the PA keyboards more performance focused for live playing musicians than they have, Although the PA2X will probably make me eat my words!

How much more live performance geared control and flexibility do you want ?