Musik,

Is it absolutely critical that you be able to control chord changes in real time ? See, when you said in the beginning that you were looking to create songs, I just figured programs like Jammer, BIAB, etc, might be the way to go for you. In these programs you enter the chord progressions ahead of time and it plays back. The chord structure can be quickly changed once you get the hang of it. If it is necessary though that you create chord changes "on the fly", then I would have to say ( at least for me ), that a real arranger is still more comfortable for me to work with than any software program. The disadvantage and one of the main reasons why I use Jammer Pro is that the style data of an arranger never changes ( unless of course I edit the style or make my own ). With "pro", styles can vary from measure to measure if you set them up that way. Even though BIAB uses prerecorded midi data, it too varies without changing variations because there are several different mini variations available within each style. I would like to see an arranger that does this. Still, if what I'm doing is writig songs, I don't need to be able to control the chord changes in real time.

As I said in my first reply to you, I have tried all 3 of the real time Yamaha based style programs and I don't use any of them. This isn't because they aren;t good programs ( they are ). The reason is that I find my arranger to be more user friendly if I need to change the chords " on the fly ".

Wanting to use a real arranger to control chord changes in real time kind of falls into the same territory for me as my desire to have knobs and real time controllers available to use when I play the synth. I can replicate and likely surpass the quality of sounds by using some of the modern day computer synthesizers / samplers, but... I lose a lot without the controller and knobs / sliders available on a synth to tweak and make adjustments "on the fly". I'm sure there are controllers out there that would allow me to prgram parameters to accomplish this, but would they be more comfortable to use than my synth / workstation ?

AJ