I'm different than most I guess when it comes to the fills. When I'd perform I'd sequence everything.. I don't like having to move my hands from the keys or the pitchbend wheel.. I do so much extensive work with the pitchbend, (I really wear that thing out too) that it's often impossible for me to hit a fill while using the pitchbend and playing the keys. Notes are often bent during fills and it's really complicated at times trying to use the pitchbend, play the keys, and press the fill button. Alot of my songs start off with a drum fill. I just like having the drums open the music. Scott like you I too would hold the fill in for several measure to get a good break down, but again that was always recorded, and not done in a live situation. Currently I no longer use the drums on my PSR, and all my drum tracks are now done with a drum machine. When I was using the keyboards drums, and when I was in the mood to really get into a song, I didn't record my drum tracks with the style recorder.. I'd stay away from the loop recording because it just took the natural feel away, and was obviously looped. I recorded everything in realtime (even the drum tracks)... Of course this is time consuming but boy you sure do get that natural feel. Keeping good time isn't an issue for me either since I'm also a drummer. No need for the metronome, I just record all my other tracks first, and then lay down the drums manually because that way it's not the other instruments following the drums, but the drums following the instruments (if that makes any sense).. As far as multipads, these I never use. It would be different if they could be recorded into the sequencer, but I can't find any use for them other than playing around with the presets. Although my drum machine utilizes loop recording to get that natural feel all I do is set the "quantize" to HI... Plus with the drum machine a fill can be recorded with the pattern eliminating the need to record separate pattern just for the fill. The problem I had with every Yamaha arranger I've owned is that you couldn't move from one variation to the next without using a fill. That's what I miss on the MZ-2000.. You could program 4 varitions (and record the fill in the variation) and by pressing another variation button in time with the beat you could move to the next variation without having to program a fill in... That's what drove me crazy with the PSR-550. First it only has 2 variations, and to get to variation 2 you must activate the fill first.. It would be nice if you could bypass that by pressing the variation 2 button and having separate fill 1 and fill 2 buttons...

Squeak