I guess I'm going to have to play one to find out for sure... It sure sounds pretty whacked out to me (unintuitive, if you like ).

The way the Roland's work is that you hold down a chord with your left hand (any chord) and you have about two octaves or so to play it higher or lower (inversions and/or octaves). The arranger remaps that chord to a voicing that the guitarist would play, in that section of the neck. Play another chord (of the same type) in the same area, get another accurate guitar voicing, not just a barré jump.

Different notes in the RH area do the strumming types (but first six notes with the actual single notes on it, for fingerpicking), up down hard soft, rakes, mutes, down-strokes on note down, up-stroke on release (VERY musical!), etc., but the squeaks are triggered by moving the chord, no need to play them! Taps and knocks round out the range.

But here's where they messed up... Because of Roland's OS (no-one knows if it is stubbornness or a patent issue), there is always ONE non-transposing track (the Drum Track). So you can't put the note pattern that your RH would have played to get a particular strum and rhythm pattern into the Style Part, to trigger the Guitar Mode chord...! (Or as you change chords, the Track will transpose, and those strum TYPE notes will get shifted around to something totally different)

So it appears on the one hand, the Roland system seems FAR more 'live play' orientated... you actually CAN play some pretty decent sounding guitar strumming and picking in realtime on the keyboard, and it all be guitar accurate, the Korg system, while seeming impossible to play 'live' to create the patterns, once you have done it offline, you CAN use the part as a trigger track for the Guitar mode in Style Play.

It seems like we need a mind-meld between the two systems... Roland's ease of performing the strums in the first place, and Korg's ability to take that performance as a Style Track to trigger it automatically.

Typical! Two half-assed solutions instead of one integrated one

With any luck, these aren't patented systems, and one of the two will finish the job.... Any takers?

[This message has been edited by Diki (edited 02-20-2008).]