I don't know about you, but one of the things that drives me crazy on arrangers is listening to the chord parts jump around like jackrabbits, rather than use smooth voice leading...

I know you can usually program a part to not exceed a certain range, but that doesn't really fix it. While it is necessary for the bass to jump around to the 'one' in a chord progression, why do many of our style chord parts have to do the same thing? Wouldn't it be simpler to take the voice leading that we actually play to be how the chords move? In other words, lets say you play a C chord from bottom to top CEG. Now let's play an F... CFA. But that's not what the ACC voices are going to play... If the style was programmed with CEG, that's what the part will jump to (FAC), unless it exceeds the preprogrammed range. And hence the 'jackrabbit' chord changes.

Surely some king of chord recognition system could be figured out that, when it sees a first or second inversion chord, it could get the ACC part to play in that too? Sort of like having the Bass inversion ON, but ONLY for the chords (or even just certain parts), while the Bass still plays roots...

One of the things I particularly like about Roland's Guitar Mode is that, depending on where up and down you play in the chord recognition zone, the inversion of the guitar chord (it's voicing on the neck of the guitar) will go up and down too. In fact this is so good, it drives me crazy that it isn't integrated into the style mode, and can only be played live!

Surely something similar could be programmed into the NTT's of ACC parts?

Good voice leading and change of part range is something that is the mark of a REAL player. Personally, I would give up considerable realism in the SOUND of something for more realism in the way that it PLAYS. After all, an ultra realistic sound, playing a part that no human would ever actually play is no way to create realism, IMO....

What do you think? Should we be asking for this from the manufacturers? And does any current arranger already do this?