Bottom line about programming your own styles is, can you actually play everything on keyboards well? I mean, good drum parts with dynamics and feel, bass parts with swing and snap, guitar parts that sound like guitar players, horn lines that would fool a horn player?

If the answer is no, don't waste too much time (unless you are having fun anyway!) on it.

If you are from the old school, and used to do your own sequencing of whole songs, played all the parts, did the drum programming, and they came out pretty well, then probably yes... it's doable.

But probably the fastest way to create fresh sounds for yourself is to try mixing and matching. Grab Drums from one style, the bassline from another, horns from something else, mix and match... I know Ian is a big fan of this.

Admittedly, there's a REALLY cool feature on Roland's (the older E/G series, anyway) called Cover Tools, where with one button, the entire selection of sounds of the style could be changed from say rock band to acoustic jazz, or Latin to Techno. Even if the results weren't perfect every time, whenever something cool shows up, you can Freeze the parameters and save it as another style, then use this in Mix and Match on other styles too.

I really regret that Roland dropped this feature on the BK series. Once again, Roland demonstrate they can't recognize a useful function even if they invent it themselves! I really sometimes wonder if Roland fire their entire Arranger R&D staff every 3-5 years, to make sure there is NO continuity!

But Cover Tools combined with Mix and Match can stretch a LOT of variety out of even just a few good styles...