It depends on how picky you are, I guess!

If you are content to use the same style for more than say a couple of songs, nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but it sure adds a degree of 'sameness' to much of your repertoire.

Much depends, also on whether the arranger or the singer is the focus. For instrumentalists like Ian, too many songs in the same style has got to get boring. Cover the style up with a lot of playing and singing, maybe not so much. I guess the more YOU play, the less what the arranger does is going to matter.

I've got a bunch of older Roland styles that work well for me, because there's a lot of ROOM in the style to play yourself, and that can vary radically from song to song. So I use them quite a bit. Kicking my own basslines also helps stretch one style into a lot of usefulness.

But I would imagine, were you playing full arranger all the time and not singing, you'd want a lot more.

Donny, what percentage of your show is done in arranger mode, and what are SMF's or MP3's? Those can also go a long way towards letting you get away with fewer styles, wouldn't you say? LOL