Oh- one more important thing I forgot to mention... If the pad track plays at least a full triad, you can send this note data over MIDI, and use it to control the style engine of a SECOND arranger, in real time! I happen to love Roland's chord fingering. Yamaha's not so much. But Yamaha has the biggest library of styles, and a big color screen. So I use the output from a very basic style on the Roland to control the Yamaha's style engine.

Another cool thing about hooking up two arrangers as I've described: With a single arranger, "Hold" applies to ALL of the tracks. When you play, they all sound, and when you release the keys they all fall silent. But if you control one arranger with another via MIDI, the "master" running the freeplay style will generally create a sound only on key press. The second arranger will work the way we're used to, i.e., the style will run continuously based on the last played chord. This gives you a lot more flexibility, with multiple tracks, bass notes, and custom voicing, than you would get just by activating the "lower" voice in a single arranger setup. Most of us have more than one arranger lying around. If you've never experimented with MIDI'ing two arrangers together, I highly recommend it!