Re: XF chords... Do a search for names like "Paul Tumelty" and/or "Heiko Plate". A long time ago, one of these gents made a spreadsheet-based tool for adding Yamaha XF chords to a MIDI. It isn't as mysterious as it's made out to be- I recognized the relevant bytes the first time I looked at the data. If I recall, they are at the very end of the file.

If Yamaha ever finished developing the step chord editing capability promised by the "CHD" tab in their on-board editor, it would be a breeze. That whole tab and feature set are half-baked, IMO.

I totally agree with your sentiment about XG Works. I have 3.07 and it runs ok for me in Windows 10. I don't do anything with audio, so all of the newer DAWs are way overkill and frustrating to learn. Do you know of any other good basic sequencing softwares that are MIDI focused?