I wonder if there’s a market for software that could convert the chord metadata in XF files into the file format that drives the chord sequencers in Korg’s and Yamaha’s? I know that Korg can save the chord sequences, I’m not 100% sure if Yamaha can store them separately (anyone?) but some way of editing and saving in these formats might be of great use to owners of those arrangers...

Also, what about conversion from BIAB format files? There’s a huge and public resource of BIAB files (for instance, I’ve had the entire RealBook series in BIAB format for decades) that all contain the chords for thousands of songs. Surely some enterprising programmer could find a way to convert these to Yamaha and Korg’s chord sequencer file format?

With any luck, the designers of these chord sequencer formats didn’t stray too far from SMF norms (Yamaha at least stayed close to SMF for even its style format, you can simply change a Yamaha style’s suffix from STY to MID and most DAW’s will read it). Now that the trend is to chord sequencers with multiple sequences all linked (so you can restructure the song at will) it would be wonderful if you could import an XF file or a BIAB file and designate sections (like verse, chorus, solos, intros and endings etc) to export as different files (like I said, I’m not sure how Yamaha link up the different sections in their file format). As long as the format isn’t too proprietary, I doubt it’s an impossible task...

Each new innovation in arranger tech (or old innovation! The chord sequencer has been around for decades) seems to bring capabilities that allow us to leverage older resources. I hope designers of these new features take into account the vast existing resources for other related features, and make translation of old to new possible...