I agree with this big time. I tend to look at an arranger as a huge pallet of colors, but it isn’t a picture. That’s still up to you..!

All I’ve been trying to point out is that work on your brush technique will pay bigger dividends than changing a tube of paint. Don’t paint yourself into a corner… 😂

And, to bring the thread back to perhaps where it began, one of the most useful OS techniques you can learn is how to quickly edit styles to change sounds, drum kits, effects and velocities. If you’re dismayed at how complex and song specific so many modern styles have got, go back to earlier styles, and simply do the work to edit them to utilize the best, latest greatest sounds you have (which they don’t address, they are likely triggering the legacy sounds included with your arranger for compatibility), the latest effects (most legacy styles were done on arrangers that couldn’t use insert effects on style parts) and tweak the velocities so the latest velocity-switched sounds transition at the right point. Older arrangers, with no velocity layers, it didn’t matter if the track was high velocity, low volume, or low velocity high volume… vel-switched sounds and kits, it’s critical…

Discussing one brand over another don’t get nothing DONE… If you think modern styles are too busy, but legacy styles sounds dated, best of luck waiting until Yamaha or Korg do something about it! It’s up to you. Roll up your sleeves, listen to some older styles and see what you can turn them into simply by messing with the sounds and effects they address. It is, in the big picture, quite possibly the least amount of work for the most payoff of anything you can do with an arranger..!

Creating a style from scratch takes skill and patience and years of experience. But honestly, crack the manual and figure out the header editor system, you can make older, simpler, easier to use styles sound as good as the new ones…

Get painting! 🎹😎