Bruno, playing with tracks has changed quite a bit in the last decade or so. If you fully utilize whatever Marker system your arranger provides.

We’re long past the linear ‘start at the beginning, play to the end and stop’ days. Drop in markers for verses, choruses, solos, endings etc. and you can restructure the song on the fly as needed. Combine that with systems to mute tracks on the fly (I always have a rhythm section only button handy!) and no two nights’ performance of a piece has to sound the same.

You can also use Markets to jump to either totally different songs, or optional sections like vamps by putting them after the main sequence with say sixty bars gap (so you don’t have them play if you accidentally forget to hit stop when you want to end!). This can give you the opportunity to build medleys you can play in any order, or throw in vamp sections while you chat to your audience etc.

And finally, with chord sequencers that allow the sequence to be saved and linked to the registration, you still retain the ability to choose fills and variations at will, change styles, do breaks etc.. Add to that Yamaha’s eight freely selectable chord sequence system, and you get the perfect amalgam of an SMF with markers, and a style. Same ability to do medleys, vamps alternate solos etc..

To be quite honest, if emulating how you would play in a real band, you have to remember that a real band would have had a rehearsed structure to a song, which you could only change on the fly with a lot of shouting over the monitors (!) or an almost prescient familiarity with each other! You certainly couldn’t completely change the chords or song structure without getting some pretty ugly looks from the bassist or guitarist!

So, all in all, the days of feeling out of control using some kind of system to play the track for you has gone if you are willing to use the newer features. Give them a whirl… your left hand will thank you for it! 😂