So far, I haven’t seen touch screens used the way that makes best use of them. We still get baked in layouts, as if they were actual buttons.

But the real strength of a touchscreen is that it is infinitely variable. There’s no reason why you can’t collect the buttons and sliders that YOU actually want onto one screen. Why manufacturers haven’t realized this is beyond me. Arrangers get more and more complex, but your interface is hard baked in, either by the button layout or the set in stone screen layout.

Now, for Yamaha, it’s early days. Genos and SX900 are the first of the breed, and I think Yamaha went far more for graphics eye candy that actual usefulness. Korg’s new arranger ups the game a bit, and in fairness, the old G70/E80 screen layout was good, not much eye candy, and a ton of stuff displayed well that is much harder to get to quickly in the BK series.

If Yamaha’s users universally gripe about the wasted screen real estate wasted on huge pictures of the instruments, perhaps they can change their philosophy. But complaining here and not directly to Yamaha don’t get it done!

Personally, I’d love to see a screen layout app. Pick what functions you want to see, discard the ones you don’t. A couple of custom screen layouts (along with the factory preset ones) ought to seriously improve ease of playing…
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An arranger is just a tool. What matters is what you build with it..!