I fail to see the distinction between what ‘pros’ need, and what home players need…

In fact, what pro players need even MORE than home players is ease of use, simplicity of operation, speed of access. The very things that also make them accessible to home players. They want sounds that don’t NEED heavy editing to be great (but like it just in case). Same with styles. Pros don’t actually WANT to have to edit styles extensively, they tend to do it when the ROM style falls pretty short.

But ‘convenience’ features cross all boundaries. Make it simple, everyone benefits.

Obviously, I am more familiar with Roland’s missteps than other brands, but let’s not be fanboys here. Every single arranger from every manufacturer launches to a litany of ‘Why did they do THAT..?!’. No matter what anyone claims about the makeup of the design team. Please also note, I did specify the head of the design team or close to it. There are always those lower down whose points may be ignored, either from a cost cutting perspective, but I rather fear more from an inability to recognize what’s important and what isn’t.

Let me give just a couple of examples.

The SX900/Genos’s chord sequencer. Brilliant! The biggest leap forward in the feature in 20 years. But… Rather than give each segment (up to eight of them) a huge display so you can name them (Intro, Chorus, Verse, Vamp etc.), they display the recorded progression in a font too large to get more than the first few changes displayed (and they don’t scroll, afaik) and they don’t transpose as you change key. The name of the segment (that you save it with) IS displayed, but in a tiny font hard to read above each segment.

Now tell me, what arranger player would ever want the display laid out that way? The whole point of the feature is to be able to use the CS more flexibly, so you aren’t forced into a linear structure. Want a second solo? Want to skip the third verse? Yep… that’s what the feature is for (and if you DID actually want it for short repetitive four bar progressions, you could name the segment that).

But apparently, a team of musicians let this slip. Please! 🙄

Let me give you the BK-9. Easily Roland’s most advanced arranger ever. Capable of doing styles, playing audio loops, displaying graphics to a connected display (thus a scan of sheet music) and storing a chord sequence (only one, mind you!). But… other than associating the loops with the Performance (eight of them), none of those features were linked to the Performance (registration). Oh, and the Chord Sequence doesn’t transpose when you transpose the arranger to ‘lift” the last verse, for instance, or need to do a blues in a different key if a saxophonist or harmonica player sits in (they tend to like different keys!).

Roland had a product that potentially could have been industry leading. IF all the pieces were put together…

Now, someone tell me that a musician made the decision that, if you wanted a chord sequence, a sheet music graphic and a style to load up for a song, you would have to do all three separately, from a convoluted folder structure. Go on, I dare you! And what musician would want to transpose the keyboard but let the CS plow on in the original key?

Okay, one more… Korg’s new ‘two styles simultaneously’ feature. Brilliant. A musician thought of this. But it has a laundry list of head scratching omissions make it close to useless as a performance tool. Maybe Korg will fix it, maybe they won’t. But I’d still like to know what musician decided that you can’t save BOTH styles to a Songbook entry, with all associated mutes and multipad settings…

These things seem so obvious to a musician, and so not obvious to a software engineer.

Let’s be honest here. Lower your hackles for a second at the thought that your favorite brand is being attacked, and try to remember the many times that you have been left wondering why some simple tweak that massively improves a feature has been omitted.

I rest my case. 🎹😎