Just a comparison of workflow by making a style with MIDI, if you wanted to, you could create ONE pattern per Variation (say just a major chord) and the arranger style engine would automatically derive every other chord and key from it. Get a little more expert, you could make slightly different ones for a minor pattern and 7th. But still just the one key.

Audio, you HAVE to audio record every single chord type you need. In multiple keys. That’s so much work, even Ketron themselves only did it on some styles. Most have a more limited chord selection before the audio cuts out and a MIDI pattern is substituted. But those patterns had to be created too, so you got to do that yourself as well.

Just do the math. Create ONE pattern in a MIDI arranger, every chord type in every key is done automatically. Do it in audio, let’s be generous and just limit your possible chords to major, minor and 7ths, and let’s be generous and limit the key transposition to a whole step up and down (or you’re going to hear artifacts for sure!). That’s a minimum of three keys. I honestly expect you’ll need more, but we’re being generous here.

So… three chords, three keys. Nine audio patterns to record. As against one.

The math starts getting hairy if you want diminished, augmented, sus4, maj7th, 11th, open 5th, add9’s, 6th, 7#9’s etc.. that’s 12 chord types (and certainly not all of them!). Now you are talking about recording up to 36 patterns. For ONE Variation… 😱. Now multiply by four. And another four for the fills. Now four Endings, four intros and a break.

With a conventional arranger, one per variation, fill and intro/ending/break. Done. Yes, you can do more, but you don’t HAVE to.

I’m just not convinced that many realize the implications of creating a versatile style in audio that you can play what YOU want to on it. Anything less than those 12 chord types, and you can only play what it LETS you play. I don’t think that’s what people buy arrangers for… to be told what they can and can’t play.

There’s a lot of incredible technology going on behind the idea that, give a MIDI arranger a major chord pattern in one key, it can derive any chord type in any key you want. Are we really sure we want to give all that up?