The thing about apps is, when all is said and done, they are just fancy MIDI remotes. If there’s no hook into the OS in the first place, it’s very difficult to control those parameters.

To be honest, the BK9 had all the elements (or at least, most of them… you’d still need audio loops to do multipads) for a terrific arranger. It could store chord sequences, and it could store .jpg’s to display on a connected screen (so there’s your full sheet music display!) but, unlike audio synced loops (Roland’s other major OS addition), there was no way to Link those chord sequences and .jpg’s to a Performance, effectively rendering the features useless in a live situation.

They also introduced for the first time having multiple Drum Tracks, which allows you to mix and match kits and percussion (the new Latin kits are spectacular!) but they didn’t have any styles (that I can recall) that used this feature. It wasn’t until the EA7 came out that Roland’s style creators got around to using this feature much (and even there it was rare).

With the Key Audio (synced audio loops) feature, you had an equivalent to most arrangers’ multipad system, with the advantage of it being audio! But Roland failed to include ANY content for the user to start with (despite having an enormous backlog of content for their samplers and grooveboxes). Not even a site where you could download some.

Roland had all the parts, but failed to put it all together. So near, and yet so far!