I study all of the manuals because I'm always in search of a better mousetrap. Not so much additional gimmicky features, but thoughtful programming that can reduce the real time workload, while preserving a degree of "live" play, i.e., not just playing melody over a recorded MIDI backing.

I play a lot of church music which is typically played on an organ with bass pedals. Since I never learned to play the pedals, frequent chord changes are required to get the proper bass note-- sometimes one chord change per beat. So I need to be able to do more with my two hands (and quickly!), to make up for not using my feet. I don't consider myself a skilled musician either, it's really just a hobby.

Being able to play major chords by pressing a single note; and minors, sevenths, major sevenths, dims with just two notes is a huge "force multiplier." It often obviates the need to relocate your whole hand to reach the third or fourth note, and awkward hand positions. Many slash chords can also be specified with just two notes. No "extras" are required; all of the keys pressed for these shortcuts are notes that you would have to play anyway, if you were playing the chord on a non-intelligent instrument. Furthermore, Roland does not penalize you for playing all of the notes, it just doesn't require you to play them. Roland's was (is?) the best system of this type, as you might expect since they were among the first to sell a "professional" auto-accompaniment keyboard in the early 1990s.

The Roland system is alive and well in the FP-E50 (see p36 of the reference manual.) The FP-E50's chord recognition, OS, and many of the style parameters seem to be carried over wholesale from the FP-50 and FP-80, which in turn borrowed from the contemporary BKs. On the other hand, the owners' manuals and feature sets of the E-X series seem to borrow from Yamaha PSRs, which I'm also familiar with. That's why I decry them as not "real" Rolands.