Am I the only one who things that Rolands (VA series) styles have mostly too long Intros and Endings? They are so long and so characteristic that they render themselves useless. I can't use an ending with 5 chord changes, 2 solo instruments and 2 phrases for a song. Specially for live performance I need something quick and I don't have.
Or there is some trick I don't know yet? I mean some trick apart from resequencing the intros and endings of the tracks, which is pain in the ***...

forget the intro/endings and play them live

Try this too - start the style and hit the fill in immediatly. Intros need to be used sparingly in live work. The ARE too much of a "trademark" for the manufacturer. Pretty soon, you won't know what song you intended to play if all you hear is the same, tired intro.

You are right about the Intros and I don't use them often. The "fill in" intro is the best solution. But what about the ending? This is indeed a problem since the "Start/Stop" button stops the arranger abruptly and it sounds like someone pressed the Stop button of a CD before the song ended. I try to end with a fill in and stop in the first beat of the next measure but again after the stop button there is only silence which is at least not professional... In addition there is not a "fade out" function. I need help here since I never used an arranger before and I was used to finish as I want on my piano. I feel much less confident now that I will be playing with the arranger cause I feel I don't have the complete control of everything. And mostly of the tempo and ending.

I find that some of the intros, particularly on the PA80 styles make good " break " points in the middle of a song, especially when we're just doing a "jam" kinda thing. I rarely use them to intro a song. That is the one good point of some of the Yamaha styles. The most basic intros in a lot of their styles often have just a drum roll with little or nothing else. The "simple" endings often work ok as well.

AJ

Yamaha is by far the leader in useable fills, intros and endings. I use the simple endings 90% of the time (OF COURSE YOU HAVE TO MANUALLY SELECT IT EACH TIME ON THE 2000).
I rarely use intros, preferring to play them myself to suit the song. I do use the count-in intros a lot for breaks during the song, again having to manually select them from the screen each time you change styles (I didn't shout that time, because Yamaha isn't listening anyway).

Diosif,
maybe you could use a volume pedal and gradually decrease the overall volume while you play (kind of "fade-out-do-it-yourself")
Better than nothing...

I'm going to say it again. "Nothings worse than hearing a great live arranger keyboard performance and then having it completely RUINED by a 'canned sounding' ending/intro."

One of the things I like to do for an intro is to vamp on a chord progression (2 to 4 chords) and then improvise an intro live. For endings, I typically delete the melodic parts of an 'ending style' and improvise the melodic part live as well. By doing this, the entire song sounds integrated because YOU are playing thru the 'entire' tune. - Scott

diosif--that is why I did not buy a va7 when George Kaye posted those great prices. I love Roland sounds but for ME the whole board was useless. I bought a used korg is40 and it is great on intros,endings ,fills-----much better than a pa80 in fact. But it does not touch the Roland(or pa80) for sound quality. Yamaha has this issue down pat but for ME the styles drive me crazy! No perfect board out there but one will suit YOU better than the others. Good luck.
Bill E

So, as I see from the discussion, there is no way to use simple endings in VAs and I have to live with that. Am I correct?

Intro's & Endings....Unfortunately most manufactures spend a lot of time on the Intro's & endings to impress the punters, this sells keyboards, but very often drops flat from the Intro when going into a style. I use the intro's only when friends call I want to impress, other wise starting with a fill is the best bet or I often save an Intro into a Registration with just Drums & Bass and build up the other registrations to suit.

Graham UK

Donny,you can play an intro live but how on earth would you play an ending? I mean all you can do on This board is try to hit "stop" right on the beat and make it sound smooth--or do the fade-out with a foot pedal. I agree with Graham that a showy ending is of limited use,which is why I cannot understand the omission of a simple ending option. I think Roland REALLY blew it on this issue!

I do use the intros and endings that I think work well with a particular song. I use piano and guitar for keyboard playing mostly and I play the part right along with the endings and intros.

Sometimes with standards I play the last four bars of a tune for the intro. If the longer endings do not work I use the simple endings. If neither ending sounds right for the tune, I do use the fade button.

Sometimes the intro and endings are perfect for the tunes I play. But many tunes you just have to improvise intros and endings, No keyboard will do everything.

I'll admit it is time consuming to learn what you can do with a board if your going to use the arranger parts. Uncle Dave's got it made. He sings great. All he needs is drums bass and right hand chords.He can use a Casio and sound great. ( Unless he only sings "She" that good.HA!HA!) He just has the natural voice.

I'm a sax player. I need all the help I can get. I even have to type out the lyrics for most tunes. Dave doesn't even own any loose leaf paper.HA! HA! again!!

Dave why don't you send me a tape. I'd love to listen to you sing some other tunes. Especially some old standards.

I'm waaaaay overdue for a new demo. I think I'll start recording some of these "stripped down" shows for you guys. It'll show you another way to utilize an arranger keyboard and still maintain a fresh sound.
The reason it works well for me is because I sing so much. My voice is clearly the feature, so it really doesn't matter much what's going on behind it. Between the 5 part harmonies, and the bass and drums .... there's a lot going on already. The arranger just adds "fluff", and that's nice every now and then too.
I'll work on some songs real soon.

Never touched a VA series, but can you do custom styles on it? Sometimes I create a custom style on my PSR8000 just to have an intro/ending that suits the song I'm doing.

Actually you can record your own Intros-endings and save them as a new style, but this is the hard way around!