For me, being able to go seamlessly from the loop to regular arranger play was the primary advantage of the Chord Sequencer.

I tried the big Roland Boss four independent stereo loops looper pedal earlier this year, and I couldn't QUITE get it to sync seamlessly with the G70's MIDI clock, so if you were not VERY careful, there would be a 'hiccup' at the loop boundaries, which if you were trying to overdub more arranger style tracks over one already recorded would throw the sync off.

Plus, of course, with the chord sequencer, you could change variations, fills, even complete styles, while the chord pattern was content to simply play the chords... you could play one section with Bass Inversion ON, and the next time around with normal root bass enabled.. You could get a LOT of variety out of one verse and chorus loop, and still switch out into a self-played bridge section and back, and, other than for simply playing the first verse and chorus (when you are likely singing, anyway) the rest of your time you now had TWO hands free, for playing full piano parts, two independent parts, a bass part that was independent of the chords, a sax solo with uninterrupted bender use, another keyboard's solo, another instrument entirely' solo (try playing trombone and having to play the chords on an arranger at the same time!) and so many other things...

The looper pedal is a pale shadow of what you could do with the chord sequencer....

It's a wonder that no-one has come up with a software version of the chord sequencer.

Surely it can't be that difficult. It's not like it would need patch information or other instrument specific data, just an ability to receive chord (notes) data from the G70, (or other arranger) and then simply re-transmit it on a loop.

So hook-up a laptop, or even one of those EEE mini pc's, and off you go.. But as with anything, there is probably a lot more to it than that.

Maybe programmers have not seen/heard enough call for such a utility to bother with writing one??

Dennis

Well, apparently so few people either understood, or could benefit from the Chord Sequencer (it really only helps out those that either have a good LH, have good bender technique, or play something else) that even Roland dropped it!

So I'm not sure what benefit a computer program to do it would have to the average arranger player, either...

Unlike editing softwares, style conversion programs etc., the chord sequencer has to lock TIGHT to the arranger's clock (something not too many computer programs do well in this day and age of jittery USB MIDI interfaces) and respond very quickly to commands.

Maybe Jørgen or someone familiar with MIDI program writing could step in here and let us know if this IS a snap to write or not. I would GLADLY pay good money for something that returns this feature (of course, I've got a few suggestions about how to improve it http://www.roland-arranger.com/smf/index.php?topic=376.0 ) to anyone with an arranger....

You might be able to get some of the benefit with an external sequencer or connecting up a 2nd keyboard. I have always wanted to try this experiment:

Before the live session, make a recording of only the chord notes (what Roland used to call the NTA "Note to Arranger") played in their proper timing and duration. Save this as a MIDI file. Now connect the 2 KBs together. Set up the primary arranger's chord recognition engine to read chords from the incoming MIDI channel, but not to actually sound the notes. (I know PSR-3000 can do this, others can as well.)

Set the Sync Start and play the MIDI file on the 2nd keyboard. The chord notes stored in the MIDI should drive properly timed chord changes in the style, but your LH will be free to work the bender, vary the tempo (on the MIDI player), turn style channels off and on, fills, variations, even manual bass. Yes you do have to record the MIDI entirely in advance, but using banked chord notes to drive the style allows the player to be a lot more spontaneous than just playing over a backing made by step recording.

I have the PSR-3000 and it allows you to step-record the chords ahead of time. But once you "expand" the step recording, you are just playing RH over a midi file ("song")- you can't use the style fills, variations, etc. This is boring! IMO Yamaha's implementation of the "Chord" tab is half-baked. I kept waiting for this feature to be fleshed out in an OS update but now we are at v1.80 and no joy.

If anybody tries this and it works, I would love to hear. -Ted

Sorry, Ted, but the whole point of the Chord Sequencer was that it was always interactive. You didn't record and store the changes in advance... You just let her rip during the first verse and chorus, so if you felt like reharmonizing, no problem. If you felt like using bass inversions during the verse (but without Bass INV ON) you could, and then when you switch ON BASS on on a second or third verse, there they were...

That was the beauty of the Chord Sequencer... for those that like to reharmonize (and hence those basically unlikely to use SMF's), you can play any whacked out chords you want... and do it differently tomorrow..!

If you are going to record the changes in advance (I think Korg's can do this), this isn't that big a step to using SMF's. Chord Sequencer was always LIVE, always in the moment, always improvised...

I still for the life of me can't understand why arranger players didn't seize this idea and run with it... it's EXACTLY what they all CLAIM is important about music, about the difference between SMF's and arranger play... that ability to improvise, to change things around, to be different each night rather than the same old, same old...

That was the Chord Sequencer in a nutshell...