John,

I too like the song quite a bit. I agree that the PA80 really gives us some good sounds to work with, particularly in the area of drums.

Don,
I often ask myself the same question about the sampling methods used by different manufacturers. Some of the Yamaha sounds are really good, while others aren't so good. even though I prefer the Korg sounds overall when comparing between my 2 arrangers, the Korg acoustic pianos don't do anything for me, and neither do a lot of the acoustic string sounds. Having dabbled in sampling myself a bit though, I'm sure the techs have to put a good bit of effort into getting the sample to sound right, not to mention all of the EQ and synth editing you can do afterwards, and because sounds are such a subjective thing anyway, I'm guessing that what sounds good to the Korg tech might not sound quite as good to the Yamaha or Roland tech, etc etc...

Eric,

I agree that the music that one can hear played on the radio here in the US is somewhat different from that which might be heard outside of the US. Maybe it is because we have different tastes in music but maybe part of that is also because we are bombarded here with similar genres and types of popular music over and over, year after year. I'm not entirely convinced that all of it has to do with our tastes though. Radio is big business in the US, and there are many stations that are owned by a relatively few large companies throughout the different markets in the US, and even many of the independent ones use syndicated programming as well. Station owners and managers are of course concerned with the bottom line ( and rightfully so..it is business....), but there are not many risk takers among them because of it. Proven formats usually guarantee good advertising revenue, which in turn makes for a good bottom line. I can go to any area of the US and find that the top 40 playlist or the smooth jazz playlist ( etc etc ) is nearly identical in every major market. There is more diversity on the lower end of the frequency spectrum ( 88-92 mhz) as these frequencies are reserved for college and other non commercial broadcasters, but even many of those are tied to large independent groups such as NPR. It saddens me to see that even despite the support shown by the FCC itself to try to allow smaller, independent, and usually low power broadcasters access to the airwaves, the N.A.B. and large networks have continued to influence many politicians in this country to prevent it from happening, arguing that their opposition stems from the potential for harmful interference against their big megastations. The FCC isn't perfect, but they've done a pretty good job in the past of keeping things on the broadcast bands pretty straight thus avoiding those kind of problems, so to me that is a shallow argument. I think it's more about money and greed and the fear of losing a fraction of their advertising revenue. I know this has little to do with arranger kb's and I'm sorry for venting here, but this is truly a subject that invokes a tremendous amount of passion in me, and I feel that the situation really limits the amount of diversity on our airwaves. None of this makes it any easier for relatively unknown bands to get airplay either, although I've strayed far enough from the topic and won't lament the big record companies part in all of that. If the situation were different and we had more choices in what we could listen to, I don't know that the public here as a whole would embrace all or even much of it, but I'd still like to have access to more different types of programming ( therefore different types of music ) available. There are many "microbroadcasters" out there just waiting for the opportunity to do it legally.

AJ



[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 01-06-2002).]