Squeak, Genesys,

I am not disagreeing that the price of the arranger too high. However, as I said before, IMO they are much more musically useful than the "workstations".

Some years ago I was at a bar and there was a solo performer. He was signing along to the sequenced tracks (a Roland sequencer box), and you could only make a requet from a binder which listed all the sequenced songs that he had that could be used for his backing. To me that is not a One Man Band - that is karaoke. You can get a karaoke machine (or a computer) loaded with a ton of songs and perform this way - you do not need a keyboard, except to fool your audience.

I know a number of pros in this forum who are doing this, and I really have no quarrel with them. If that's the type of a performance you want to do, more power to you. I always feel cheated when the person in front of me sings to a recording while pretending to play, similar to realizing that the concert I went to see was a lip-syncing act; however, some audiences obviously don't care.

When I play, oftentimes I play whatever the mood of the party inspires me to play, and I adjust it according to the situation in front of me. If people are enjoying it, I will add repetitions, variations, other changes to make the music more fun, and transition to another song which may come to mind in a similar style. If they look tired, I will segway into something different quickly. People tell me that no two of my performances are the same, and to me this is a good thing. And the only way I can achieve this is by using an arranger backing, and not sequenced tracks.

Now, how many people do you know who do a solo gig with only the workstation? I know none. Because if you play to a sequenced track, you only need an iPOD to hook into the PA (and before that it was the minidisk players). But there is a large number of people who are earning money with an arranger. In fact, i'd venture to say that 80 % of people buying the high-end arrangers are the performers looking to use them in their acts. On the other hand, the number of workstation buyers who will be earning money by using them in any live acts is probably 20 % or so (though the numbers sold are significantly higher).

A piano is a musically diverse instrument - you can use it to play solo music in almost any style. There is no other instrument that is as diverse (a guitar may come close). If you try to play solo music with any other instrument (a trumpet, a violin, an organ) it will sound hollow, with components of what we expect in the sound missing - no bass line, no rhythm track... With the exception of some better quality piano samples, playing a synth workstation is like
playing any one (or perhaps two) instruments solo - it may be appropriate in a band or along with other instruments, but ty themselves it is lacking. The arranger keyboard is the electronic equivalent of a piano - with a press of a few buttons you can at will play a song of your choosing (not pre-recorded in the sequencer), complete with a variety of solo parts, accompaniments, drums, and vocal backing.

Most arrangers do not have much (if at all) sound editing, but for the majority of arranger players the objective is to duplicate the overall sound of a song, not the exact sounds found on the recording, so it is not a requirement - after having several synth eary on, the only thing I miss about tweaking the sounds is the time I wasted doing it. If your needs are different, e.g. you want to write original music, complete with the original sounds, then perhaps the workstation is what you need. Of course, with an instrument that allows loading external samples, as Tyros 2 is supposed to do, you can use your synth at home to create a sample, which you can then load into the T2, so that you go to your performances with only one box.

The manufacturers charge so much for the arranger keyboards because they can - they have features which are not easily duplicated by the non-arrangers, and by and large people who buy them do so to make money. This situation will continue until musicians have other options when it comes to playing with accompaniment. Until an item becomes a commodity, its price is not at all determined by how much it costs to produce, but for how much it can be sold. If someone is looking for an inexpensive and feature-laden home/studio solution, then the best way is to use a cheap workstation (e.g. Motif 6) and a PC-based accompaniment program, such as Jos Maas' OneManBand (OMB). This way you can have accompaniment, and a user-friendly sequencer in your PC, and a flexible and sturdy keyboard. On the other hand, if you are looking for an all-in-one portable solution of good sounds, ease of use, vocal processing, accompaniments, you have to shell out for an arranger keyboard (or shell out for a high-end PC-based system).

Regards,
Alex