morning Scott

Nice of you to post that article here - with its (cough) balanced approach to the question of whether or not arranger keyboard players should be allowed to live or even(god forbid) perform in front of an audience!

As usual - it seems so important for sanity sake - to keep the business of music separate from the philosophy and bias discussions. Any essay re: the pitfalls of arrangers that uses either 'common practice' or 'pro musician preference' to support their argument - has zero effect on any real life situation except perhaps to irritate someone's ego on this forum - un-necessarily.

Humanity has a tremendous musical heritage and tradition achieved by the continuous passing along of songs - structure - harmonic content - melody - and rhythms. This is a tradition carried on by arranger keyboard players - in a fashion which allows audiences to hear songs they love, songs that bring back youth and simpler times, songs that bring our emotions into sharper focus, songs which bring people together in the recognition of shared experience at a point in time........ Arr. KB folks do this- at a low cost -mid volume - and on a much smaller stage!!

The face of an old woman smiling as she regards the melody of a song which took root and meaning at some point in her life - reflects a universe value that transcends what anyone will ever write about the way that song was played.

Mike H