Actually, as my post indicated, I would rather listen to a live band of exciting players. If you are going to compare yourself to lesser players, then of course you have the edge. But all things being equal (something you don't appear to want to compare yourself to), you might as well compare yourself to a mediocre arranger player... That would be the equivalent.

It is such a shame that so few of you have any positive things to say about the bands you've played in (or listened to). Negative posts completely outweigh the positive. Are they REALLY so bad? Admittedly, I live in a vacation resort area now, with many good bands making a good living, but I've also lived in Memphis (loads of great musicians) and New Orleans (don't get me started on how good that was!) and NYC, amongst other towns, and there was never a shortage of good musicians anywhere... or gigs.

Once you HAVE played with bands that contain musicians of that high caliber, well, it's certainly hard to look at your arranger, and call it anything other than a poor substitute for the 'real thing'. It certainly is an easy way to make music, and of course, it can make a small combo or solo sound really full, without having to do a lot of sequencing. But please don't compare yourself to mediocre musicians just to justify it. It doesn't need justification. It is what it is...

Compare it to a band full of musicians at LEAST as good as you if you want a TRUE comparison...
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BTW, the reason I want the return of the Chord Sequencer (it is NOT an arpeggiator ) is so that songs that have a repeating chord structure (probably most of them!) don't need the chord input after the first time through. THEN, I can use both hands to the fullest rather than the tyranny of HAVING to play the chords constantly. Or play my trombone, or a REAL bassline, or add extra voicings outside the arranger chords, or use the bender for expressive solos, or a million other things you can't do while your left hand is tied down...

Don't knock it until you've tried it. It is, after all, a totally arranger only feature, not some ported over half-baked workstation feature. As arranger players, we should try to support ideas that further arranger play (IMO) rather than get too gaga over the latest workstation port... The CS totally blurs the line between SMF play and arranger play. ALL the advantages of arranger play (interactivity, spontaneity, make up your own structure on the fly) with the advantages of SMFs (independence of parts you play to the backing).

Few people that ever learned to use one ever want to do without it again... It's kind of like multi-pads on a Yamaha (but different!). Once you get used to them, you don't want to lose the feature...