I put this in the middle of another thread, but think it maybe deserves discussion on it's own thread...
------------------------------------------------

The sad fact is, IMO, that so few of us realize just HOW proficient as a keyboardist AND a programmer you need to be to be able to make styles that rival the ROM ones. Until you try, whereupon intense disappointment and disillusion sets in. It's kind of like handing a pro garage's set of tools to a person that bought a car to drive to work and play, in the expectation that perhaps they could fix the car themselves! What percentage of car drivers are mechanics?

Add to that you are not really expecting them to FIX their car, you are expecting them to virtually build a new one!

I've listened to interminable arranger demos, and the one thing that they all seem to point to is how few have the skills to even put up a decent RH part against the arranger, yet alone to be able to program convincing drums, funky bass lines, horny horns , groovy percussion, etc., etc..

Basically, if you can't sequence something that sounds like the real thing, you are in no position to program a style, which, IMO, takes even MORE skill and experience than a sequence. Cut and pasting between ROM styles is the only way I have heard for regular players to stand a chance at equaling the ROM quality, and that really doesn't qualify as style CREATION, does it?

I think that the manufacturers are well aware of this fact, too... Despite adding the style creation tools as a marketing ploy (so few use them, it's not like they would actually be missed at the bottom line), the main makers tend to hoard the good styles VERY tightly, offering just a few as a bonus to their existing customers, but keeping the vast majority to use as ROM styles on the NEXT model they try to sell us. And we generally go and buy those arrangers not necessarily for the new OS features, but simply for those styles.

If this weren't the case, one would expect a LOT more new features and sounds in most model releases...

Primarily, I believe the problem has come because the manufacturers have made NO effort to 'protect' the style ROM and RAM. It must be tough for any of the skilled programmers to get a decent return on their investment in time and effort, when it is a simple thing to trade around these styles like bubblegum cards as soon as they are released.

The recording industry has learned how to protect MP3's and AAC's, to the point where the iTunes store is making millions, if not billions, from SELLING something that a few years ago we all traded around for free. It is LONG past time that the arranger industry provided a secure data area and an individual ID per arranger, that would allow style creators to guarantee that their work was being used by ONLY the person who paid for it.

THEN, the style creators could drop their prices almost to iTunes Store levels... $1 a style, $2 a style, prices like that for QUALITY styles, in the knowledge that EVERYONE who used the style had payed for it. They would make a LOT more money, which would make them make more styles, and we wouldn't be sitting around having this discussion about how difficult it is for normal arranger players (who don't tend to be the great players in the first place!) to make their own styles
------------------------------------------------

What do you guys think..? Is it time to go back to the ROM styles that couldn't be copied, and add a mechanism for extra style content to be delivered in a PROTECTED format that would incentivize new style development?