Originally posted by Kingfrog:
Guys Guys..... Working in a music store married to a 30 year professional keyboard player who has played for many major shows and does hundreds of single dates a year and myself having performed with national acts fronting many bands. I have never seen on single arranger nor have when asked has any one I have worked with even considered using an arranger keyboard live. There are all pro player who derive their sole income from performance. Not week end warriors or retires. These are the bread and butter buyers of product.
My wife feels that she is being hired as a Keyboard player and as such would never show up with anything less than 88 key weighted board, either the RD700 or even a Casio Previa 320 for beach gigs to go along with here Bose system and Guitar. I speak to pro players every day in the MI store I work in a beach town that employs many many singles, duos, and some bands most of the year. NO ONE uses an arranger on the job or would consider them. But they all like them and understand their benefit, if only for songwriting and recording.
Kingfrog... If your wife feels she has to turn up with an 88 note stage keyboard, then they are hiring her to be a PIANIST.. plain and simple. And the honest truth is, were she to turn up with a 76 note ANYTHING, she could do the job just as well (or at least well enough no-one notices).
I am hired to PLAY in bands. They don't hire my equipment! If what I bring does the job, no-one says a word! Whether it is a 36 note strap-on KX-5 and a module, or a 76 note anything you like. They hire ME..
For me, a one keyboard rig is preferable to the three sided stacks I used to use in the seventies and eighties. But I have to be able to play organ parts, as well as piano parts. To do THAT well all on one keyboard it cannot be an 88 wood. Organ playing relies on speed and smears, glisses, dives and all the other tricks that are close to impossible on a wooden weighted keyboard. Conversely, piano needs AT LEAST 76 notes to be able to get the range of LH RH separation you expect (surprisingly, though, those last few outside notes are seldom used from an 88).
I believe that the performance is what drives people's satisfaction with you as a player. Not the equipment you play on. The trick is to pick a keyboard that excels at ALL areas of sound, not just being an arranger. Once you play with live musicians, sounds that can cut it against anemic drums in the arranger seldom work well against the real thing.
My take has been to weight my buying decisions primarily towards how well the sounds work in a live setting. Then make sure the built-in drums can keep up with that, for when you need them. Most arranger shortcomings can be worked around, but anemic sounds CAN'T...
The problem, and most of the prejudice against arrangers comes from two things (in a live band situation), IMO...
Firstly is that many of them ARE anemic compared to the best workstations, which are primarily voiced for live use, and secondly, and probably the most important, is that the SECOND anyone uses any arranger functions in a live setting (at the soundcheck, for instance), the defenses of every single musician that could lose his job to one of these goes up, usually in a hostile way. And who can blame them?
So I make a point of NEVER using my arranger's auto stuff in any live band situation, my G70 LOOKS like a pro piece of gear, it SOUNDS like a pro piece of gear (the piano is from the TOTL FantomX, the organ is from the TOTL VK-8, the rest of the sounds are the cream of Roland's live line), and no-one is the wiser about it's other functions because I NEVER rub their noses in it...
And in over fifteen years of using a Roland arranger for all my live gigs (with everything from local acts, to recording artists, to studio work for national artists with my G70), not one single musician, soundman bandleader, or audience member has ever come up to me and go, derogatively, 'Oh, you are using an ARRANGER?
'. In fact no-one has ever come up to me and said much other than 'what are you using? It sounds GREAT!'
I just smile...
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