What's "RIGHT" is what's right for the individual. Donny throws everything he can into his act and is successful. He's an entertainer.

I have a love-hate relationship with arrangers and generally use them only for drums, with left-handed bass, with drum breaks and other changes triggered with a 13 note foot controller.

Guess what? We BOTH eat well (too much, damn it!).

I do things my way, but realize that the arranger, used in ANY form is a compromise, at best, for me.

An arranger is my LAST CHOICE as a preformance instrument. But, I work a lot because of the flexibility it gives me.

We run the gamut here from chord holders who play no solos at all...players who use all automatic functions and play everything in "C", using a transposier, to those who mostly use MP-3, or whatever, to total purists who only use arrangers to rehearse.

The key is to choose your position and do the best you can to be satisfied with the results.

And lets work to cut people who don't do it exactly the way we do a little slack.


Russ