But who says it's SUPPOSED to be easy..? It's about making art, isn't it? I am sorry, but I refuse to delude myself into thinking that simply sitting down and either running rote through a bunch of MP3's or just LH chording the large percentage of one's accompaniment and playing a simple RH melody is anything other than commerce at it's crassest. I know this is not going to be a popular opinion here (and don't forget, that is all that it is ), but on the one hand we have a lot of people superficially concerned with making music, but then we get attitudes like this, and I'm sorry, but I am sure there is another side to this coin. What do you think those dead weights you seem to think you are carrying are saying about YOU on some other forum (if they had the poor taste to actually voice them?). Only the most egotistical amongst us could possibly think that they don't have issues with US, as well

So far, I have yet to hear anything on this forum that I could comfortably say could NOT be improved by the addition of good live musicians. No matter HOW good we are, a machine is NOT the ideal accompaniment. In fact, the better we are, the WORSE playing with machines makes us. The machines keep getting better, but are still poor imitations of really good musicians (if you aren't playing with those, then that is YOUR problem, not theirs ). If you ARE a great musician, you have to ask yourself why you are playing with such lesser ones. Is it them, is it you, is it something you don't want to think about? Or maybe it is just that we are no better than they, we merely have a machine that disguises our inabilities (to the less discerning listener, at least)...

But maybe it IS simply about money... what is the value of music compared to that, in our material world?