You could very well be right, Abacus, but it does lead one to wonder; at what point does a kid stop relying on technology so much and actually sit down and learn to play. What kind of music will he be able to produce? Will that spell the end of classical music composition? Will the great mathematicians of the future be able to skip learning to add, subtract, multiply, and divide?

I know I'm old-fashioned and probably not able to think outside the box, but I still see the role of a musical instrument as being able to produce various sounds that we can manipulate to express certain emotions. The voice is one of those instruments, which is one reason why I hate vocoders.

It just seems to me that we are putting too much emphasis on the wrong thing. We're pushing our engineers and programmers when we should be pushing our musicians. We want more and easier ways to replicate someone else's ideas when we should be developing our own. As we all know, in sampling technology you need to start with a good sample to get superior results. Who is going to provide that 'source' music for the engineers and programmers to help you replicate?

Before we decide or speculate on what the future of arrangers will be, we should first decide what we want their ROLE to be in the future. THE FOLLOWING IS MY OPINION AND MY OPINION ONLY, BASED LARGELY ON WHAT I HAVE SAID ABOVE.

I think the future role of the arranger keyboard should be similar to what appears to be Roland's vision of the arranger's role in the (future) music scene. An affordable, easy-to-use, relatively good-sounding instrument, designed from the ground up for the HOME USER (GW8/PRELUDE). Synths/Workstations dominate the PROFESSIONAL studios and stages of this world with nary an arranger to be found. I know this, you know this, the manufacturers know this. More importantly, the KIDS know this. The Daytona 500 should never be run with cars driven by computers. Great ballets should never be performed by dancing robots or computer animation. A fine Stradivarius could never be mass produced. Some things need human fingers, toes, brains, emotions, to bring them into the realm of true artistry. Arranger keyboards may shine the light on someones artistry, but not yours. Just the opinion of someone who loves to PLAY with arranger keyboards but don't regard them as legitimate instruments WHEN USED IN THEIR NATIVE MODE (PLAYING STYLES).

chas