Quote:
Originally posted by john smies:

1 the quality of the musician.

Any arranger keyboard will be subject to the musical capabilities of its player. Here in Holland we have names like Peter Baartmans and Michel Voncken who are or were promotional keyboard players for Yamaha.
Attending any of their demos and no matter what keyboard they play, shows their masterly skills. I remember attending once and seeing Peter play a 400 dollar budget Yamaha keyboard that made your mouth water so to speak. Anyone would have wanted to buy one…….only of course to be totally disillusioned having bought one and having to play it yourself…..


2 the quality of the professional programmers and musicians.

Overriding the importance of the musician that plays the keyboard,the quality of those people hired by the manufacturer of any keyboard is clearly overall important. All the major brands have top quality arrangers and technicians at their disposal to create the basic samples, sounds and styles. In my opinion these sounds and styles are often top notch and when faced with converted styles of any brand for any keyboard you will more often than not be disappointed. I have just purchased the budget Korg PA500 and am amazed by the quantity but above all quality of the sounds and in particular the onboard styles. But I have meanwhile collected a massive collection of styles that also play on the Korg PA500, from all kinds of sources and all kinds of conversions. Very few of these are in the same quality category as the onboard styles.


3 the quality of the onboard basic samples.


It goes without saying that no matter how good musicians and programmers,if the basic samples suck, the overall impression will continue to suck as well.
Luckily these days one can safely say that most keyboards of the well-known brands, including the budget ones, come with quite decent samples, and the top range come with extremely good samples. I guess the ideal arranger keyboard would be fully RAM sampled, in order that the musician could compose his owncollection of samples but that remains wishful thinking for the time being....


4 The quality of the onboard factory styles.

Referring to what I have already remarked on styles earlier on I personnally am often amazed at the apparently insatiable desire and hunger for more and more styles. Why ? I believe it was Uncle Dave or someone else here on the forum who remarked that significantly tweaking one of your favourite styles, would leave you with a couple of styles much more desirable and useful than say one hundred new styles imported, downloaded or purchased……………….


5 The quality of the onboard Performances/Registrations/User programs.

This is probably the most neglected area in the whole arranger keyboard field. I recall that during the previous decade ANY Roland arranger keyboard out of the box sounded dreadful, absolutely dreadful. The Roland G-800 for which I did a lot of programming at the time is a good example. But Yamaha and Technics weren’t that much better.
We have come a long way in one sense, but on second consideration not all that much further. Nowadays all the keyboards, even my Korg PA500 boast a Songbook, or Songlist that has a couple of thousand ready-made registrations for playing wellknown popsongs. Basically these registrations are a laugh (imho).
At the completion of the keyboard design some programmer or other has been alloted an minimum amount of time and money to construe these registrations, which are nothing more than picking a style and one or two right-hand sounds that apparently go with the style. Don’t make me laugh. Like I said I did a lot of tweaking on the Roland G-800 way back when,and in the early years of this millenium I spent hundreds of hours tweaking the Korg PA80 and PA50.And it takes ages and a lot of trial and error to come up with truly worthwhile registrations. And now that I have purchased the PA500 I will be tweaking away on this keyboard. It will take me at least a month before it becomes basically acceptable to my taste and needs, but that of course depends on the person.

My point on all this : Musicians should first of all concentrate on their playing abilities, should purchase the best keyboard that they can afford, and should not be blinded by the legions of sounds and styles either on board or on offer.
And personally I think they should try and create better and more useful total
registrations, it will open up a whole new window on your own keyboard.

Looking forward to your constructive comments and criticism.

John Smies
Holland