hey all....just got a fantastic PSR-3000.
This keyboard exceeded all my expectations.

I still remember a couple of years ago when I was frustrated with making music on PC and wanting an arranger to write music on. My idea was to abandon the approach of writing music directly on the computer, because I would always getting problems for a reason or another from the software, etc (and I have used computers for 10 years, so I am no newcomer)

I have used (and still use) ,other than the standard boring Cubase stuff, Band In a Box with all the Realtracks, plus Kontakt and three killer libraries from Eastwest.

But I was so sick of computer technical problems and also complexity. Since I started to use hardware arrangers.....wow, what a change. WOW !
I bought and tried a few older keyboard because in my mind spending so much money for an arranger would not make sense ....I would still fall into the trap of thinking 'well, with that money I can buy that great sounding library'. What a mistake, and what I missed by making that mistake.

So I took the plunge and got an used PSR-3000 from Whitley Bay Organs.... I choose to buy from them after reading good stuff about this shop on these forums, and I am glad I did. They sent me a PSR-3000 for £ 499 in lovely condition. I love this keyboard, it's so easy to build great arrangements with, it's fullfilling all my musical activities...the flash key is a blast, I previously bought a PSR-1000 to save a bit of money over the 3000, and was working my ass off to transfer my midi files from the PC to the floppy.

Wow, that flash key on the 3000 made me realize what an idiot I had been, I should have bought this keyboard before. Now I have a little key with my whole midi library with thousands of soundtracks and songs, and for those songs who are available only as audio, I just connect my MP3 player in the Line in and jam away.
I thought it was only good for singing, but no, it even doubles as a line-in , perfect!

What all this means? It means that I can turn off the PC entirely and don't even need it for playing any music files at all, which is great as I end up focusing on the music for hours without checking my email every 25 minutes!!

The chord recognition on the Yamahas is the best I have seen, as well as the ability to write anything in real time and step time. I am very fussy about exact harmony progressions. Also great sequencer to me is essential....I have tried some other makes but in my opinion Yamaha is the best for that....I did try some nice GEM keyboards and it was very difficult to write exact progressions with all the inversions I wanted, etc....but Yamaha really kicks ass in that department, plus the PSR-3000 is really an excellent well-round workstation, I love this simplicity and efficiency....

with the bloody PC software, before you set in punch in and out points for overdubs you have to go through 15 steps. By the time you get there, you even forget what you were trying to do (and it happened many times to me!) On the Yamaha it automatically records and overwrite the previous part as soon as I hit the first key. Or you can just press a pedal for the ins and outs, no need to enter horrid numeric values. Not even Cubase has the super-efficient little things as on an arranger !!

I am not throwing away the PC stuff, my idea is to write the music with my arranger from start to end, then export as a midi file and replace the sounds with the libraries I have.

But for writing music, forget it. I'll never look back again.....the arranger is a real instruments made for musicians, the PC stuff gives you the illusion of mind-blowing potential but if you think about all the time you have to invest in it to make things work, you'll grow old....and it'll never work in exactly the way you want.

Take Band In a Box. Great program, sure. And the Realtracks sounds killer. But oh, how I hated it when I was writing the chords for a track and all of a sudden the software would include an augmented fifth or an augmented fourth in my progression. These notes require a particular way to handle them, and yet I could not get rid of them, even after trying all options, or I had to change style to make the progression less full of things I never wrote !! In the meantime, hours would pass by, without writing any music, only trying to make things work.

Another example where the arranger scores and the PC doesn't, even with expensive software: I have spent good money on a piano library from Eastwes. Great quality and sound, no doubts, except for one problem: the dynamics SUCK. Even with an hammer-action master keyboard, I can only get a very narrow dynamic range, like a bit more piano than mezzoforte and a bit more forte.

Where's pianissimo and fortissimo ? That one REALLY sucked, I would bang on the keyboard really hard trying to get a 'forte' in the choruses, to no avail.

Believe it or not,I like the piano sound in the PSR-3000 ! It has a nice dynamic range and sounds sweet! It's no 20 gb piano sounds, but I don't care, it plays better!

Plus, a good hardware arranger, for intros and endings, blows any software out of the way. I have spent hours just studying the great sounding intros on these arrangers. One man Band plays Yamaha styles so the intros etc are there, but it's very hard to find a soft GM module for it that sounds as good as an hardware arranger.
Well, there's the Ketron SD1, but I was still getting other problems.

An hardware arranger is the best. The apparent higher cost will more than pay off in the long run. I write more music with the arranger in a week than I did with all the stuff I have on the PC, in 5 months.
I can really focus on the music and just turn off the computer entirely, I remain immersed in the writing process without even missing the sampling libraries that I have and even forgetting to check my email (good thing!)

Just in case anybody is thinking to 'replace' a real arranger with PC stuff....don't do it. Maybe you want to use both, but don't fall in the illusion that a PC , with all it's 'possibilities' can substitude a real instrument. I have seen time and time again that it can't.

Anyways, sorry about the rambling...I just am so happy with my PSR-3000


[This message has been edited by arranger_yes_pc_no (edited 06-12-2010).]

[This message has been edited by arranger_yes_pc_no (edited 06-12-2010).]

[This message has been edited by arranger_yes_pc_no (edited 06-12-2010).]

[This message has been edited by arranger_yes_pc_no (edited 06-12-2010).]