I have always felt that writing is a lost art... along perhaps with reading! Nowadays, it's 'blogging' or 'tweeting' and 'texting' - such ugly words for an art form no less rich and complicated as music itself.

I have said many times, you put ANY of us in the same room together, and no matter HOW contentious our posts get, you'll find two people with FAR more in common than they have differences.

I honestly wish that more of us COULD frankly and openly discuss arrangers without getting so defensive about them. I keep saying... they are TOOLS, not your grandkids, not your wife, not your religion. They ALL have flaws. They ALL have issues. They ALL have weak points and strong. Sadly, few can post along those lines, so everything quickly devolves into a 'mine is better than yours', when it SHOULD be 'mine is as BAD as yours...! and what can we do about it?'

We all make music here, whether for fun or money (or both!), we use a common tool to do it, yet, rather than be supportive of each other, perfectly reasonable feature requests get ganged up on, because some f*-ing Japanese corporation doesn't want to do it, and agreeing that it's a reasonable request might force some of us to admit that MAYBE our 'religion' or 'grandkids' aren't QUITE as perfect as we would like them to be.

Put us in a room together, put us on the phone with each other, and nowhere NEAR the rhetoric would get spoken. Reasonable people can agree to disagree...

Except, apparently, on a forum!