For the last 6 months, my arranger "play for pay" has been nil.

All my jobs have been either guitar instrumentals, with my guitar/bass/drum trio, on B-3 or a combination of some of these.

Almost all sessions have been on guitar and piano.


That's the way I like it, but yesterday, my trusty SD-5 came thru, big-time! I was called by a potential new client, who manufactures a new kind of solar panel. The job was to create training materials to educate sub-contractors about specifying and installing the equipment. Part of the program is a series of videos involving the "spec to install" sequence.

The president of the company was trying to describe the idea he had for the film(s), complete with some "dramatic, green" music he was visualizing.

I ran to the car and got my SD-5, set it up, and began to play various pieces to get the "feel" he was thinking about.


In about 15 minutes, we had a direction. He was much more impressed than if I had simply used a piano or guitar for an on site rough.

From a billing standpoint, total revenue for the finished three films will be about 50 times the cost of a "fully loaded" SD-5.

For lower end scores, I sometimes just use the arranger for an entire production.

So, while I'm sort of gravitating away from performances on an arranger, they really pay their way as production/ demo tools.


Russ