Not having the luxury of being a vocalist, I have to rely on making the arrangements interesting...mmmm...surrounding oneself with talented girl singers is certainly one way of raising the attention level of the audience...and maybe a little distracting to the player (in a good way, of course).

I know of several arranger performers who do hundreds of songs (thousands even!) and it seems that many who rely predominantly on their vocals tend to get really lazy and end up basically singing over SMF and rarely playing any keyboard parts...if it works for them, that's great, but, I'm primarily a player and I get off on playing...in other words, it's not just for the money, and, since I can't fall back on vocals, I tend to try and put as much of myself into the music as I can within the limits of arranger style play.

It seems to be working, although I've decided to take a break from personal gigging this past year and have only been doing Yamaha clinics/demos....and, when I play at home, I still like having the music there for security reasons...however, I am not tied to it and many times stray from the written notes, adding my own phrasing and chord substitutions.

I'm sure you know what I mean, Fran...personalizing a tune, without taking away it's core meaning, is made quite easy with a tool like an arranger keyboard...whether you've got cuties singing for you or not.

Ian