This is not a PROFESSIONAL Arranger players' forum, Tostie..!

We have players of all skill levels and ages. I think what you'll notice is that the regular working players here, at least those outside the NH circuit, rarely post any work. They generally don't need validation of their skills by those here (who seem predominantly amateur in skill level), and on the whole, little is received well unless it fits into their small, blinkered view of music (Boo's rant is fairly typical... 'New music bad, old music good!'), so why bother?

Overall, we have a plethora of demos by elderly players, playing elderly music to the elderly. Talk about a captive audience!

Secondly, Tostie, we don't have the gigs for arranger players that Europe provides. Other than NH type gigs, solo keyboard gigs are few and far between. For starters, this isn't a country where people tend to get together and sing... Karaoke is something of an exception, but rather than the EU model of people singing TOGETHER, karaoke is more a watchers sport, laughing while your co-workers squirm uncomfortably and sing badly! Schadenfreude, to be honest. We seem to be gaining more and more of this in our 'popular' entertainment over here, lately. Bit like Germany in the 20's, and we know what happened to them!

But, on the whole, Americans don't gather together to sing, and need someone to provide backing... This tends to mean that in general, keyboard players with real skills still play in real bands, and only those that can't end up playing the NH circuit, or functions for the elderly. And those gigs are few and far between enough that there's no incentive to learn to play well, give each other competition for gigs, and allow the cream to rise to the top.

As I've read in thread after thread here, most arranger players' priorities seem to lie in how portable and easy to set up their rigs can get, or how small a PA they can get away with, and rarely is any desire to try to PLAY better discussed..!

I think that if we had the employment opportunities that some EU countries afforded, we'd see a migration of the really good players away from bands onto the arranger, but right now, generally, if you WANT to play with a real band and have skills, you can. Why would anyone want to play hoary old music to hoaky old codgers if they didn't HAVE to? LOL