Hi All,

I've been working hard with Dan on implementing and testing Technics support in vArranger and he is doing a fantastic job!

Technics keyboards are very much alive in that there are hundreds of thousands of them still in use. My website has almost 5500 members (I only launched just over two years ago having planned it for decades) and is growing strongly. Neil Blake at Strawberry Music is also a strong supporter of Technics instruments.

Neil owns the copyright of the book and CDs mentioned (we're collaborating on a new version of the book) and I have just spent the last 12 hours programming styles for KN6000. So, support for these instruments is still going strong.

One thing I would be really disappointed to see would be the sharing of commercially available copyrighted styles, or the ones that I've spent hundreds of hours working on that are unique to my websites. This would in fact be the only thing that would cause me to stop supporting Technics instruments because it would change my websites from a position where costs are almost covered annually to a loss making situation that I couldn't personally sustain. I would hope that if you want my styles you'll join my website.

It is brilliant that vArranger will support Technics files and I know Dan will tell you himself how much I've helped with that because I've been sending him information that jd5live and I have spent years putting together and I'll also be sending him a keyboard later in the year so that he can enhance Technics support.

So, I'm absolutely up for sharing information and appropriate files. Just if you want to share Styles then please do the conversions yourself, or make new Technics Styles yourself, or find Styles that are freely available on sites that are explicitly making such Styles legally available for the purpose of sharing (such as Gunnar Jonny's which I now host or Willum's Website or here on Synthzone in the Technics area). Or share Styles that have been completely abandoned by their makers. Otherwise, it will become soul-destroying for those of us who spend all of our spare time working on such things or those such as Neil who make a living from it... or indeed Dan who sells vArranger.

This post expresses purely my opinion. Nothing personal here, I'm just saying. Quite frequently I buy a Technics keyboard just so that I can convert the Styles and make them available for other models. This takes many months per instrument. Whilst I realise that I don't 'own' those converted Styles, there would be little point in me putting the knowledge, skill, time and effort into all of that if I can't recover the cost of running my website too. Well, otherwise I would either not do it or I would just work on Styles that I personally enjoy and share them with a couple of friends.

Hopefully I haven't put a downer on this conversation, which is very close to my heart. I'll also add that I will be sharing some Styles on the vArranger website and adding a vArranger section to my website that will include many vArranger-Technics specific Styles along with other files, help and information.

Long live Technics laugh

Best wishes,
Mike
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