It is with some hesitation that I breach this subject again, after all this is the ARRANGER forum. Operative words here are and will be "arrange", "tweak", "gigging" and "songstyles ".

In light of the current discussion on the Roland EA7 thread I thought it might be interesting to share my views on the subject and see what yours are.Also in view of the current Genos hype.
Don't get me wrong, I briefly played the Genos and it is absolutely topclass, though shamefully overpriced. It is however not really my cup of tea probably because I have been biased towards Korg for the last 20 years.

So far the consensus between these two brands has always been the fact that Korg is more like having a real band supporting you and Yamaha is so smooth and perfect as if having finished a CD yourself ( if and when recorded).

With the current top arrangers Ketron SD9, Korg PA4X and the Genos there is no accounting for tastes. However if it comes to
ARRANGING it is my belief that well over 75% of Yamaha players, in particular the non gigging ones, are more or less satisfied what the manufacturer has concocted as far as arrangments go. The Songlist is adequately sufficient to them and on top of that they have a gamut of Songstyles. In fact one might conclude that they only use the keyboard part of the arranger keyboard whereas the actual arranging has been left to the manufacturer.

Korg players by contrast, though of course not all of them have less of a tendendy to lean to songstyles and factory arrangements and set themselves more to tweaking and using onboard styles for the benefit of recording or performing wellknown pop classics without the actual use of the exact songstyles.

As far as in depth arranging and tweaking goes again there is a substantial difference between the gigging and non gigging community, counting myself among the latter.
Those gigging most of the times lean very heavily on a song being reproduced and recognisable to their audiences. Most of the times they will have either a songstyle (complete copy) or a style that has been tweaked to get as close as possible to the songstyle. Although there is room for different arrangements they cannot stray too far from the beaten track for fear of their songs not being recognised or appreciated.

Those using the arranger keyboard at home without gigging either opt for the 'easy way out' ( read: using the songbooks etc. provided by the manufacturer) or they go for intensive tweaking and arranging, like I used to do. ( and will do given the chances). By doing so they discover, as Donny pointed out elsewhere the real depth and possibilities of their own arranger keyboard and in the process become more creative and start arranging themselves.Do not get me wrong , I am not saying that one thing is better than the other. The performer on stage has to entertain the audience and make sure he sounds good, songstyles or no songstyles, tweaking or no tweaking. But those who have time on their hands and want to get beyond that what is on offer by the manufacturer will like to delve deeper.

As to myself, some of you know I have programmed, tweaked and arranged quite a bit on the Korgs over the last 15 years, something which was until recently not possible on the Yamahas.
To me the added value of any arranger keyboard has been the opportunity to arrange things your way and thus, hopefully, surprise people from time to time.By way of illustration, if you check the famous song "Streets of London" by Ralph McTell on youtube and then check my version of it ( incidentally recorded on the Korg PA80 way back when) you will understand my point of reasoning.

In conclusion , I am still waiting for the PA1000 to arrive as is Uncle Dave, already knowing that I will be upset (yet again) for Korg having abandoned the good old Performances. They were ever so handy for those arranging and tweaking in depth and not gigging................alas..............

Best wishes to all of you for Christmas and I hope 2018 will bring health, prosperity , wisdom and lots and lots of good music.....on whichever instrument