Guess my earlier post a couple of months ago fits in well here, at least this part:

"As to the second issue, public performing and entertaining, giggin if you like, I think the shift to different approaches is becoming more and more apparent and imho will ultimately phase out the arranger keyboard altogether. Luckily for most of us here on the forum we will probably not live to see the day, although……

As remarked by others the audiences these days , with the possible exception of folks in an old people’s home ,want to be entertained and do not really care whether the entertainer is actually playing his keyboard or just pretending for instance by using midifiles and adding the odd note here and there. Worse than that, more and more I visit places or occasions where there is no longer a keyboard but either a performer with an acoustic guitar ( amplified) which is great really, or just a performer with a mike, a good voice, a decent amp ( Roland Streetcubes are quite the thing here) and a stack of high quality Backing Tapes.

The advantages are obvious. Less gear to drag along, less efforts to make and prepare, you can’t go wrong with playing, your amplification can be very small and portable and your investment likewise. A wireless mike would be the icing of the cake but even with a decent wired mike you are okay. Only problem is the amount of dough required to invest in purchasing decent backing tapes in your vocal range. Mind you I am not saying this is something I welcome but it sure looks like this is going to be the future.

And the audiences ? They could not care less cause they want to be entertained. And they want to hear their favourite popsongs as close to the original as possible. And even with all of our songstyles ( in particular on the Yammies) we cannot get as close to the original than many of the current high quality backing tracks, see below.

So all in all not a rosy picture for the arranger keyboard I admit, unless of course you want to do with it what its name suggests: ARRANGE, that is get away from replicating the original popsong for the sake of a public performance but use it at home or in the studio to either arrange your own compositions or make new and refreshing arrangements for classic popsongs in a way that is not done with the Backing Tracks however superb and true to the original they may be"



John Smies