Yep... Bon voyage, Roland!

I predict, just like Technics, that soon we will all be looking back fondly at the sounds and features that were forward thinking while we conveniently forget some of the little niggles!

I do have a sneaking suspicion that sooner or later, we all may be facing a lack of serious progress with arrangers. The thing is, almost without exception, an arranger is based around the ‘engine’ of that company’s top workstation, but more and more, those workstations are morphing into synths with little emphasis on the ROMpler real instrument part. And without much progress there, there’s little room for progress in the spin-off arranger.

While Yamaha have made progress leveraging the vastly improved insert effects architecture of their newer engine, to be honest little significant progress has come with the sounds with the exception of the few round-robin drum kits. And Korg is still stuck with largely the same limitations that the Triton engine imposes on it, decades old tech.

I have a feeling that, unless future keyboards move back towards a more real instrument emphasis, the arranger is going to struggle to match the pace of workstation innovation. I wonder who the next company to join Roland in abandoning the segment will be..?