I often draw comparisons with the decline of the arranger with the decline of the home organ. Once upon a time, it was the dominant keyboard of its day, with only a few professional keyboards like the Rhodes and the clavinet as alternatives.

They got more and more capable, more and more complicated, more and more expensive, and then music changed and they no longer sounded anything like current pop music. It was being made with synths, drum machines, sequencers and rock guitars, none of which the home organ could do well, especially without an astronomical price tag (Yamaha GX-1, anyone?!). Young people looked at the home organ and the music that was being made on it and said ‘Thanks, but no thanks!’ and moved on to firstly synthesizers, then workstations and rarely looked back other than a reverence for the B3 for rock music or jazz. The nail in the coffin was the appearance of the first true arrangers, developed out of the marriage between synth/sample technology and the primitive auto accompaniment sections of the last generation of home organs.

The home organ didn’t die out completely, but its days of being the main home music maker were gone. Now, let’s look at this in the modern context…

Modern arrangers are amazing instruments, the top end at astronomical prices. But they suck at doing modern music, which revolves around the easy triggering of loops and arpeggios, quick and easy visualization of the clip content, and modular synthesis or emulation of vintage synthesis. They also have a terrible image problem with young players, faced with a battery of hokey old styles and almost no contemporary content when first switched on. Imagine how popular arrangers would have been when they first came out if stocked primarily with 20’s and 30’s styles! Yep, it’s about that bad!

So, here we are at the end of the line, fewer and fewer being sold, a wider and wider gulf between modern pop music and what they are designed to do best, prices rising at the top end, and the low end being constructed cheaper and cheaper in China, and now, to top it off, a global pandemic that has decimated the professional arranger players usual venues.

Does anyone honestly expect the pace of innovation to continue at its previous pace?

As to software improvements vs. hardware, the problem is that piracy is almost taken for granted, but building hack proof systems in arrangers is very difficult. So yes, the arranger manufacturers COULD update the OS to do more stuff, could release expansion packs of new sampled sounds and styles that use them, but where’s the money coming from to do this? New unit sakes have flattened, the truth is, if you want an arranger, you’ve probably already got one, the update isn’t going to sell much hardware. And piracy will mean that only a small percentage of adopters of the new stuff will actually PAY for it. So, what’s the upside?

Yamaha seem to be the only designer who have found a way to protect sample packs, Korg have a system that is highly intrusive, difficult to manage and impossible to edit the sampkes. But neither of them have a way to key the OS to the hardware, so OS updates can be ‘shared’ freely, negating any significant way to monetize them.

Yamaha’s model of incremental improvement of hardware was the main model of the industry, every three years or so, some new samples, a few more pro styles that used them, a slight increase in effects capability, maybe a bump in polyphony, some new wrinkle to the chord recognition or guitar strumming emulation, rinse and repeat.

But this relies on constant upgrading by the users, and that relies on a robust market for the used arranger they’re selling to buy the new one. Tried to sell a used arranger lately? Not easy… not at a good price, anyway!

So, what’s the solution? Not one the industry is willing to do, I fear. To appeal to a new generation of players, the arranger needs to ditch the oldies stuff, and add a boatload of stuff to ease clip and arpeggiator features, move the sound engine more towards analog synth sound emulation, and pack it with clips and loops for today’s music. In other words, turn it into a modern workstation. And they already make those!

Personally, I think it’s more likely that some arranger functionality gets added to loop stations than the other way round. Too few of us already playing arrangers are likely to use that stuff. To be frank, I’ve heard very little user demos that leverage much of the NEXT OS stuff that got added to the PA4X, the touch screen control of arpeggios and modern things like that. You rarely see a PA4X in a modern DJ’s arsenal, or onstage with an EDM act. So, adding modern stuff to an arranger doesn’t seem to be a sales slam dunk.

So, as we get older, buy fewer and fewer arrangers, we see the echoes of the home organ’s decline. It took about twenty years to go from market domination to niche keyboard, and we’re in the middle of that, I think. What little hope we have revolves around loop stations getting more arranger features and practical tools like lyrics displays, easy gig operation, song lists, stuff like that, but I rather feel we’ve hit the zenith. There ARE things that could be improved in arrangers, better sounds, articulated samples, more variations in styles, better voice leading in chord transitions, more responsiveness to the player’s input (dynamics, ‘busyness’ of playing etc.) but where’s the money for all that development coming from? Not us buying as many as we used to, that’s for sure!

But at least, just like the amazing last generation of the home organs, we are going out on a high note. Personally, I don’t feel much desperation that we might be looking at the last generation or two of a keyboard that’s been around for thirty years or more. What I already have will see me out to the end of my career and continue to wow my audiences. In the end, it’s still mostly down to the player.

So, no tears for the arranger. Job well done!