I think most of it boils down to musical tastes. An arranger is an exceptional instrument for creating live backing for older genres of music, but to be quite honest, sucks at doing anything remotely modern. Music has moved wholeheartedly into the current taste of triggering clips and loops and arpeggiators, and the concept of the underlying chord harmony has largely gone out the window. To be quite honest, a proper chord recognition system is more a liability than an advantage when you listen to how modern music is composed!

The kids are desperately trying to sound different, and traditional harmony and chord progressions are all so used up that it’s difficult to go down that path without sounding derivative. Hence the move towards backing that doesn’t interpret your played notes and derives a traditional backing, but towards something that plays your trigger notes as is, allowing you far more dissonance and ambiguity.

The loop creation station has also been instrumental in the move towards more static chord and song structures, the nature of laying down a loop to play over pretty much has killed off the idea of more traditional verse, chorus, pre-chorus, bridge, intro and outro structure.

We’re fossils! And expecting much in the way of dinosaur evolution after the asteroid hit is simply a bit too optimistic, IMHO. 😂 We’ve reached as close to the zenith as these arrangers can be taken with little R&D budget available nowadays. But on the positive side, every last modern arranger is capable of extraordinary realism in the hands of the skilled, and conversely, won’t sound significantly better than a ten year old one in less skilled hands.

I think the way forward is to look at combining an arranger with a more contemporary type keyboard like a Krone, or a MODX etc., and trying to integrate the two. The odds of any manufacturer doing that for us in one keyboard is basically zero. Too much work for too little reward. Or look into software and something like a Mac mini or laptop.

But we’re pretty much at endgame with hardware. Sure, Yamaha and Korg will keep trotting out new models every few years (albeit at longer and longer intervals) but if anyone is thinking something radical is in the pipeline, dream on!

As I tried to point out when I rejoined this forum, we’re at a point where the only thing that’s going to make your MUSIC better is you. Not gear. You…. While it’s fun to natter on about the hardware, you want to sound better, start with your playing. Learn your chords properly. Learn your voicings properly. Learn to imitate horns and guitars properly. Learn to play organ with a swell pedal! Turn off the backing and try some proper two handed piano playing. Then crack the manual and finally figure out how to customize your sounds, your backing, your effects etc..

Any of those will help you sound better. Without them, it’s unlikely the next gen arranger will. Tough to take, but the truth. Spending 90% of your time fixating on something that might at best make a 10% improvement isn’t efficient. Time on what you are actually PLAYING makes the difference. Trust me, the machine is already good enough. Until you are playing better than it is, it’s good enough!

In the end, what’s an arranger for? To give you something to fiddle with, or to make MUSIC..? If it’s to make music, shouldn’t that be what we discuss here? 🎹😎