Great post, Diki. Sadly, it's unlikely you're ever going to get anyone over 70 to change their position on ANYTHING.

You may have noticed; with very few exceptions, subjects that deal only with arranger issues usually only produce 3-4 posts (sometimes less) before disappearing into the mist, while those that accidently or on purpose, veer off course, oft times gain new life. That's usually because the topic deviation is usually more interesting than the original topic. It's also because most of the arranger posts have been done a dozen times before and literally discussed to death. With no new product on the market, there just isn't much to discuss that has not already been discussed to death. This also proves that the forum is more about technology (and social interaction) than about music. Nothing wrong with that, in fact, it's perfectly natural in a population where untrained amateurs far outnumber trained professionals. As you and others have noted in the past, there is rarely a post or topic about things like chord structure, approaches to transitions, modulations, odd meters (5/4, etc), and most of all ARRANGEMENTS ie. how to best assemble the parts (styles) that we paid so dearly for. What I've noticed is that, in many cases, the thing that mars an arranger performance is TASTE; knowing what sounds good and what doesn't. Just because you CAN mix practically any song with any style in an arranger doesn't mean that you should. However, these things are never mentioned in forum critiques of posted performances. All we ever hear are superficial 'attaboys' so as not to embarrass or discourage the performer. Heck, Pro's get critiqued all the time; it's the difference in selling 200 records or 2,000,000. Trust me, that's a critique .

Sorry for being so long-winded. My initial intent was just to say "Great post, Diki", but then I got carried away .

chas