Gary, I think you are confusing ‘hamanizing’ with ‘playing badly’. No one was talking about speeding up, or playing too loud. No drum machine or any other gear has this as a feature.

And I’m sorry that you consider the occasional flaws in other players the reason to go solo. I’m hoping you aren’t considering that you were perfect! But did the other musicians you played with go solo to get away from YOUR mistakes?

Just because an audience couldn’t tell the difference between an arranger and a live band, the point wasn’t that untrained ears can’t tell. It’s whether WE can. Because we are the ones playing and listening to the arranger 24/7, the audience gets a few minutes, and ‘listening’ isn’t really the reason they are there. They want to dance. They want to eat. They want to drink. They want to chat up that pretty redhead… and, oh yeah, there’s some music going on. They don’t hear it be identical every time you play the same registration. They don’t hear the same fill night after night after night. They don’t hear the exact same baked in Intro every single time it gets played. But we do.

I can tell you, that video Donny posted didn’t fool me. It shouldn’t have fooled any decent musician.

It is considering that every single Part other than what we play as inconsequential that lessens us as musicians. No matter if it’s an arranger or a real band, what THEY play is as important as what we do.