A game changing feature is only game changing if you play the game 😂

I think you are wrong about demographics driving design, Chas. Let’s face it, if arrangers were designed around what the vast majority actually use, there would be a sound button, a style button and a ‘Play’ button! There would be no samplers, no editing, no loops, no chord sequencers, no footswitches, no bender, no microphone inputs, no aftertouch, no bass inversion, no nothing!

Yes, there ARE arrangers designed for the vast majority of home players. They are the absolute bottom of the line models. By your reasoning, that’s the only models they need to make..! Toys for kids and barebones models for completely unschooled home players.

I also take exception to pros not using arrangers. Unless they are piano bar entertainers, I think the majority of SOLO pro keyboard entertainers use arrangers. I can’t say I have seen a single solo keyboard player use anything else for decades. Now admittedly, some like me don’t use the styles very much, but they still outperform workstations like the MODX’s and Fantoms or Kronos/Nautilus’s for the solo player.

Truth is, who was the last solo keyboard musician using some form of backing you went to see, Chas? Doesn’t sound like your cuppa tea unless he was a Hammond player using a drum machine!

Yep, it’s rare to see a pro in a band using an arranger, but outside of piano bar players, it’s getting rare to find a solo keyboard player anywhere, these days. This has been the decade of the acoustic guitarist/singer for the majority of solo work lately. At least in the USA. Europe seems a bit different, and they probably drive sales in the pro and semi-pro markets nowadays.

We both have our reservations about arrangers, and our opinions of the skill and musicianship of the majority of its players, and I feel that in truth, a large degree of their popularity comes from people that couldn’t play to a backing track because they rush the count and skip bars, which doesn’t faze an arranger!

But for decades, since the inception of the type, we have had models made that the average user has no use for. They are supposedly designed for the more skilled home player and the gigging professional. Which brings me back to my original point. Given the undoubted market they are supposedly designed for, how do these incredible blunders still occur at every release? How could a skilled musician supposedly in charge of the design team let them slip? 🎹😤🙄