I guess what I always wanted was simply to play as I had the previous 30+ years of my career, whether it was in a band or not. I spent decades honing my style and technique to make a rhythm section (guitar bass and drummer) sound as full as possible, trying to cover not only the keyboard parts, but as much strings and horns etc. as could humanly be done.

I ended up with very much a ‘two right hands’ approach, which is enormously fun to do and rewarding to pull off musically. I guess it was having to abandon all that and tie that LH up doing next to nothing that put me off all that much arranger playing. It kind of ruined my self-delusion that I was still playing with a band! But tracks and SMF’s definitely had almost as many restrictions back in the day… zero interactivity, zero spontaneity, relentless repetition.

Fortunately, with the trend towards backing tracks being multitrack and software that allows you to move freely through the structure (and MUCH better tempo and key change results than before) most of the restrictions can be avoided (with effort!).

Thing is, on the other side of the coin, now that multi-section chord sequencers that can store the sections to a registration are available, and arrangers that can interactively mix two different styles together and allow you to pick and choose which Parts are active, most of the reasons I didn’t like arranger playing have also gone (with effort!).

What an amazing time to be alive! The promise of a band that plays with YOU, that does what you want, when you want, how you want is quite honestly virtually fully realized, and all without abandoning the technique and skills that playing in great bands helped develop…

And there are now TWO different ways of achieving it. Amazing! 🎹😎