I have been saying for DECADES how there's nothing intrinsically wrong with arrangers for younger players EXCEPT THE STYLES. You wouldn't buy an arranger if the vast majority of the ROM styles were from the 1920's or 30's. And kids today don't want to buy anything with the vast majority of styles are from the 60's and 70's.

The bare hardware and sounds will probably suffice, most contemporary arrangers have pretty decent synth sounds (albeit voiced a little more 80's than '10's!) and quite a few have knobs or sliders for the knob twiddling crowd.

Sure, the clip launching stuff seems to be mostly on the high end stuff, but that's a marketing thing, nothing to do with what the unit COSTS, much. It would take little to add to even mid-line arrangers.

But nothing would turn a twentysomething off of an arranger more than wading through bank after bank of styles with ZERO relevance to what they would ever play. I mean, if I had to wade through eternal banks of Charleston or Black Bottom styles I'd probably pass on them!

But does anyone remember the Rapman? Casio made a barebones arranger specifically voiced for rap and hiphop in 1991. It was a cult classic, wildly popular with young musicians. You know why? ZERO old styles and sounds. No ballroom, no sambas, no bigband. No rock, even...

THAT'S how you get young musicians to play arrangers!

Weirdly, the arranger makers already understand and follow this. Most arrangers have an Oriental model. Revoiced for Far East or Middle East musicians. If they understand the worth in revoicing current arrangers for a regional market, why not for an age specific market..?

The other thing that is being ignored are software arrangers, particularly for tablets. Why isn't there an iPad arranger? An Android arranger? A basic soundset and a fully editable arranger is child's play for a modern iPad. iPad Pro has enough horsepower to run a Genos level arranger AND the sounds.

Most iPad musicians have plugins for sounds like drums, pianos, organs and especially synths that put most of our TOTL arrangers to shame. Take the output from an arranger engine, put it into the best iPad sounds, you got something that could give a TOTL arranger a run for its money!

Roland, I'm looking at you... you stopped making hardware arrangers, but you still own the code from a BK9 or EA-7 and a team of great iPad developers (check out the new iPad Zencore GX!). Easy money! Why are we having to point this out to you..?

What I would love to see is the AFFORDABLE marriage between arranger code and clip launching tablet samplers like Koala. Let the USER import the styles he wants, that way there's no putting the kids off with 20 Enka styles and a bank of 40's ballroom crap that few even of US use much anymore!

If the Rapman could be a hit, why not? 🎹🤩