Well I agree to a point there. American music often does have that harder edge – one of the main reasons I mostly go for US made synths; Moog and Sequential in the early days, Korg’s modelled synths (I believe designed by the guys at Sequential) and my beloved Kurzweil. Many Japanese synths have in the past had a ‘nice’ sound, sitting well in the mix but not grabbing you by the… (well, you know!). Japanese workstations have been getting better of late, with a greater range of sounds to call upon but sadly arrangers have been lagging behind in this department – still perceived by many ‘serious’ musicians to be stuck in the ‘land of cheesy’.

I think this is changing with the latest batch of arrangers, in particular the PA1x and G70 and we’re now seeing arrangers that can start to rival workstations in terms of sound palette and editability with the added bonus of built-in styles. Of course, you can always turn the styles off but unlike previous generations of arrangers you’ll be left with a half decent keyboard instead of a collection of naff sounds with a naffer keybed.

Players, of weddings and old folks homes might want to cover their ears for the next paragraph

I hear what you’re saying about Hip-hop, rap, etc, but to my ears the vast majority of music coming from the states is still guitar based whereas I think the Europeans have long been quicker off the mark to adopt and embrace other instruments and styles. Is it possible that a European musician is more likely to try out that strange Rumba rhythm built into their keyboard and incorporate it into their set? I can’t see many US acts doing that sort of thing (although a few clearly do). What I’m trying to say here is that the US music scene is predominantly made up of styles developed or evolved in the US (and thanks for that guys – it’s added a wonderful freshness to the world music scene). Whereas the European music scene has been doing its thing for much longer and has therefore just absorbed the American influence into something that was already going strong. This has had the effect of encouraging the European music scene into being even more eclectic, where US created genres are still new enough to provide decades yet of work to refine and develop. (rider: of course that doesn’t mean there aren’t loads of US Musicians and composers doing all kinds of world fusion things – just trying to generalise here).

Add to all this that Arranger-Central is somewhere in Italy and maybe we’ve got a situation where these things simply aren’t offering potential US buyers what they want. Personally I’m happy with that situation. Sure, most arrangers have (to my ears) totally useless styles built in but I’m not sure I would need lots more rock, grunge, hip-hop, rap styles in their place. I agree, if I was doing that style of music my first choice would be a workstation. But as a composer, I mostly use the styles to challenge my preconceptions of what a song or piece of music should (or could) sound like – “I wonder what that would sound like with a Latin/Arabic/Siberian (delete as applicable) beat?”. I guess that makes me far from the average user of an arranger anyway. But for me at last arrangers have moved from providing cheesy sounding versions of classic songs to workstations with creative potential. Far from perfect, but worthy of adding to my toolkit and an aid to producing something that little bit different.