Ellis Hall and his beloved PSR 2000

It was one of the best mid-range arrangers of its time. I still have my PSR 2000 although it is getting little use now that I have my Fantom G7. At this juncture I think it was a good idea to wean myself off of arrangers entirely, at least for the time being anyway. It gives me an opportunity to increase my playing skills without an auto-accompaniment feature to detract me from doing it. I suppose in 3 years or so I would be willing to give a 76 key Tyros4 a go of it if Yamaha complies and makes one. Or if Ketron ever decides to finally kick the Audya out of the testing facility its at and headed to stores I may consider getting it possibly. They will have to drop the price at least a grand or more before I would consider buying one though. If it takes two or three years before it drops that much in price, so be it. Roland could surprise us with a totl arranger at Winter NAMM 2009. That would mean it would be available by next summer maybe. If it's priced similar to what the T3 is and also has 76 keys I could see myself getting the Roland, all things considered that is of course.

Best,
Mike

but if Roland comes out with a new total arranger they have a lot of work to do to match some of those awesome tyros 3 SA sounds, i mean can the sax, clarinet, guitar get better?

what i hope Roland does (as i said many times) is give us some GOOD, AUTHENTIC latin stuff programmed by real latin musicians,
not styles loaded with tons of unecessary and unrealistic instruments...

give us some usable dance stuff,

give us some good brass, not some wanna be weak brass

it's a race for the ultimate arranger, AUDYA, Tyros3 or some MOTIF arranger, Roland, G-80,,, i hate waiting

so i will keep on enjoying my G-70 and Ketron XD-3 till something WAY better is available

There are many things Roland could do to regain their position. I believe they already HAVE much of the technology in place on other keyboards to make something truly competitive, and yet still excel at what used to be their best feature... USABILITY. Once upon a time, every feature on a Roland arranger made sense to a MUSICIAN, and a good one at that.

There used to be features that rewarded having a good left hand. There were features that rewarded good on the fly arranging skills. There were features that made sense to a live musician as WELL as an arranger user.

We need a return to those days. And then the logical development of the features that are half finished now that with work could make the Roland up to date...

First up is Guitar Mode. At present, little more than a gimmick, virtually useless live. Most of the time we want great guitar part ACCOMPANIMENT... Roland's can't be used in a style Only played live or recorded into an SMF. Idiots... Yamaha's Mega Voice thingy is probably it's STRONGEST advantage over the Roland... Allow Guitar mode to be triggered by the Style section, and you've gone a LONG way to narrowing that gap.

Next up is a refinement of the old Chord Sequencer feature, that rewarded having a strong LH. Play the chords the first time through, then hand the chore over to the Chord Sequencer (all interactive on-the-fly) and jam your little heart out! Take back over any time you want...

OK, tie it in with the ability that Korg's have of being able to STORE those chord sequences, give us a selection of four or so to chose from interactively, and either playback pre-recorded ones, or store multiple sets on the fly, and link it to the registration. A solo blowers dream come true... I just don't get it, guys. Korg's have this non-real time system and it gets praised, Roland had a better system that was REALTIME, and it gets no support at all... Un-f*ing-believable!

And it COULD be even better... well, whatever!

OK, let's look further afield in Roland's product line... The FantomX was able to play time-sliced and tempo-synced loops of any kind, and integrate it with arps or SMF's. And you could lay out a selection of these (either preset, or RAM audio) and trigger them from a really nice big velocity sensitive drum pad section. Wouldn't that, even if just relegated to triggering MIDI files, be the equivalent of the Multipads of Yamaha and Korg? Now add in the FantomX's time-sliced audio loops, and you have the equivalent of Ketron's 'Live Drums', but with the advantage of being able to play full workstation style musical loops..! Perfect for the younger player who includes electronica and hiphop amongst his styles (and the acid jazz and smooth jazz guys too, don't forget)

How about just MORE of those great V-Drum kits, and add to it four-way percussion of as high a quality. Actually, the GW-8 Latin has some great percussion sounds, seven or eight different types of conga sounds, bongo sounds, a pretty exhaustive Latin set, actually. Those would be good, too... Some of the Hiphop kits out of the Fantom's too... And allow drum sounds to be triggered by those handy drumpads/Multipads, for programming styles yourself, or adding to SMF's (or just playing live, too)...

Add more control to the VK-8 section (and make the bloody Leslie pre-f*ing reverb, for Pete's sake! ) and give it a dedicated output...

You know, if JUST those things got added, and ALL of them are existing Roland technology (not even cutting edge current product technology), it would be the best arranger on the market... NOTHING else even comes close. And it is all leveraged technology, no R&D of any significance to make it too expensive.

The addition of five year old loop slice technology from the WS line and it's pad controller could revolutionize the arranger industry again, with a decent integration into arranger workflow. And the completion of Roland's half finished Guitar Mode could narrow the Mega gap. And, you know, if they did all this, I wouldn't miss the SA thing one little bit (even though Roland currently ARE working on an infancy version of it in their new AT Organs)...

Will they do this? Who knows? Can they do this? A definite 'YES!"... Should they do it?

Well, if it were up to me, it already WOULD have been done!

Was able to compare pretty much all of the instruments at Pakefield, and while the GW8 was a star in its intended segment, the rest of the E & G series were at the bottom of the pile (They haven’t gone bad, they just haven’t kept up with the times) even with top performer demos.
Contrast this with their new Atelier range of organs and it was like comparing chalk and cheese, the Atelier sound engine was astonishing, and although it didn’t have SA2, (It didn’t need it) it easily left the Tyros 3 trailing in its wake.
Now combine the Atelier sound engine with some of the best usable styles out there, (Roland make crackers) and the Yamaha R & D guys (As well as others) would be shaking their heads wondering what they need to do to compete.
One thing I have to reiterate from earlier though is; no matter how good the arranger, in the end there is no substitute for playing technique.

Bill

I won't upgrade for starters, $3899.00 is a lot of money and S900 is doing the job for me very well. I don't think the majority of the crowd will tell the difference between the t2/s900 or t3.

So Yamaha catches the poor & the rich in one swoop since their mid line can come that close to their TOTL arrangers. Is that good or bad?

I think is good, since there are still differences with the t2 & s900. Some people don't need the extra bells and whisles. I looked at the t2 first and I was going to purchase it, but I also spent some time with the s900 and I found it to meet all my needs. I would have liked an internal hard drive but the usb works just as well and it had all of the styles and sounds I needed. Korg did the same thing with the pa80 /60.
I always thought that the t2 should have been in the 2500-3000 price range to begin with.

Maybe not. But the overall sound can. Much better (compared to what the Tyros3 sounds like now). Tyros 3 is good, but not by far reaching the highest possible level of realism. Not by far. Well maybe if you want all your music to sound like a Burt Bacharach production.

I play Guitar Mode live. And I use it in styles. So I guess they're no idiots after all