I'm sorry, but SMF's have only been around since the advent of MIDI (mid eighties) and only practical for many since the Sound Canvas in the early nineties... (or MT-32 just prior)

In the meantime, home organs had auto accompaniment since the seventies. Arrangers in one form or another have been around a LONG time...

What's "RIGHT" is what's right for the individual. Donny throws everything he can into his act and is successful. He's an entertainer.

I have a love-hate relationship with arrangers and generally use them only for drums, with left-handed bass, with drum breaks and other changes triggered with a 13 note foot controller.

Guess what? We BOTH eat well (too much, damn it!).

I do things my way, but realize that the arranger, used in ANY form is a compromise, at best, for me.

An arranger is my LAST CHOICE as a preformance instrument. But, I work a lot because of the flexibility it gives me.

We run the gamut here from chord holders who play no solos at all...players who use all automatic functions and play everything in "C", using a transposier, to those who mostly use MP-3, or whatever, to total purists who only use arrangers to rehearse.

The key is to choose your position and do the best you can to be satisfied with the results.

And lets work to cut people who don't do it exactly the way we do a little slack.


Russ

I think the point I was trying to make Russ, is that arrangers can EASILY fool a less knowledgeable player into thinking he (or she!) doesn't NEED to learn anything more...

Heck, it SOUNDS like you are playing well, doesn't it...?

Trouble is, so little of it is YOU. You don't take credit when you listen to an iPod for the music that you are listening to, but so many arranger beginners (and some who should know better!) somehow think that when they hold a C chord, and out comes a great bigband sound, that it actually IS them playing

Turn off most of the parts, take a real gander at your actual playing, then decide if learning to PLAY, or learning to control a MACHINE that is playing most of it is more important to you...

Do you want to be the driver, or do you want to be the passenger?

Words of Wisdom Russ great post!!

Thanx



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Donny

Exactly...There is no law that says we all have to be "pianists"
I certainly am not. no lessons no training But I have ears. The rest I can get out of the keyboard.

If Im recodring a song and I don't have the chops to play what i hear theoretically i can just slow the tempo and play the scale or scales i want. Then again Im not a live player and only a studio rat who knows theory but did not spend hours playing Hanon..... I will play with the wife but mostly guitar. NOw SHE is a pianist with the training to sight read AND improvise. Not something you find many classically trained pianists can do. I am certainly not an elitist pianist by any stretch....


[This message has been edited by Kingfrog (edited 10-20-2008).]

Diki

I though you would be on the ball when I said SMF in various guises, I was refering music sequencing in general which predates MIDI using the old CV/GATE system which goes back a lot further...Actual Arrangers as we know them today have only been around for about + / - 20 years my first dedicated arranger was a Roland Pro E which I purchased in 1989 I have played organ since 1972 and the Pro E was the first arranger I had ever encountered!
Auto Accompaniment on lower manuals of 70's organs cannot really be really be classed as an arranger until the Lowery MX1 came along in the 80's

P

[QUOTE]Originally posted by captain Russ:

Guess what? We BOTH eat well (too much, damn it!).

I do things my way, but realize that the arranger, used in ANY form is a compromise, at best, for me.

Russ, both of your statements are so very true, arrangers are a compromise and eating -- let's not go there. aaaaaah.

John C.

Arrangers are tools like a saw is used to cut wood for those who don't have teeth on the edges of their hands,,,,,and don't care to grow them.

Ever since I was 15 I would rather play music than "learn how to play" music. Would I be a better physical player with speedy chops in more than three scales? Definitely. With today's technology does it matter. not really. Transpose buttons are my friends.

Now intelligent arrangements have suddenly become my friends. I view them as tools to substitute for those I don't have in ny tool box to build the same house another can build who has all the tools...like my classically trained wife, She actually asks me how to play some improvisational scales. Of course I can only show her in CGEA+F....LOL

Forget about the black key scales, I only know the major ones there.

For the confused..

A standard midi file is a sequence..but a sequence may not be a standard midi file..

SMF's began as a uniform GM map sequence..with the Roland Sound Canvas(GS) primarily leading the way (late 80's).

It is called "standard" because all products are able to use it with similar results..

The "old" days sequencing was more instrument specific..meaning it needed to be played back on the instrument used to record the data..as the early Roland recorders{data)....

I'm afraid that VERY few OMB's used much sequencing prior to SMF's and the Canvas, etc..

What was done with CV gates and the like was usually more of a studio tool (due to the glacial load up times they took). Back in the early eighties, you saw a lot of guys using drum machines, but sequencing was pretty rare on the gig until the late eighties/early nineties...

There were a few Oberheim DMX users, but on the whole, until the MIDI sequencers got good, it was more common to see a guy with a drum machine, and LH bassing his brains out (I was one of them!).

More of us should try this, just turn off EVERYTHING except the drums, and play like that. You learn a lot more, a lot faster (including starting to realize just how BAD arranger bass lines are - they never LEAD into a chord, they always FOLLOW them around... a huge difference!), unless you are simply trying to SOUND as if you can play, rather than actually playing!

BTW, speedy chops in more than three keys does NOT make you a better player. Understanding how to do more, with less does, IMO. And that is one of the LAST things any arranger is going to teach you!

You want to learn to be a player, and how to interact with the arranger's parts? Learn how to do it with REAL PEOPLE first, then take those skills to the arranger. Because, the other way around, the arranger isn't going to teach you a damn thing. It's just going to spoon feed you, and do it all for you.

And that, my friends, is karaoke in a nutshell...

Whether you want to admit it or not.

[This message has been edited by Diki (edited 10-21-2008).]