I keep reading about arranger players with excessive libraries of thousands of styles Onboard their KB's, or where ever.....etc, etc,...

Personally I only use about 30 styles for all my work as a pro platyer on stage most are tweaked & edited by myself to suit my tastes,....I can pretty much do any song I need to with these excellent styles,......
Why would anyone need hundreds & hundreds on board?
It just puzzles me?

I have a USER bank with about 80 styles, all of my own assembly, and I have Gig Folders that have styles suited for various types of jobs.

Probably around 200 or so that are in constant use.

I could probably pick about 50 or so if I was to be limited.

The vast storage on today's arrangers make it less needful to use one style for many songs.

Ian

In constant use, I probably use about 200 to 250. Sure, I could get by with far fewer, but I love the variety those extra styles provide.

Gary

It depends on how picky you are, I guess!

If you are content to use the same style for more than say a couple of songs, nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but it sure adds a degree of 'sameness' to much of your repertoire.

Much depends, also on whether the arranger or the singer is the focus. For instrumentalists like Ian, too many songs in the same style has got to get boring. Cover the style up with a lot of playing and singing, maybe not so much. I guess the more YOU play, the less what the arranger does is going to matter.

I've got a bunch of older Roland styles that work well for me, because there's a lot of ROOM in the style to play yourself, and that can vary radically from song to song. So I use them quite a bit. Kicking my own basslines also helps stretch one style into a lot of usefulness.

But I would imagine, were you playing full arranger all the time and not singing, you'd want a lot more.

Donny, what percentage of your show is done in arranger mode, and what are SMF's or MP3's? Those can also go a long way towards letting you get away with fewer styles, wouldn't you say? LOL

NH 100% styles/vocals always,.......
For larger dances 4hrs on average 1/3 styles/vocals, 1/3 Mp3 backing tracks playing on top/vocals, 1/3 Mp3's,.....
but, it varies per gig genre also,.....
I've done 100% styles/vvocals 4 hrs many times also depending ...
I got a box of tools, .....what you do to build & how you build a house is up to you.

FWIW ... 4 hour gig last night with the sax player, I used 3 SMFs : Sweet Caroline, New York NY, Mack the Knife (the Bobby Darin arrangement ... the rest were all KORG styles ...

Donnie, great topic.

I know that you guys who perform night after night get comfortable with probably less than 100 good styles, all designed to support your well rshearsed repertoire of popular songs in several genres. You've probably a dozen ways to access them in configurations (arrangements) that fit certain type songs your audience often requests. Each audience is different and you must be able to configure your musical gig to satisfy their unique needs.

Some songs are seemingly ageless and are requested again and again across the spectrum of audiences. Lyrics for the songs you don't practice enough to be confident about must also be pre-set in your specific keyboard or tablet/laptop setup for quick recall and ease of access.

As a songwriter, I constantly search through my collection of styles to see how I can tweak them to keep my songs from all sounding alike. In certain genres, it's good to have a recognizeable backing sound... sorta like a trademark performing style. In other genres, all bets are off an I must "wing it" to discover what sounds best. Multi-pads enhance many of my songs to a degree I never expected, mostly due to my lack of playing ability.

Quick access is not one of my needs but cataloging the setup and instruments plus their individual volumes along with companion multi-pads are crucial to me.

Advancing from the PSR-2000 to the PSR-S910 was a leap that sounds so much more authentic. The available choir-based vocal "instruments" are light years ahead of what was previously available for the 2000.

The big difference is that my songs are usually recorded and never performed again (unless I determine a different style sounds much better... or decide to move it into a different genre... often retaining the original version.) I can't own too many good multi-pads or "voices"/instruments in "today" sounding styles. In songwriting, the need to sound "retro" is often also important. Very few "concrete" rules apply to songswriters as opposed to gig artists.

We are so alike in so many ways... and so different in so many other ways. Thank Heaven for Arranger Keyboards.

My songs must be cataloged, documented regarding precise set-ups, copyrighted and then, if worthy, registered with ASCAP so I can more easily be plugged into the money stream. I don't perform except to an "audience of one"... ME! If I had to appear on stage, I'd probably keel over or fade into the woodwork. I'm very much like a fisherman, attempting to keep as much bait in the water as possible, hoping to land the big one... a well known singer who has a following willing to buy just about anything he or she records.

One thing is for certain, I admire what you gigging artists do very much. It takes a special person to master the art of satisfying a crowd's differing musical tastes. Kudos to you all.

Dave Rice

I think the important aspect of a style is how much, I like to say, "punctuation" it can give to my instrument's musical grammar.

Great styles break up a tune just like commas, semi-colons, quotation marks, question marks, and a good old exclamation point every so often in a written sentence does....wonders!

Much the same with my music. Tunes that have a sameness about them throughout tend to be boring, and I must be very careful with where to put fills (commas), Main Variation changes (semi-colons), and, that good old stop/fill (exclamation point!)

Using the right introduction is just as important in my music as in my social life...remember the old saying, "You never have a second chance to make a first impression."

I generally program my styles to have phrases that actually phrase, and introductions that allow me to play over the top, so I can use a well programmed, interesting style, for more than one tune in a set.

We all know what its like to read a post
with no punctuation capitals or other grammatical
necessities as it gets pretty boring and tedious
to read sentence after sentence word after word
with no space between sentences...see what I mean?

So I generally try to make my styles give my music some space and breathing room...a certain...um...style.

Thank you...thank you very much!

Ian

I use my arranger for recording, and I'd like to think that my audience is going to listen to my recordings repeatedly, so the more varied and vast my style collection, the better. I try to never use the same style in more than one recording.

To that end, I just purchased Band In A Box 2014 to try and vary my recordings a bit. I'm quite pleased with my first attempt at using it in the studio. The Real Tracks audio clips are pretty cool, and because the software knows in advance what chord changes are coming, I find the bass lines are more "human" than what the arranger can do. Of course none of this is useful for live performance, but still fairly impressive technology, I think.

It's really quick to sketch out a tune and print a lead sheet too.

I'm considering getting Band In A Box if a certain opportunity presents itself in late summer or early fall.

I still remember using the the first, or at least very early, versions of the program at the Music World store in Newfoundland many years ago...it would still be quite useful today, and it only had drums, bass, guitar piano and strings and we used a then new Roland Sound Canvas with it. Even back then the bass lines had that human quality to them.

Compared to these latest versions, the version we had would be like comparing a Model T to a new Lexus.

I was very impressed with the specs and demos of the 2014 version.

You must be having a great time with it, Dan. I think the lead sheet feature is super cool.


Ian