Keyboard TV provides some interesting article video's. Worth a look if interested.
http://keyboardmag.tv/index.html?req=1&station=arranger

Thanks Graham. I already knew Arrangers weren't cheesy but a lot of musicians still hold to the belief that they are. Word is spreading though and people's opinions about Arrangers are slowly changing, thanks in part to places like Keyboard TV and even this Forum. And as we know, Workstation keyboards are slowly incorporating Arranger capabilities into them. I just recently purchased the new Yamaha Motif XS7 which has advanced intelligent chord recognition capability and in my opinion it has a smoother accompaniment flow of operation than Yammies arrangers do. Everything i.e. (the accompaniment along with the chord changes and lead voices) flows together in a more natural and seamless way. The Motif XS has 5 arpeggios (Arps) that are similar to an Arrangers Main Variations A,B,C,D. With the Motif XS you now have an E. Is it an Arranger? No, not quite, but I think Workstations are heading in that direction and one day there probably won't be much of a distinction between the two. The line is starting to blur and in fact may eventually become non-existent. Will there always be a need for Stage Pianos and Organ clones? Sure, but Workstations and Arrangers may eventually meld into one and will most likely be simply called a Workstation keyboard, instead of an Arranger or an Arranger Workstation keyboard. That's my opinion of course and only time will tell if I'm correct. Either way, I'm glad traditional Workstations are finally incorporating arranger capabilities into them. And there is fortunately no way one could consider, for example, a Motif XS, a Korg M3, a Roland's FantomX (or its successor) cheesy. Unfortunately a significant number of musicians still hold to the belief that an Arranger equals = cheese. I think the Tyros was the first arranger that started to change that notion (mainly because it had a wider exposure into the marketplace as opposed to Ketron's SD1 or GEM's Genesys PRO or even Korg's Pa1X/PRO because of its higher price tag and not being readily available in stores up until recently). And now we have the Tyros2, the Roland E80, and the forthcoming Ketron AUDYA. Korg should also be coming out with its new Flagship Arranger sometime soon too. All the more reason for people to stand up and take notice that an Arranger doesn't necessarily mean that it has to have the word "cheese" associated with it. People are finally waking up and realizing that fact.

Thanks again for the link.

Mike

[This message has been edited by keybplayer (edited 04-15-2007).]

interesting video. te demonstrator did an ok job in terms of getting his head around arrangers and then the diferent set ups for each of the manufacturers. But it was pretty obvious that he had only just learned this stuff about arrangers and never played one for himself before this demo. What i liked about the demo is that he alluded to the fct that the instrument was completely programmable and could be customised much deeper than the stock preset sounds and styles. I am glad that the gospel of arranger keyboards is getting out there. Wish they could have used each manufacturers demonstrator to demo specific parts of their own instrumnets like petter baartram and so on as they would have done a far more convincing job. Despite the often repeated statement that arangers are not cheesy , if the demo makes them sound cheesy then it just reinforces that impression. Unfortunately this demo did nothing to dismiss that myth.

What i found really intersting was the organ flutes demo. The use of drawbars is only going to sound realistic if there are intuitive drawbar controls on the keyboard and in my opinion this can only truly be useful in a live setting if you have real physical sliders or drawbars. In the demo it was clear that using digical toggle switches in a live setting is simply too cumbersome and i am eally surprised that Korg in particular took the sliders away and put digital toggle switched drawbars on the PA800 . Wht was the reasoning behind that ? None of the PA1X users have critiscied the sliders on that instrument . Interestingly the Roland E80 did the exact opposite and put the sliders on !

Korg removed the sliders on the Pa800 to reduce production costs. In OS 1.5 we will get virtual sliders instead, i.e. you will be able to adjust the drawbars directly on the touch screen. It will never be as good as real physical sliders, but at least it is better than the current situation where you have to use a combination of the touch screen and the scroll wheel to adjust the drawbars.

Kind regards,
Tommy

The truth is, only to a player of real organs does the drawbar issue really matter. If you never got used to real drawbars, it doesn't really matter WHAT is used to change registrations, as long as it can be done quickly and accurately. Only purists and players raised on Hammonds really understand how to get the most from the drawbars.

And I say this as one who grew up playing Hammonds and other organs. To be honest, although the sliders are OK on the Rolands, they don't move or feel like the real thing, so it's still a step away from the real thing. I always worry about breaking them if I slap them around like you can a real B3....

I think that using a volume pedal with the right taper is FAR more important to getting a good organ sound than authentic drawbars, and I am amazed at how many clone-wheel and arranger 'organ' players out there don't use one....

As to the 'cheez' factor, arrangers are only as cheesy as the styles put in them. I have always said that if you took out ALL the ballroom and oldies styles, packed it with styles that sound like stuff on the charts NOW (not 20 years or more ago) arrangers would be the most popular keyboard on the planet.

But while the majors keep stuffing them with styles that are mostly only appropriate in a nursing-home gig, no young player is going to want to play one. And they, bless their little tattooed backsides, feel the same way, as far as I can tell.

The sad fact is that most modern TOTL arrangers can have their entire style memory changed around at will. Even the so-called ROM styles. So, why on earth don't Roland or Yamaha take a T2 or G70, ditch ALL the old styles, pack it with new, cutting edge styles (the programmers for the hip arps in the TOTL workstations should have no problem developing 'styles' that the modern player likes, why not co-opt THEM into making styles for the market?) and re-brand it as the G70 EXTREME or T2 Dominator!?

90% of all the workstation users would MUCH prefer to have an arranger, if only it SOUNDED like the TOTL workstations. Yamaha are starting to see the light with the MotifXS, but you still have to jump through workstation hoops rather than the ease of arranger operation. Far better (and easier) to take an existing arranger, and just develop styles for it that wouldn't embarrass a twenty-something hipster....

Diki, the makers have had some attempts in that type of arranger. Remember the Roland EG-101. There was also the original Yamaha DJX. Now Yammie released the MM6, which is a new modern DJX.

I agree that they're NEVER going to get the attention of the younger crowd as long as they continue with the styles most commonly found on arrangers. Honestly I don't think they really want to attract the younger buyers. The marketing for arrangers is really screwed up IMO.

Here's one for ya. I got this response from a Yamaha rep just over a year ago when I was helping a friend start up his store, and helping him decide what he could bring in in terms of keyboards.

Well we talked to a Yamaha rep. What that son-of-a-bi~#@ said in response to one my questions nearly got him strangled on the spot.

We got to talking about how arrangers aren't catching the attention of the younger crowd,,, blah blah blah. The topic of the higher price tags on the upper end arrangers came up. I asked him why in the hell does Yamaha charge so much for their flagship arrangers? I asked why does a Yamaha Tyros for example cost more than a Motif, considering the Motif had a more indepth feature list and was more pro orientated?

His response: Well the "home player" and the intended market they're designed for are more willing to pay the higher prices because they don't know any better. He said, many are "retired" play at home thus will pay the price. MAN THAT PISSED ME OFF SOMETHING BAD!

I think Yamahas (for example) idea of attracting the younger tatooed crowd is the MM6. It's all MONEY. The new Motif XS is an excellent example. The Motif XS dances circles around the spec list of a Tyros 2. Yet the Tyros 2 costs $1200-$1300 more than the Motif XS6? What in the hell makes the tools on the Tyros 2 more important to the user than the tools on a Motif XS6 to that user that justify that price difference??? Especially considering the Motif XS has the Expanded Super Articulation voices, and the Tyros2 has the first generation SA voices, which were a HUGE marking aspect of the T2.

Squeak

Well, squeak, as you can see from the Mediastation furor, the features themselves don't seem to be that difficult to develop. Cost of development of the hardware part of any keyboard is probably reasonable consistent across the board.

The thing that's killing Dom is that he has put very little (comparatively) into the style development and sound set integration. And so, what is a promising platform languishes for the lack of good styles.

Each TOTL arranger from the majors not only has at least as much technical innovation as many workstations - Yamaha debuted SA technology on the T2, NOT the Motif, Roland have a far better VK organ and V-Drum integration than any workstation - but ALSO has to have a couple of HUNDRED killer styles developed for it, obviously not something that comes cheap (or Dom wouldn't have this problem!).....

The software costs may easily account for an arranger's higher price (despite what some marketing twerp will tell you).

Developing really killer styles is nowhere near as easy as it seems (hence the dearth of great user styles) and probably constitutes one of the major costs in developing an arranger. If they were that cheap, you would see the majors releasing (even selling!) loads of new styles all the time. But generally, once a new arranger is launched, you don't see a whole lot of new factory styles for it. Their style team is probably already hard at work making another killer set for the NEXT arranger in the product cycle....

Good point Diki, but look at it like this... Think about how much work it takes to program the arps on a synth. How much work it takes to get those awesome acoustic guitar arps? The new Motif XS for example is using arranger capabilites with the arps. That's not easy work. You ever program a user arp, I mean try and program a real indepth arp? That's freaking ROCKET SCIENCE man!

There's a shit load of work that goes into the features of a synth too. I was mad at the guy, but when he left I thought about it and it started to make sense to me. All the makers "exploit" the home player market. They hit ya hard in your pocket just for those styles.

It would be different Diki if say brass players did the brass section, drummers did the drum sections, real guitar players did the guitar section, and so on, but that's often NOT the case. You know what I mean? Not as much work goes into the styles as the makers would have you think IMO. It's not to say these styles are not freaking awesome in some cases, but I think the guy was right to a degree. I can't tell you the nubmer of times I've talked to owners of a Motif, Triton or Fantom who played a T2, PA series, or Roland pro arranger, who said they can't seem to understand the major price difference either, and who agree that they see no difference in the importance in an arrangers tools to the player as they tools on a synth are to them.

I asked one guy on the Motif forum once what would he do if the price of a Motif 61 key model cost $3500.., man that guy used such colorful language and words I didn't even know existed when he replied to me

That's also a good point, squeak. Mind you, you compare a MotifXS 76 to a G70 (now that MI are handling them and the price dropped) and the price isn't THAT much different. About $2800, roughly, USD. Nearly $3.5k for an 88..... street price. That's major money in anybody's opinion.

The difference between arp development and styles is that each arp is usually a thing unto itself, whereas every part of a style has to be related. Different developers can work on arps (one guy does the guitars, another does drums, another bass-lines, no need for much interaction), but a style is usually one man, or one team. ALL the parts have to gel. And then there's all those Intros and Outros, and all the fills. It's quite a different thing to a bunch of patterns.

But I admit we do tend to pay a premium, especially when something is groundbreaking and new. I guess the trade-off is that for most of us, one arranger does the job. You don't see too many workstation/synth players with just one keyboard! So they pay a little less, but have to carry two....