I was speaking to Bill a few weeks back and he made an interesting remark: "people don't care about good (instrumental) music anymore...they just want to hear vocals with a solid drum beat that they can dance to."

The other day I was talking to Don about our PA3x's and he said something similar: "do you really think anyone knows, or even cares, that you're using a $4k keyboard?......does anyone really listen that closely that they're going to come up to you and remark that the snare drum is not the right one for that song?"

I had a gig on Saturday night that I booked by boasting to them about my new PA3x. I spent the whole of last week learning the functions, programming songs, setting up the instrument cominations, etc etc. I finished it all by Friday and when I went to review all my settings I found many of them had "vanished" and I was left with a PA3x almost in default mode.

I decided to put what Bill and Don said to the test. I took out my 15 year old Roland E-300 and used that. I used my best EV's and sang my butt off. Lo and behold.......they're right. No one came up to me and said they could tell that was a 15 year old keyboard I was using! I couldn't tell myself 'cause, played right with a lot of pitch bend and vibrato on the onboard sounds, it sounded almost as good as any of today's keyboards (I'm thinking right now about Fran and Diki and their Rolands).

And that bring up another point. I've always played either Yamaha's or Roland's in the past. Roland was always my first choice as, at any given time, they were always years ahead in arranger keyboards.

Now I'm wondering why I bought a PA3x Yes, it's a great keyboard. But if all I need is "good vocals and a strong drum beat" I might just as well use a cheap-o keyboard with an industrial strength speaker system!

As the butcher said: "liver and loin!"

Sadly, this may be true, but you have to please yourself knowing that you are bringing the best sound that you can to your audience. I believe that this would reflect in your presentation, regardless.

Mark
Glad the gig went well. As Bernie said and has been discussed before we buy all this new stuff to please ourselves and make the jobs fun more than to please the audience.
Why do you think all these Kareoke acts are working? No one cares, give them a beat and a decent vocal and they're happy.
Maybe it was a good thing the other keyboard went down. As I think I told you you would of been too distracted trying to use it for the first time.
BTW how did the piano search go??

Mark,
First, I don't sing and all my gigs are purely instrumental. Yesterday I had a gig to play and have recently had some severe lower back problems and decided to take my little Korg Microarranger rather than either my Tyros 4 or my s950. The folks loved the little $500.00 micro arranger and I even spent and extra 30 minutes after the gig showing several people how it functioned. They said they loved the sound and rhythms. Don't know what that says about the TOTL vs others debate but that is what happened. By the way, it was a kick playing the little KMA again.

Deane

In this part of the world, you need quality vocals - the keyboard is of secondary importance. I've been using the PSR-3000s since it first came on the market, and the 3000 continues to do a fantastic job. In my case, I'm a singer - not an instrumentalist, therefore, my vocals are my best attribute. I'm confident this gives me an edge over guys who don't sing, and I'm booked solid a year in advance. Until this past year, NYE was booked 3 years in advance.

Good Luck,

Gary

Mark, I believe that if you hang in there with the PA3X, in the end you will be glad. All the controls make playing live very easy, and the vocal processor/harmonizer is fantastic.
As we discussed, any current, or even not so current, arranger will get the job done, but the bottom line is "make it easy for yourself!"
In the past I have played for the same audience several nights in a row, and switched back and forth between arrangers on different nights. Nobody ever asked if I had changed something. Of course this is after everything was set up, tweaked and optimized for me.
DonM

For me, I guess it all boils down to how EASY any given arranger makes doing the usual tasks that you need to do to fully personalize your arranger for YOU.

How simply is it to edit and create Performances. How easy is it to edit styles, and SMF's? How easy is it to link lyric readouts with the style for that song? How easy is it to organize your data, to cover different types of gigs?

Basically, the harder any arranger makes any of these tasks, the less likely you are to actually DO IT!

I'm still an ardent Roland fan not necessarily for any technical reason, but simply because Roland make all of these tasks pretty simple, especially editing styles and SMF's, so tweaking a legacy style to use the best new sounds is not a daunting chore, but a minute or so of simply button pushing, and done! Re-working your SMF library to take advantage of newer, better kits, a snap!

It's the little things that make the biggest difference, IMO...

Exactly! And it's very easy to do with Korg PA3x, AFTER you become familiar with the OS and all its intricacies.
Roland is more intuitive, especially the models that read directly from USB drive.
Of the primary arrangers, i.e. Yamaha, Korg, Roland, Ketron, Korg is the hardest OS to learn, but it may well be the deepest and most versatile as well.
DonM

Sometimes I wonder why I can't figure these things out for myself?

Quotes.......

Bernie: "but you have to please yourself knowing that you are bringing the best sound that you can to your audience."

Bill: "we buy all this new stuff to please ourselves and make the jobs fun more than to please the audience."

Don: "All the controls make playing live very easy, and the vocal processor/harmonizer is fantastic.....any current, or even not so current, arranger will get the job done, but the bottom line is "make it easy for yourself!"

ME: It appears GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE....

....and great advice! You're all absolutely right.....I never thought about it that way. I'm going to re-think my thinking.....and I'm already thinking now I'm glad I bought the PA3x. I can't say I didn't have fun playing it last week just for myself.

Bill......I went to Altenburg. Nice fellow.......nice conversation......no pressure. Unfortunately, I didn't see anything that appealed to me. But......an enjoyable visit to the store.

I did a really nice job this evening, on a patio overlooking the lake, about 2 minutes from my house! It was a reception for an Air Force Pilots Retiree golf tournament. All they wanted was Country, but I didn't know much.

Anyway, I had to show them how the arranger worked and that I was really playing. These guys and their wives were amazed at the technology that we probably are taking for granted.

On a related note, I am trying to make it look HARDER than it is, so the audience can see I'm working at it! Thinking about putting a mirror of some sort behind me so folks can see my hands, like we used to do at piano bars. I'm even considering letting more cables and gear be visible to the audience, so it doesn't look like K******.

It's all good!
DonM