I have noticed for many years, the need to use different tools as crutches...when making music..Some crutches can be over com-ed, others can not..

I see as an example here...Cass stated that he relies on his playing as a back up for his vocals, and suffers in his playing skills to "play" his best...Hopefully I didn't misunderstand you Cass..

If this is true, I know of many, that are the same...There are "strong" singers, that need the vocals as a crutch for their playing skills...

There are others that rely on their playing skills to make the best of their vocals..

There are many that rely on the written music to play..this can also be a crutch..

I think the "arranger" keyboard has become a crutch for so many...causing them to lose skills that they may have had before...and others do need the arranger to aid them because of lacking skills..

All of these scenarios are fine, but maybe we need to look at our own positions, and see if the "crutches " are holding us back , or causing us to deteriorate as players..

If you want to test yourself..turn off the arranger stuff, and turn off the mic....and play...see if you can hold your own..

Piece of cake...and again, I takes dis toime ta tank me mudder for dem lessen on da pie-anna.

The 'cardeen lessens helped too.

I need and will use any crutches that I can get a hold of ... life's too short.
Ciao,
Jerry

Plus one..."Skills" are for pit musicians and studio players.


Sequencers, loops, transpose buttons.....all of it negates a skill set and yet allows more people to express themselves musically and in the end, THAT'S the most important thing......The only bad "crutch" is the one you cannot use to get somewhere you want to go.......

My instrument is Arranger, not Piano. It isn't a crutch, it's a tool. It's my band, in which I control all the parts. Don't need to turn anything off and don't want to, and don't feel any need to justify playing Arranger.
It's what I do. Does this make sense?
If I don't remember the words to a song, I look at them. I get requests for songs I have done 10 years ago and need to look at the chords and lyrics sometimes. They are not crutches, but tools.
My next step MAY be to get one of those laptop antenna things so I can connect to the internet from anywhere at any time. If I get a request that I want to try but don't know or have the words and/or chords, I can Google it, download it, play it and pocket the LARGE TIP. If I can't play it, I could even download an MP3 and play it on break for them. Whatever tools are necessary!
I only started singing because I didn't want to pay a singer, but I'm slowly getting tolerable at it. Just another tool.
DonM

Don, you may be interested to know it IS worth getting a tool (whatever that may be) to do what you described above.

I used an App on my iPhone called MIDOMI - Kind of like the Shazam app you see in the ads (the one where they hold the iPhone up to the speaker and it tells you what song it is) except Midomi is a lot more flexible. You can type in the name of the song, hold it up to the speaker, or just HUM the melody (yeah, it actually works) and the app will tell you the song, alternate versions of the song, Discography of the Band(s) who did the song, an option to buy the song, or just to stream it from Youtube.

So, Midomi REALLY helps me.
Before that app (and the iPhone) I would never be able to play almost ANY song for somebody. Just last week an elderly guy came up to me at a gig and asked me for a song I'd never heard of, but meant a lot to him. I got him to sing the song into the iPhone, and sure enough, it came up with it! We couldn't play it for him live, but I just streamed the song from youtube, plugged the phone into our PA system, and the guy got up with his wife of 40 years and danced around the room with a big ol' smile on his face! (It even sounded pretty good!!)

That's priceless - it makes you the ULTIMATE DJ - there's (practically) nothing you can't get for someone, new OR old, live - at a gig!

Btw, all that streaming cost me nothing as I was leeching some Wi-fi from the Venue, because I used a great Wifi finding app that cost me just $2.

Life is good.......

I've stated a while back that I am glad I got rid of my arrangers (at least temporarily anyway) and bought a true workstation because it made me focus on my playing skills more, instead of using the auto-accompaniment features of arrangers. I started playing arrangers from the get go and by switching to a workstation it has opened up new ways to concentrate solely on my playing skills and of using proper fingering methods plus more in depth music theory development and research.

OTOH, I would like to get another arranger fairly soon to use in conjunction with my Fantom G7. In a two tier situation that is.

All the best,
Mike

I think all forms of keyboards can be a crutch (if we let it get to that point). Those of us who also have workstations can get to the point of the synth becoming a crutch. I've said several times in the past that it wouldn't hurt to turn off the auto accomp as often as you can and just PLAY.

It's the same thing with workstations. You get so used to using the preset patterns and arps to simplify things and you run into the same issue.

I always suggest that a player every so often do a complete LINEAR recording with their keyboard. No quantize.., no looping, no copy/paste, no styles, NOTHING. Just pick a track and record. Pecking out an entire drum track will do wonders for your timing. Putting it all together track after track on a strick linear format IMO can be a very good practice tool.

Squeak

Good post Fran. Piano was always my instrument I always played solo. Once I bought my first arranger ( a clavinova cvp 107) I about dropped playing piano solo. That was a bit of a mistake, since then my chops have really diminished. It gets frustrating playing a piece that I once had a pretty good command of with all the dynamics that should go along with a good piano solo. I play a number of piano solo cocktail hours, when playing a NH gig there's usually a pretty decent grand piano in the rooms I play. I usually wind up playing a 10 minute segment of solos. I have recently cracked open the Hanon series to get some of the left hand strength back, can't let those skills disappear completely. Not only that I find there's no arranger that allows me to play as expressively as I can with acoustic piano.

Bottom line no matter what it's the arranger that brings lots of entertainment to the table. It's a tool not a crutch. Now my vocals are a different story I need all the crutches available.

Don M's post is SPOT ON!