Kids dont want arrangers for todays music...

http://usa.yamaha.com/products/music-production/synthesizers/mx/?mode=series#tab=audio_and_video


watch both of the video demos...marketing suggest a NEW direction to sell KB's to the younger generation...

Thing is, none of these things offer the operational ease and instant gratification that arrangers offer.

The problem seems to come from the CONTENT of most arrangers made today, along with not just the feature set. Not only do they struggle with not having a proper modern arpeggiator, audio looper, and full synth parameter control from knobs and sliders, but the poor little dearies have to THEN wade past a style selection primarily geared towards their grandparents!

After all, when you bought your first arranger, how would you have felt if most of the content was for music virtually 100 years old?! Hardly anything newer than a Quadrille, or a Mazurka, or a Schottische, Valse à Deux Temps, Redowa, Five-Step Waltz and Varsouvienne! None of the styles to play rock and roll, R&B or cool jazz...

You would have avoided it like the plague, even if, buried under all that was the BEST way to make music easily.

Until someone steps up and combines the features and sounds that kids NEED with the styles they actually LISTEN to, and want to play, the arranger is a non-starter.

For the want of a nail.

Even THEIR music has intros, Variations, fills, breaks and endings. It's just that they are radically different to what is in most arrangers. Get the content and features right though, things like the Yamaha MX series don't stand a chance!

Everything I saw in those two videos can be done with ANY arranger keyboard, and for the most part done easier and better. Nothing there would excite any you person I know. Most of the young people I see at GC and my friend's music store are looking at guitars - not keyboards - not synths.

Gary

Have to disagree there Gary, arrangers do not have (Or very limited) programmable real time controls, and one thing you want with modern music is to tweak the sound live, without having to wade through menus or have to keep pushing buttons to alter things. (The LFO for example) If you look at most Workstation/synth players they are constantly twiddling controls while playing.

Arrangers by their very nature are easy play instruments(They are basically all the easy play features from organs stuck on a single keyboard) where you can just push a button and everything is done for you, which is exactly what most home players want. (Only a minute percentage are used by pros)

Bill

This is all these kids today need to make THEIR music..I would say having an arranger and a synth like the Motif xf is an awesome combo on stage or in studio production.

The modern WS still has a few steps to go through before they approach the operational ease and flexibility of arrangers. They ARE getting there, but only about halfway, IMO.

The main thing is, while you can have all the chord following and multiple patterns to allow you to play different sections of a song, there are still considerable difficulties in making them flow into each other.

For instance, in a WS, you want a fill suddenly, you HAVE to ask for it a bar in advance. Ask for it on beat 2, and unlike an arranger, which will immediately jump into the fill, starting on beat 2, nothing will happen until the NEXT bar, when it will then play the ENTIRE fill.

And there is no such thing as an auto-fill. In other words, ask the WS to go from Arp 1 to Arp 2, it will switch at the end of the bar that you asked it to do so to the next pattern. But it won't jump immediately to the fill and THEN go to the next pattern. Everything HAS to be cued up in advance, and everything needs to run through the entire length of its pattern before you can have another pattern start.

So, for instance, you can't set one pattern to be the intro, set that it only plays once, and automatically go to whatever pattern is the equivalent of Variation 1. In other words, you can't give patterns destinations.

Then there's the issue of inversions. WS's, on the whole, may recognize what chord you are playing (although their chord recognition algorithms are far less sophisticated than arrangers), but change inversion, they rarely follow that. Nor are they capable of recognizing what chord TYPE you are playing (maj/min/7th, etc.) and substitute different patterns for those. Everything needs cue-ing by hand, and everything a bar in advance.

But listen to most kids music (if you can!). The real thing still has Intros, fills and Variations, Breaks and endings, and far more variety than is easily performed LIVE with a modern WS.

That is our foot in the door.

But before the kids embrace the arranger paradigm, first it needs stripping of EVERYTHING that could possibly link it to us! ALL the old styles have got to go. All the nomenclature that would even remind them that they are playing their grandparents' arranger needs to go. The cheap speakers need to go (they wouldn't handle a sub-bass even if they were on!). They need maybe a dozen more knobs adding, so they can twiddle the filter cutoff or LFO speed as they play.

Then they need easy incorporation of user audio loops (BK-9 has that nailed!), and all front panel controls need to be able to be sent as USB MIDI to whatever VSTi rig they are running on their laptop...

It would sell like hotcakes, but only if they don't KNOW they are playing an arranger!

lesson one

One needs to learn how to play
Musical education
Piano is still the best..
Organ play on an arranger is good too..
and then on a 76 key arranger, both can be archieved...
(tough if people have room, an old piano still fits best)

But what musical teacher is gonna learn kids how to play music on a 49 key thingy?

Big difference between a child who can't play, and a 'kid', who, for the purposes of this forum, is anyone under the age of 30!

You may have missed it in translation, but we are talking about gear for players that started playing in THIS century!

I think they are aiming these instruments at people that cant play, and only learned how to create music with a computer... they are loop experts but not musicians..

They never want to play more then a simple mellody with the right hand..,


most of us realise that you can not play music withouth years of dedicated training... just playing a scale up and down, or a simple etude... its the beginning of something great..

But then maybe they are all little Mozarts...

Gary.., I mean no disrespect my friend, but you couldn't be farther from the truth on this issue. It's not your fault because you don't play modern music, and as such honestly don't really know what an individual needs the keyboard to be capable of.

I'll give you an excellent example. I have recently attempted to create a modern style of music on my PSR-S700. The S-700 is a MOTL arranger keyboard that (price wise) was right next to the workstation MOTL models (that were priced the same).

Not only do current arrangers lack the sounds and (just as important) the styles to create modern music, but some MOTL arrangers (such as my S-700) are lacking MAJOR abilities that are CRUCIAL to creating modern music, and without them makes an arranger very DIFFICULT to use for these styles. Also.., not to forget the absence of "ASSIGNABLE" REAL TIME CONTROL KNOBS on many models.

Unless it's hidden deep within a menu somewhere that I've not found.., my S-700 (and I would assume MANY others in the S series) lack the ability to SYNC a tones LFO settings to the internal midi clock.., AND more shocking the inability to SYNC some specific EFFECTS settings to the midi clock. It doesn't stop there either. Another HUGE omission you'll find when creating user styles (at least on the Yamaha's) is the mod wheel CANNOT be used to adjust crucial parameters within style parts and RECORDED to that style part.

For example.., if I was to create a Dubstep style, I would need the ability to not only modulate the sound with the wheel, BUT the ability to perform other functions at the same time such as:

-Using the mod wheel to control the LFO rate of the selected tone.
-Using the mod wheel to open the filter
-Using the mod wheel to control the LFO rate of the chosen effect.
-Using the mod wheel to control DSP depth for distortion.

These are just a few things that are CRUCIAL not only to Dubstep, but to MANY styles of electronica. Sure I can make these settings when playing a sound in REAL TIME.., but the purpose of the Style Recording is also to SIMPLIFY song creation. Without the functions I mentioned above means that the user has no choice but to MANUALLY play each of the parts through the duration of the song. There's nothing simplistic about that, and it's an EXTREMELY time consuming process.

Now.., I haven't had the chance to really dig into a Korg arrangers style recording functions.., but if there was ANY arranger on the market that I would "assume" had these abilities.., it would be Korg (who IMO have the BEST combination of a synth/workstation/arranger on the market today).

Squeak, my apologies if I have already asked you this...

Have you tried the Casio PX-5S?

I'm strongly thinking of getting one to use to compliment my Tyros4, so I'm wondering if you have had a chance to try one out?

There are none here at our local music store, but I'm planning a trip to the mainland after the worst of the winter, so I'll be able to see one then.

It has some awesome features (arpeggiator, 4-zone controller capabilities, phrase sequencer etc.), and the price seems very, very reasonable for what you get. Plus it sounds incredible in the demos at least.

Lots of real time tweaks via knobs and sliders and a great feeling 88 note weighted keyboard, so you could do your piano stuff in style.

Dreamer, here on SZ, has one and loves it, and I have heard a lot of other positive reviews on other forums as well.

What do ya think?

Ian

Squeak, I don't play what you refer to as "modern music" for a very good reason. No one, young or old, and by young I mean 30 to 45 years of age, ever requested a modern song. Maybe it's just the places I play, or the type of audiences I attract, but sorry, no one seems to ask for anything remotely resembling the demos. When I played the resorts, Tiki Bars, Marina Restaurants, etc... down in the Florida Keys, it was Jimmy Buffett, Country/Western, light rock, and a smattering of Bob Marley - that's it! Up here, it's pretty much the same, and of course, this time of year, traditional and not so traditional Christmas songs.

Gary

I do have some request from kids with their parents, but never from adults. I'm not in the right venues I suppose.
If circumstances demand (read large tip), I will play the original from the laptop or sometimes directly from youtube.

Ian.., yeah I think we discussed it not long ago. I've talked to many owners on YouTube and I've yet to find one that doesn't rave about that board. Casio really hit a home run with that unit IMO.

It's great to see Casio getting back into the game. After the death of the CZ series.., many of us thought we'd never see Casio come back. Their current synth models and that new PX5S have caused a great deal of excitement in the keyboard community.

Gary, LOL

I honestly think that the kids aren't asking for something modern because they don't want to hear it... after all THEY put these songs into the Top 40! Song wouldn't sell if they didn't buy it...

But no kid is going to go up to someone older than their grandparents and ask you to do some Daft Punk, or Katy Perry! Give them some credit for being able to figure what YOU can pull off, and asking for something appropriate!