What makes us change arrangers?

It might be interesting to discuss why we decide to get a new arranger…

What flips the switch, what’s the trigger for making the change, what decides for you that it’s time to move on up (or sideways!) to the new model?

Can you think back to perhaps the last couple of times you got a different arranger, and find a common factor to what it was that made you spend your money?

My first arranger keyboard was a Tyros 2, and I liked it a lot, except the width. It was very hard to stack on a two keyboard stand, so I changed to a psr 950. When the sx900 came out, I had to have it for the chord looper function. It’s a great feature, now I would never buy an arranger keyboard without it. Total game changer!

I still have a Korg Havian, Korg Micro, and Ketron Audya. I’m not looking to change them,but I could get by just fine without them , even though they all serve unique purposes. The sx900 is my my most versatile tool.

Montunoman, I share your thoughts about the Sx900; I feel the same. I am going to add my KMA to the Sx900, I love some of the sounds.

Reasons for buying a new keyboard:
1-Owned every keyboard that Technics made from the Kn1000, to the Kn7000 --- and I was never disappointed.
2-I always bought the new flag model when I played out; I was being paid top dollar, why not.

3-I enjoy setting up a new keyboard --- it brings new interest.

4-I sold my Yamaha Tyros 3 to buy a Korg pa800; more drive.

5-I sold the Pa800 to buy a Korg pa4x ---- that was Don’s fault (smile) If I was still playing out I would have a Korgpa4x, or a Pa5x keyboard.

6-I bought the Yamaha Sx900 because it had many of the same features that the Kn7000 had. The Sx900 had less drive, but over all sound was richer.

7-And sometimes it’s BORDOM, BORDOM! BOORDOM!

There are many opinions out there, and that’s good.
John C.

For me, it was the improved sounds/voices, which were far more realistic than the prior models. There were a few OS updates that came with the upgrades, but nothing that I could not cope with or learn in a few weeks of exploring the keyboard. I managed to sell every one of the prior models within a few months of purchasing the upgrade. The only reason it took that long was that I wanted to be able to do the same things on the upgrade in the same time frame, before taking the newer board on the road.

Good topic, Diki,

Gary

As a light user of the style engine, style fatigue never really raised its head, but if a feature came out that seriously upped the ease of use live, that was a big factor for me. And if something utterly new came out sound wise, like a proper B3 sim or a huge increase in multi velocity sounds and articulated sounds (more expressive) that was often a trigger.

But all in all I tended to feel that it usually took a decade or so before I heard something that made changing mandatory. The only time I shortcut that was going from the G800 to the G1000, two very similar arrangers, but the G1000 had a SCSI disk and the 800 had floppies. No more loading anything on stage, it was all instant! Only had the 800 less than a year, but that one thing completely changed my live show.

The BK9’s audio stuff (live playing MP3’s and WAV’s), articulated guitars and vastly increased sound set and, I won’t deny it! drop in weight from 45lbs to 20lbs made that decision easy…

But I’m a bit surprised only one person copped to boredom as a factor..! I must confess, if I used the style section more, that would have been high on my list. The rate of high quality style creation had dried up to a trickle from the heyday of the 90’s, and while legacy style are sort of okay, they just never quite measure up to the best of the new ROM styles in any model. And consistency of backing, for me, is paramount, live. I want every backing to be equally inspiring…

Style fatigue is one of the reasons I’m so jazzed about Korg’s new ‘2 styles at once’ thing, as mixing and matching exponentially increases your high quality ROM style options!

I think I’m at the point that I may never upgrade again, the little BK9 rarely leaves me wanting, but you never know..! It’s getting about ten years old 😂

Im at a point where I see no need to change Arranger Keyboards. My main keyboards now are the Pa700 and Tyros 4. I have kept my older arrangers which I can go back to when I feel like it. But when only a small pecentage of functions sounds / styles are utilised by most players its like a dog chasing its tail.
How many people have got the latest model only to miss something thats only available in an older model.

I feel the same way about my BK-9 (I have two). Admittedly there are a few new things like clip launching audio (which I would use to be able to do Mark/Jump on audio backing tracks) and dual style engines, but they’re all other manufacturers as Roland left the building. There’s altogether too much I like of the Roland workflow, sound and weight!

Roland have rather taken the gearlust out of the picture by simply not making anything on the pro end of things any more. I can only dream about what they might be coming up with if they had kept going, but at least there!s no temptation..!

My only gearlust these days involves using iPads or computers to add capabilities the BK9 will never have, whether modeled instruments, or backing flexibility, or groovebox beats, etc.

I’m done!

I used to think I needed the latest TOTL keyboard, like the KN7000, the G70, Audya 76, and Hammond SK1. After all, my audience deserves the best, and a new keyboard would get me there; WRONG. It was partially true of new features and better navigation, but, I had work-arounds I could have used. It amounted to gear lust and I was playing 3 to 4 times a week, so why not. Never mind the untold thousands of dollars spent, rather the fact that I never learned the hidden gems of any. I was so busy playing that I would learn only the necessary goodies. That is all from a practical standpoint. The good part is the thrill of having a new toy that I could enjoy, if only superficially. I have since come to my senses and am learning the finer points of what I have. I will spent much time on one, to get it to a higher plateau, then, like finding a forgotten toy in the bottom of your toybox, go to another. The fact that I don't play out like before, is somewhat responsible for my reincarnation, but I am happy with it. After all, at 81 1/2 I can do whatever I want.

In an arranger, I didn't care as much about voices as I did styles. Because I didn't use many voices beyond keyboard-related voices and strings. Also, how live it all sounds. An intuitive interface and OS is also a major plus. Owner interest and participation online is also a plus.

I think it boils down to how much you are able to customise your arranger keyboards, in terms of how much you are able edit sounds, etc.

Rewind back to the early days of arrangers keyboards when you had a limited sound and style library, no means of adding new styles or even editing anything for that matter.

So you had to be creative with what resources you had in front of you.

We are really spoiled for choice today having access to 1000s of styles and sounds.

When the keyboards first came out there was so much that could be added; most came from the organs. I remember talking with some of my friends who played Kn7000 --- the feelings were the same. “What else could they possibly add?” Making new upgrades become difficult.
I must admit that the Ketron Event has my interest. The price?????

I sold my Korgpa4x and bought a Yamaha sx900. My reason for changing? My needs were no longer the same. I play at home, and I just celebrated my 91st birthday. I wanted an easy-to-play and sweeter sounding keyboard. The O.S. on the sx900 has many of the same features as the Kn7000.

All this to say --- We have desires,
but they are not all the same.
John C.

Sadly, although we have access to thousands of styles, many of them converted from other brands, the pace of creation of styles for the CURRENT models has pretty much dried up. You tend to only get impressive new styles along with a new model, and those often leverage new sounds and kits or features like new guitar modes or multiple drum tracks, and can’t play on older models.

Then there’s the issue of taking older styles and converted styles and editing them to be as impressive as the best of the new batch. That usually involves quite a bit of editing to get drum kits to hit the sweet spot of sample crossover, and a fair bit of rebalancing styles and inserting effects correctly (if you even can use inserted effects on style parts), and dealing with note ranges and wraparound. And don’t get me started about translating one brand’s guitar mode to another’s!

For me, the goal is consistency… if one style blows me away, I want them ALL to blow me away. Sadly, I seldom get that from legacy styles and conversions. The new model arrangers latest always raise the bar!

For me I spend a lot of time remixing, rebalancing and finding ways of manipulating a style.

Some say the older styles are better programmed, alot of styles can be way to busy. For me generic styles offer more flexibility than just using song styles.

While older styles tend to be a lot more generic and general purpose (personally, I hate songstyles. I’d much prefer a decent SMF or audio track if I want to sound really close to the original), they tend to be quite weak in the guitar programming and dynamic sound or the drum kit, because most of them come from an era before guitar modes and multiple level drum samples.

Back in the day, there was very little difference between a high velocity drum part with the volume turned down, and a low velocity drum part with the volume turned up. One sample per drum sound… Nowadays, with drum sounds like snare and Tom’s with four or more samples per sound, where the velocity and volume sit becomes critical. Most of the older styles I occasionally use had to have a ton of time editing spent n them to get the same level of dynamics as the latest styles.

In fairness, Roland (until they quit making TOTL arrangers) tended to have fewer recognizable songstyles than most, but it has become a disturbing trend with Yamaha and Korg.

One trick I have used from time to time to spruce up an old generic style is to replace the guitar parts with a ‘borrowed’ guitar part from another similar but current style, which should be a lot better with the modern guitar modes.

I have to confess, having done some style editing on Korg’s, I’m not sure I’d bother much, as Korg don’t have a global way to mess with velocity dynamics on individual drums, you have to do it not only on each variation, but also on each CV (chord variation). That’s an insane amount of work just to do something like bring up the velocity on the snare and lower its volume!

Korg need to copy Roland’s Makeup Tools editing system. This is a one step process for an entire style with a Roland… The easier you make something, the more likely the players will use it!

Think is a lot of people focus on the master / Global Eq to make their keyboards sound better. When it’s individual sounds that might need adjusting. Trap I feel into was to solo tracks and adjust the Eq for each part.

When in re this should be done with the style playing same with balancing the parts for the style and what your actually playing.

I have thousands of song specific, custom, style files on hand, many of which sound fantastic to say the very least. As for the guitars, they can be individually tuned, then saved in the style, thus replacing the one that is in the original, thereby providing a significant improvement in the overall style sound. Many of Yamaha's and other manufacturers onboard styles are a bit too busy, but fortunately we have the ability to mute any of those segments of the style, then save it as a user file that can be instantly accessed with a single touch of a button on the Music Finder Directory or registration. All of this is so very easy and can be accomplished on most TOTL arranger keyboards. No tablets, PCs or special software needed!

I still have my trusty Yamaha S-950, I have replaced a few buttons, still using the original keypads, and thousands of music jobs, endless hours of playing at home, it works, and sounds, as good as the day it came out of the box. Really no reason to upgrade.

Here's a classic example of an onboard style that I modified the OTS guitar voice to perform The Wreck Of The Edmond Fitzgerald

Here's another that I modified for the song Black Velvet. In this style, both the drums and guitar were modified and saved into the style.

More often than not, just utilizing the variations of any style file can make a huge difference. The lower variations frequently allow you to highlight your vocals, while at the same time providing you with beautiful, simplistic backing. A good example of this is the onboard style I used for Annie's Song. I changed variations to "C" for the bridge, then went back to the "A" variation to finish out the song. Most of MY audiences loved anything John Denver, which made life easy for me.

As I stated earlier, all of these things can be done on most TOTL and mid range arranger keyboards. For me, updating from my old S-950 was out of the question. I only wish I would have held up, physically, as well as the keyboard did. The keyboard was easily and inexpensively repaired, while in my case, they removed a lot of body parts and some never got replaced.

Good luck,

Gary

Very good, Gary. I am ashamed to say I never have tried modifying any style except for normal balancing. Thanks for posting. I will try it.

Bernie

I have all my styles on a SD card. They are listed according to who sent them.
Gary’s styles are listed with the name of the song that he is playing. When I get a new song, I go to Gary’s list first --- and then modify it. (if needed)

John C.

The trouble I have with busy styles is, muting a part isn’t what you actually WANT to do. You want a simpler part. Muting a busy guitar part doesn’t get you a simple guitar part. Just no guitar part at all…

That’s where swapping in guitar parts from other, simpler styles works well.

That’s one of the reasons I am so enthusiastic about Korg’s new 2 styles at a time system. To swap in and out parts from other styles, you basically have to go through the whole aditing procedure before you even got to hear how well they work together before now. But Korg’s system allows you to hear the results at least with two at a time without any editing at all..! An excellent way of checking out whether parts groove with each other, or whether you’re going to have to spend quite a bit of time in the quantization and micro editing section to match grooves.

I have to youtube the 5X. I wasn't aware you could swap elements of a style (vs being stuck with just 2 styles), like the old VA morphing feature, which was brilliant and lots of fun. That would definitely be a game changer.

It isn’t possible (afaik) to swap parts into a style you’re building any easier than before, but what being able to play two styles at the same time brings to the party is the ability to preview the process.

I'm in exactly this place right now.

I have both the T5 and a PSRS970. I've never bveen able to get the T5 road ready enough as far as how I want/need it to sound. I found setting up the board after purchase to be complicated and after months of working on I gave up.

OTOH, I've loved playing the S970 which was a breeze setting up and sounds fantastic live.

Now, to the thread's main question...I've had the S970 long enough and put a LOT of live gig miles on it that accessing replacement parts is an issue. At 8 years old, should something major die on me, the board might be disposable.

Pi0cking up a new PSRSX900/700 - with me being 62 and still- gigging 350+ times a year - would give me some peace or mind repair wise and we're not that far down the road from the psrS970 that the whole OS player interface would've changed that radically yet...

Yeah… Yamaha have always made the transition from one model to the next as painless as the procedure gets. No, not always seamless, but generally far less traumatic than Korg or Roland did.

I certainly didn’t hear an awful lot of grumbling from 970 users when the SX appeared. Certainly nothing close to the tsunami of chaos that erupted after the PA5x appeared!

I’m just lucky… Roland are out of the game, their last high end arranger is a total gigging gem (for me), I have two so backup is assured, and there’s nothing else that ticks all its boxes. Yes, there’s some nice new features just starting to come out, but none of them are housed in a 20 lbs keyboard with a 76, and cost about $2300 (remember, the BK9 was nearly $2k less than the G70 when it launched!).

So, gearlust on hold, probably indefinitely! 😂🎹

Bill, no worries about parts - they will likely be available long after you retire. I can still get parts for my S-950 and my son was able to get parts for the PSR-3000 I gave him.

Good luck,

Gary

That’s an understatement Diki, the place is toxic. Some stirring the pot of discontent, don’t even own one. Probably don’t even intend on buying one even if there weren’t problems.
Some are under the impression “top end “arrangers are out there in bucket loads. As far as I’m aware there’s only 3 left , Ketron, Korg, and Yamaha . Some think Roland will come to the rescue ( for your sake that would be great, ) somehow don’t think so? Not sure if any of them currently meet all the expectations of some users.
It is a mess for some.
Feel safe to say it here, I’m enjoying mine. The bugs are really annoying because they should have been fixed in the Dec. update.
I work my way around them.
The ones complaining about missing functions, well, I read the manual before I bought mine, so I knew what I was getting and what I wasn’t.
They’re planning on adding a lot of the prior functions back, going to take time. The Pa4x evolved from the i3 back in the mid 90’s.
They goofed up by calling it a PA5x, should have given it a different name , new operating system, new name. Name sort of implied it was a continuation of the pa4x.

In fairness, Rikki, the PA5x is not a completely ground up, utterly new product. Some of the hardware has been seriously revamped, but the underlying OS is very MUCH a continuation of everything Korg has done for decades. It’s just horribly bugged and massively incomplete.

But once the missing stuff is added, and the bugs addressed, there’s very little from workflow to editing screens that will make a PA4X player have the slightest problem adapting. Certainly no more than the PA3-PA4 change did. I think you are being a bit forgiving to Korg. But then again, not being dependent on data migration and being able to immediately gig on your very expensive purchase puts you in a small field of users that can AFFORD to give Korg all the time it wants. Others are not so lucky, and nothing makes them madder than trying to take the heat from off Korg’s feet!

Hi Diki, only what some others have said, new operating system. If it’s in regards to style structure, definitely not new. Way one picks styles , that’s new. Other stuff works differently too. So I don’t know what qualifies something as new. Maybe just an excuse.
Yes, personally I have the time to wait for bugs to get sorted, there’s others in my situation too, home players,they’re just happy playing a great sounding keyboard.
I do feel sorry for the pro’s who use it for gigging. Songbook function isn’t working correctly, that was a bug that was supposed to be fixed last update. It’s the ones that have built up libraries of sampled sounds and styles and pads etc that have every right to be angry. Some would have been putting resources together for years..
I’ve got my style library , but I was fortunate, all my Pa4x converted ok, I never used sampled sounds.
Korg sure have made a hash of things. I tell anybody who asks to wait for the next update if they’re considering buying.
If I needed a keyboard for work, I wouldn’t replace what I’ve got with something brand new on the market, don’t think it even had a manual. That’s where the PA5x name must have given those early buyers false security.
Supposedly 3 to 4 months till next big update when they supposedly add a heap of functions back in.
Think they’d get more kudos if they did something earlier and fixed the bugs that were supposed to be fixed in last update.

Hope it’s not going to be the end of an era like with your beloved Roland, top of the line arrangers ,not worth the hassle or for whatever reason it was Roland stopped developing them.

Haven’t heard anything on replacement for Genos either? not that I probably would have bought one. At approx. half the price I’ve got my brilliant sx900. Asked the question on psr forum if Genos “styles “sounded way superior to Sx900 styles, majority of users said no, except that Genos has the revo drums and sa sounds and extra fx. ( talking about styles) not keybed or anything else.

Anyway going to be a long 3 months for many.

Hate to say it, but I don’t see the PA5 ready for pro use (if one is a pro that uses samples, the Songbook, the MIDI to Style converter and all the other missing or bugged stuff) for at least a year. Look how long it took Korg to address some of the PA4’s shortcomings, and that actually DID have all the aforementioned stuff working!

Now naturally, I’m sure that Covid, the economy collapse, the chip supply chain disruptions and a host of other factors played significantly into this debacle, but the fact is, Korg had a highly regarded fully professional arranger already out there, and next to no competition amongst power users (Yamaha wasn’t luring many away from Korg with the Genos), and to be quite frank, a few OS updates and a slew of new factory styles would have kept the faithful in line for a couple more years.

Rushing out a half finished massively buggy new TOTL arranger completely incapable of being used professionally only succeeded in making their competitors more viable for those wanting fresh meat.

I can only imagine how tough for Korg the Covid years became, and how hard the economic downturn hit their bottom line, but their overall corporate health seemed okay, the synth lines etc. we’re still selling well. To torpedo the arranger division before they had a good product ready to go, well, that’s how Roland screwed the pooch and decided to get the hell out of the segment..!

Hopefully not Korg’s intention, but they DO seem to be following the same blundering path… 🎹

Hi Diki, yep me too, wonder why they changed it. A few new features. Few new styles. Lot of us would have been happy enough. Might not entice most Pa4x owners to upgrade, but pa3x and older , likely to do so because they’re ageing .
My pa800 passed quietly away 3 years ago, 😇 (truth be known I wasn’t going to replace the screen for the second time at a cost of $800 aud. and this time round an extra $400 for shipping).
Anyway, I’m off to play, without all these functions to distract me, I’m actually playing music instead of converting styles I don’t need. Took me a while to work out it’s easier to just turn on the Yamaha keyboard instead of converting Yamaha styles across to the Korg . Haha.
Great chatting.

Hi ,
I find pads a great way of auditioning and changing styles. Korg has a great function style to pad/ pad to style. Simple method of making pads, choose style, choose the track you want to turn into a pad. Save it. Just say it’s a guitar loop, you can now try it with any style, just mute the guitar part in the style , trigger the pad instead. If it works , you can then use the pad to style function , to replace the existing guitar track.
Basically you put together a bit of a pad library. Bass, guitar, piano?

When I first got my sx900 I started to put together piano pad library. Not as easy to do the above for yamaha, pads had to be done in a Daw, but got some great results trying different piano patterns in styles. Just had to keep track of which pad belonged to which style, then I just had to copy the track from one style to the other.
Some of those Freestyle’s (FS) sound great with a piano track. Defeats the purpose, but sounds good.
Yes you can always just use the pad itself, but Korg doesn’t have the sync start function button that Yamaha does , not easy pressing the pad button to start exactly at the first beat. Piano arpeggio not great starting on next beat. You want it starting on the C not the E.

Whoops at it again,supposed to be playing, I think it’s one function that does still work on PA5x , even if not maybe not totally bug free. Have tried it.

Yeah, very strange how Korg view syncing things. I think you even have to do something extra to get the ‘two styles at a time’ thing to both start at the same time. Which begs the question, when would you ever want two styles to NOT run in sync with each other?!

Once again, I have serious doubts that the design team actually play arrangers. Either that or they are seriously into avant guard polyrhythmic stuff! 😂🎹