I read the article and I have the magazine and I really liked some of the ideas he presented.

For example, he liked the sweet flute and the solo nylon guitar very much. I agree with him that those were the best of the best sounds. However, he missed the sweet trumpet which I thought to be the best ever sound in the PSR series from PSR740 to PSR9KPRO. HOWEVER, as an American, I expected that an American will not appreciate the sweet trumpet sound as MUCH it deserves because (AHEM, please take my comments with grain of salt, this is only an opinion ) of the influence of JAZZ, big bands and other styles of music. I like the trumpet MORE in easy listening and classical music than in Jazz or bigband. But the point is that he hit the nail on the two other sounds.

I also agreed with him when he said that although PSR9K has additional professional features, they are not subsitute to dedicated sampler for example.

However, the following takes the cake:

“I’ve noticed the arranger-keyboard fraternity expects Style providers to trawl popular songs for inspiration. That fixation on existing song material is annoying and one of the reasons why such keybord have a bad rap among pro musicians. If arranger-type instruments provided feels and grooves that were fresh and free, their appeal would be broadened. Of course, my opinion is one of personal taste, if you play dinner sets in a hotel lounge, you’ll porbably be extremely happy with what the 9000pro has to offer”


Well, he clearly missed the point. STYLES are not primarily created for NEW MUSIC. STYLES is for performing FAMILIAR MUSIC. If you want to create new music with new edge, simply modify some styles, write your own or do not even use styles for that.


But I think I know where is he coming from and here is what I have to say: if you want to sell a "PRO" musician an auto-arranger keyboard, I will not recommend Yamaha keyboards. I will recommend GEM keyboard instead. The reason for that is that when you record GEM styles in the studio, they do not sound like they are coming from an auto-arranger keyboard unlike Yamaha keyboards. Yamaha auto-arranger keyboards sound like an auto-arranger keyboard and therefore they do not fit for professional recording of songs. I believe this is what Julian wanted to say but could not articulate it and thought it was simply an existing song material issue.

My 2 cents. As usual.