I don't really think arranger keyboards will go the way of the old home organ. Yes, at the moment the vast majority of people who really understand how to use (or for that matter sell) an arranger keyboard comes from an organ background. But to say that until the arranger keyboards are re-designed to make them appealing to a younger audience, well that's not totally accurate. There are a few arranger instruments that can definitely hold their own next to what is commonly referred to as a workstation keyboard but not enough folks are aware of that fact. I see several problems that need to be addressed to correct this. Retail salespeople need to be trained on these instruments so they will know the capabilities, and they need to be de-sensitized to the word arranger. I mean there is a very fine line between today�s workstations and arranger keyboards. A lot of the newer workstations are filled with patches that with a single touch of a key starts to play patterns consisting of drum loops, bass parts, etc. Also, for arranger keyboards to gain some ground in the U.S. the manufacturer would be good to advertise to a younger audience, but with the relatively small margins made on this type of product that is kind of hard to do effectively.

A quick story; A couple of months ago I visited Sweetwater Music to provide product training to their sales staff (I think I worked with about 80 salespeople in a 5 hour period). One particular salesman who was into DJ stuff like sampling/looping, re-mixing, etc. asked if he could start a loop and then bring tracks in and out at will. So we found a techno beat that he liked, pressed start and triggered a key. The style played with the accompaniment tracks. I pressed Mixer and he was able to mix each track live. He then wanted to adjust the cut-off frequency of the filter for the bass loop so I pressed the Edit Sound button and he was able to adjust the filter and every other aspect of this sound like amplitude and filter envelope generators, LFO�s, etc. in real time. When he said �that is the sound I am looking for� I pressed the store button and saved his edit to the initial style preset, all while the style was still running. There were more revelations but suffice it to say that he was coming from a totally different background than the average arranger user and the questions he was asking pertained to the products he is familiar with that are designed with only DJ use in mind and he left realizing that there is a whole new instrument that he can introduce to buyers in his market.

As for price, there is the Euro/U.S. dollar issue. But also take into consideration the fact that an arranger instrument requires the same type of hardware and software that goes in to a workstation instrument PLUS on top of that additional software must be written for the arranger section, not to mention the cost of creating all of the styles that are included in the instrument. It costs more to create a professional arranger/workstation instrument.

Dave