You are hard work dikki :-)

Have you ever made a style and then just chucked it away ???? I dont. I use them again and again in different ways just like an arranger was designed to be used !

Arranger 'features' does not mean the motif is an arranger. Noone is saying that it is . What is so hard to understand when i say it has arranger 'features' ? The whole point i made when i posted the clip was to show arranger features being used in a workstation. The clip showed exactly that. But a blind person cant see. My mistake really ha ha !!!!

Not all the arranger features are present just like they were not on the mediastation and possibly still are not but it still has arranger features right ? Why do these discussions always have to go to the extremes ? Just as the arranger has workstation features, but not all workstation features. I cant believe (actually i can) how stubborn some people can be just to score points . But it is a debate about music so i guess its all good !

I dont know how individuals make music in terms of songs here whether from scratch or from styles or both or if anyone has ever remixed a song . But when i do, i experiment with chord progressions and styles and mostly just grooves that i have doodled with (created myself) . The grooves i do mostly have some sense of build up just like an ordinary style that can be get busier or plainer as you wish. Using my PA1X ,i sing and play with bass drums and guitar and keys with a style or groove or combinations of both i have programmed earlier when just doodling in arranger style for fun or for a specific project,singing a melody out loud ( to the annoyance of my daughter ha ha !) . If i like the general direction of the song I drop it into the sequencer as a rough draft in one pass. i might do this again in a different style . Instant remix if you will :-).if i come back to it later and dont like those progressions or want to extend or change the progressions i punch in the chord changes etc using that same style . i might do this several times as the inspiration takes me in different styles or grooves, whether original on my PAx1 or ones that i have developed over the years myself.

Now i have a song or maybe several versions of the same song that i can work with in the sequencer in the traditional way. I might let the choir leader listen to what i have done to see which version/versions she likes best . We have songs that we do in morning worship which are geared towards the main church and the remixed version of the same song for concerts where we might get a bit livelier haha !! The key advantage is that she can hear the song not just piano and me singing (which could completely sour the song) ha ha !! but with some accompaniment so she gets a good idea of the feel of the songs etc. I can then use those tracks in terms of editing the drums keys guitars additional strings horns effects breaks fills manually until i am happy with the end result. The rough draft, once i have the basic structure of the song, might have taken just 5 minutes in a one pass in style mode recording to lay down. The creative thinking, experimenting with progressions and developing the melody might take a few hours or even days just like any song creation but the physical laying down of the tracks takes no more than 5 mins and i can lay down several different versions of that song with full tracks in separate recordings if i wish and each recording would take around 5 minutes. Each version of the song could have a different groove feel and i can edit any version that i choose as i wish at a later date. This is particularly usefull if i am remixing a choir song using differnt grooves or feel for someone else to tell me what they prefer.

If i did the same on a workstation using just the sequencer. I might spend hours producing something that i like and put it in the sequencer manually. Bass drums, keys guitar. Each track taking about 5 minutes each if i play each track note perfect the first time.(of course that happens every time right guys ?) If i dont like the progessions in the first draft or want to try it with a different groove or feel....well you can just imagine the work ! i have to reprogramme every track just to mess about with the structure of what i might have done before. Anyone that has ever done this will know it can take hours.

So an arranger helps at the very start of the writing process in the creative phase in a way that a workstation cannot.

Now an arranger is not exactly like a workstation neither is a workstation exactly like an arranger . i hope that clarifies it for some here that continually , perhaps deliberately miss the point !! but thank God someone at yamaha had just a tad of creativity and imagination in them to see how arranger 'features' could help both pro and hobbyist musicians to make music.

I hope this information is useful to somebody. Sorry if i come accros as brow beating. Thats not my intention at all. I am not just debating to score points or come across as being superior or more knowledgeable than anyone else. we are all musicians here trying to help each other (apart from those that are not ) and i am just throwing out there new ways of making music easier to make. You cant hear the tone of written responses but generally i am just trying to help and maybe being a little cheeky too ! If it helps just one person see the potential advantage of arranger features in both types of instruments then all these words did some good.

I hope you all accept the spirit of my posts.

Cheers .

Spalding


[This message has been edited by spalding1968 (edited 09-08-2010).]