Steve:

I represent possibly the bottom end of your market... but possibly not. I don't perform. I'm a songwriter. I need better voices (I call them instruments) and though my efforts are not limited to "country music" I do write alot in that genre. The arranger allows me to write and create melodies quickly for the lyrics I generate. Today's country uses better drum sounds, a variety of country instruments including dobros, pedal steel, resonators plus many of the instrument voices you already have in your excellent stable of voices.

Having more intros, middle breaks and outros included in each style (three or more each)would allow me to utilize the same style with different setups to keep the music from souning the same as my previous song. Right now, I do my best to never use a style more than once with certain exceptions. If the intros are different enough, then the style can be utilized in successive productions.

Please remember that my songs are mostly demos used to audition a song for an artist or producer. If they like it and decide to record it, they will arrange things to suit their style and artist... but they have to hear something that sounds reasonably professional first. There is an abiding dislike in Nashville for "Cheesy Sounding" keyboards... and fortunately, an well set-up arranger can sound like a band, an orchestra... or a simple, no frills guitar demo or worktape.

Vocal harmony is important. Better sounding backing groups with a VH system much easier to set up and utilize... would be nice.

For my purposes, I could use a much smaller keyboard. 61 keys are not important to me. I play chords and let the style and multipads add the backing needed after carefully setting up the board and selecting the instrument voices, volumes of each, etc.

I then record "live" and seldom use tracks. I use earphones only during recording thus the built-in speaker system is a liability insofar as it becomes a cost driver for acquiring the machine.

I connect the keyboard directly to a digital recorder where I can optionally use tracks (or not, usually) and then I "port" the WAV file into a PC where the edits are done before the song is converted to an MP3 song or possibly a CD for demo purposes.

USB input and output is vital to me. The need for a good earphone jack in the front of the machine plus a USB port both front and back to allow USB sticks/memory devices to be attached is important. I avoid MIDI setups like the plague. Too complex and time consuming for me. I am a songwriter first and a "techie" only out of necessity... without many skills in that direction.

A hard drive "on board" would be nice to contain all the styles but an input/output capability (via USB) is important. That way, to reduce costs, I could use a stand-alone hard drive if Yamaha's Motherboard would support an external USB drive.

Naturally, if Yamaha can keep a "weather eye" out for newer musically oriented devices and apps to further enchance the "new type keyboard" that would be a real plus. I don't use an iPad yet but can see where some of the new apps have promise and would enhance song creation in conjunction with the keyboard.

An onboard style converter would be heavenly... allowing styles from other "boards" to be utilized.

An Onboard collection of MultiPads with versatile, melody following accompaniment options would also be a super companion feature.

Most of all, I need an inexpensive unit. There must be somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 songwriters in the USA alone and the pyramid of writers on the bottom level can "ill afford" to pay studios and session players to create demos of their work. Being able to create the entire song: lyric, melody, vocal and recording is a real plus. Unfortunately for Yamaha and the other Arranger producing keyboard manufacturers... Arrangers are relatively unknown in the USA. But that could quickly change if an extensive Youtube campaign were launched by Yamaha or it's competitors.

Finally, to keep me from having to hand-write the setup I have utilized for each song when I record and sing, it would be nice to have a printer port that would allow me to print the exact setup, volumes of each voice, master volume, vocal volume, Multi-pad volume... plus the name of each instrument, the tempo, transposition settings (sometimes I change key at the break) and other setup parameters. Then I could print the setup and name it and file it away in a notebook for this purpose. I often go back and re-cut a song after listening to the most recent creation. It's amazing how different a song can sound after being finalized than how it sounded to me the day before.

Thanks for any consideration you may be able to give to any or all my ideas. I'm certainly available if your design team needs a "guinea pig" or "sounding board" to bounce ideas around with.

Best of luck.

Dave Rice

http://ShowCaseYourMusic.com/DaveRice/