Hate to say it, but the lazy way seldom results in top quality results..! You and I both have similar opinions about most arranger music, and much of it derives from firstly the repetition problems (I’d fire a drummer that always played the same fill all the way through a song!), and secondly about the lack of voice leading (an arranger never knows the next chord until you play it!) and if you want to make music that sounds like it was made by musicians not machines, you HAVE to do what it takes to fix those issues, and that takes time and effort…

You can always make studio music building one track at a time, but as a solo producer, you never get that feeling of interacting doing that. That can often lead to a struggle playing parts that leave room for other musicians when those parts aren’t there when you first lay it down. This is where the basic arranger bed can get you into playing parts that work ‘within’ an arrangement.

But yes, on the whole, if I’m doing an entire track, an awful lot of the original rough is replaced or edited extensively. And that means recording with MIDI. Then you can do tricks like editing drum fills so no two are identical, or adding the odd ‘kick’ or some ghosting. And editing the bass line and guitars so there’s a certain degree of moving towards the next chord, or adjusting voicings if the part jumps around a bit too much.

A lot of the time, things like piano parts or strings, horns etc. simply need their MIDI part thrown into a much better VSTI and a little editing, but sometimes just simply redoing them gives you something that obviously feels less robotic.

There are times when the basic arranger rhythm section will suffice unedited, but it’s few and far between… When the goal is to make music that DOESN’T sound like a machine made it, there really are no shortcuts that involve a machine except just to give you a full sound to start your project off with.

Me, I love playing most of it or editing what needs to be edited. Who wants to let a machine have all the fun?! That’s not lazy, that’s simply denying yourself fun!