As some of you know, I've been involved in a lively discussion over the merits of arrangers over at the Music Player forums.

Keyboard's Technical Editor, Stephen Fortner, replied to some of the posts concerning arrangers, and I thought I would crosspost his post here because its has some info about an upcoming Keyboard Magazine arranger roundup:

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First, a clarification. Soundscape posted:

(regarding the Tyros 2) "Well, what's the actual technology? Recording of multiple articulations isn't really any technology per se, it's just multiple samples. So the real technology must be in the way the samples and/or programming is triggered, e.g., legato 'lead' playing leads to certain samples being triggered and played in a certain way (monophonically?), etc.? Now I'm not saying this isn't a good thing, but it seems more of evolutionary than revolutionary."

Yep, I did say "revolution" in the Jan. '06 review of the Tyros2. What struck me as revolutionary about it was this: I play and phrase like a keyboard player, and we all know this can introduce a certain amount of inauthenticity when playing, say, a brass, woodwind, bowed, or plucked sound, even if the sample quality is excellent. The Super Articulation voices on the T2, while they weren't perfect and didn't do exactly what an accomplished player on one of those instruments would, always did something tasteful. It always made a "keyboardistic" run sound a helluva lot more like the real instrument than I'm used to being able to pull off in real time on a pro workstation like a Motif, Triton, etc.

There are a few other ways I know to get this level of realism in your transitions between notes: You can go the Gigastudio route and program certain keys to switch articulations, but you still have to do the switching yourself. The T2 simply follows your playing and relates it to the instrument you have dialed up. A couple of more recent pieces of software do so, as well, Synful Orchestra and DVZ Realtime Orchestrator. Though I've seen NAMM demos of both, I've not yet tested either at length. Though I suspect they'll go deeper than the T2, I can't imagine they'd be as easy to integrate into a live performance context.

Bottom line: On the T2, you can dial up a sax, play like a keyboardist, and not hear most of the auditory cues that make us go "That cheesehead is playing sax on a keyboard!" I think that, in the context of hardware you'd take to a gig, that IS pretty revolutionary.

On to a related subject. It's timely that we're once again discussing arrangers, because in an upcoming issue (the plan is currently March), we're gonna do our biggest roundup of them ever. I have a bunch of stuff here already, and more coming: Korg PA series, the new Roland E80, Yamaha PSR-3000 and some of the more entry-level PSR line, Generalmusic Genesys Pro, and yes people, I AM getting the honkin', Linux-based, Lionstracs Mediastation in here.

So we'll really want to hear from veteran arranger users like The Pro about what they do and don't like about their current setups, what they wish arrangers were better at, and what they do with them in live performance.

This is a very quick thought, but one thing that strikes me as valuable about them is that for some audiences, certain sonic cues are as much a part of a song as the melody - that pan flute or synth sweep or porn-movie wah-wah guitar - and an arranger offers a way to combine that experience with seeing a live performer, which vibes a room in a way that pre-recorded music does not.

OTOH, there's nothing quite like hearing a really gifted pianist BE the "arranger." A few NAMM shows ago, a company that restored grand pianos was showing off their best specimens in my hotel lobby (it was the Crowne Plaza that year, IIRC), and Wayne Linsey (Google it) suddenly sat down at one and threw down the most amazing, jazz-voicing-rich rendition of "If I Only Had a Brain." Totally simple song, but Wayne made it sound like - gosh, George Shearing, maybe.

If I read Dave Horne's perennial message right, it's that we should be wary of things that cause us to lose touch with THAT, or to take some more technologically-driven experience as our example of what music is all about. And it's a good message. I find myself constantly vacillating between that view and the view that if it weren't for technology - if the piano were the only front door - a lot of people wouldn't try to make music at all, but stick with more passive forms of entertainment.

With a blingy, blinking-light keyboard, there's a greater chance that someone who'd never otherwise see themselves at a musical instrument might get seduced, might eventually wonder how the darned machine is doing it all, follow the bouncing ball on a scrolling display of sheet music, and wind up playing the notes him- or herself at some point.

There are really two different debates here. One is about learning or performing music "the right way" vs doing it with technological shortcuts; the other is about doing music with shortcuts vs not getting into it at all. So are arrangers forces of musical democracy, or agents for the SysEx of Evil?

We report, you decide. [Big Grin]

Yes , I already get this message too...
Monday we will shipping to Stephen J.Fortner one Mediastation X-76 pro too.

This MS will be full expanded with a lot of VST plugins and KORE Linux included.
cheers

Well, all I can say is that workstations (the darlings of Keyboard Magazine) are in no way any LESS a technologically driven form of instrument than the arranger. The pitfalls of allowing them to drive us, rather than the other way round are no less.

If the ability to sit down at a piano and play unaccompanied is the criteria for good musicianship, both workstation and arranger allow exactly the same experience. If you would like a rhythm section to follow your improvisation, well, forget the workstation!

Nowadays, the primary difference between arrangers and workstations seems to be in the basic sound-set, with most modern arrangers having a far less contemporary, but far more utilitarian choice of basic patches, and the depth of editing they allow.

This gap is continually getting smaller. Hopefully, with the emergence of the all-software keyboards like Lionstracs, the big boys will FINALLY allow the true convergence of workstation and arranger, rather than the arbitrary crippling of workstation features in arrangers to avoid scavenging their own sales.

Personally, when faced with a gig of unknown needs, I would MUCH rather take my G70 than my Triton or K2500, knowing it will be MUCH simpler to call the right sounds and effects to a split or layer than any workstation. In the studio, they all have their sound, and their place, but live, top-end arrangers are MUCH easier to gig with.... even if you DON'T use the arranger section!

I'm waiting for the Big MERGER>>>>>

SYNTHWORKSTATION/ARRANGER