Hi Captain,

Wereabouts are you located?

Danny

I have a differnt 'take' on the lack of arranger sales in the USA.

The "pro Yamaha" instruments came first to the USA and were very successful (DX7, etc).

When the arrangers first arrived, they were, correctly, viewed as consumer 'toys' and marketed only thru mass retailers.

Later, when the arrangers became serious instruments, the pro outlets did not offer then. Why, I do not know. But perhaps their earlier reputation, or perhaps inter-company competition, was a factor. The fact is that there is minimal distribution for these instrument in the USA. In my view, that is the major factor for the relatively poor showing in the USA. Few people will spend thousands for an instrument that they can not touch!

Just my guess...

Regards,

Michael

I think you are correct with that being one of the reasons for a lack of arranger sales in the USA.

And it’s the chicken and the egg which one comes first story.
Arranger manufacturers are reluctant to put a good amount of arrangers in the distribution chain if they don’t think there is a sizeable market to distribute it to. On the other hand, the market (most keyboard players and consumers) would not want to buy an arranger if it is not readily available to try out (in the distribution chain) especially if they have to spend a lot of money.

I think until manufacturers look at arrangers as serious professional instruments, and start making them and marketing them as such; Until arranger manufacturers start marketing arrangers to professional musicians; until seasoned arranger users demand from arranger manufactures a professional sounding and looking arranger and settle for nothing less; arranger keyboards will always be a small part of the keyboard market.

I'm sure that the Geneyses is a great keyboard. The fact that we cannot find any at many dealerships in the States is a minus, plus who fixes the keyboard when it conks out?. Also, who pays for the hernia operation after carrying this thing around to gigs? Just a thought. Bob L

I've run into that same brick wall that Pianodano has in the studio. The Tyros may very well be a "professional" OMB "entertainer's" keyboard but it certainly is NOT a "professional" studio keyboard.

You can't even turn off "Local" with a toggle that stays off or on until you go turn it the other way. You have to go into a screen and turn off seven things with button pushes and if you leave that screen they immediately go back on! You can save it as a user template but then you have to call it up from the Tyros and not the software sequencer. If you try to call up the panel voices from a computer sequencer you don't get the DSP included with the voice! Obviously there was absolutely NO thought given to the possibility of using the Tyros in a recording studio other than for recording audio out of the stereo ports and that possibility was simply built in and not thought out as such.

I've pretty much decided to change direction. I'll keep the Tyros but I won't be buying any new arranger keyboard. Instead I'm going to buy a CME-UF7 controller keyboard with 76 keys and 9 assignable sliders and 8 assignable knobs and then go with the Tyros and Fantom XR module as sound modules and anything else will come as softsynths and VSTi's because my main use is in the studio.

With my outside paying job as a church organist, the church furnishes the organ and I don't have to carry anything around.

In reality I'm moving in a different direction anyway. I've now got GPO and EWQL Silver Orchestra, plus about 4 different books on the art of orchestration and I'm starting to study that with the idea of learning to do serious orchestration mockups so that someday I can orchestra my own work.

I have to admit I'm having a lot of fun learning all this new stuff, along with some temporary frustrations. Now that I've decided to move to Cubase SX-3 from Sonar 4PE that's also settled some things down and now it's "off to follow the yellow brick road", LOL.

Tom

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Bigger is not always better

Many reasons(why less arranger market in US)


It's not just EU,it's the rest of the world)asia or south america) vs US.

reason?

simple.

Compare to the rest of the world we have more LIVE music with LIVE bands.(other countries have their LIVE music with their traditional instruments) unless it's their pop or pop orientated music(in a small bar situation - an arranger took over)where in US you can still hire 3-4 piece live band relatively cheap .

The Audience - more arranger bar going people(at night) are also younger than in US / expect live music in the place(where arrangers comes - (arrangers there are also dance machines too-all newest hit dance songs are written and played in bars).

they still have younger crowd who loves harder rock live music (where in US more younger crowd is into -Hip hop or DJ).


another thing

prices of the instruments -

do you notice that for gtr related products,it's THE CHEAPEST in US. 99$ simple Digitech pedal is 99 pounds(149$) in UK and so on.(think Gas prices-it's the tax-3$ now in US,6-7$ in EU(yes both in UK or Germany).


US vs rest of the world

even after Korea or now China -overseas gtr production-
the standard instrument for pro live band is always a US strat ,LP or high end other guitars which relatively is more expensive for the rest of the world(yeah you can buy a US strat with a month's pay here but not so in the rest of the world).(I'm talking about pop orientated music which has the largest market in every country.(not hard rock or havier stuff where EU still have the edge over US as live bands.)

another reason(for Bands)- Transportation - since almost everyone has cars in US so lugging and transporting your gear (KB or GTR equipment) is less painful than getting a cab.


And not but the least - the biggest market of Western music(not just country music) - ie blues,jazz,country etc music is still in good old USA where you have tons of bands making tons of original music with LIVE bands.that's not the same with EU(compare the population too) or rest of the world.

I still love to see many LIVE bands with original music in this good old US of A and still enjoy to play and make money with my arranger/ and play gtr in a live band.

peace.




[This message has been edited by jamman (edited 08-28-2005).]

Tom, best of luck and fun on your new path. You will never look back. The quality of your outputs will be worth it.

Since Generalmusic USA took over the North American distribution of all GEM products several years ago, many new GEM dealers have come on board. A large number of these dealers focus on our home products, I.E. RP700, RP800 and Genesys Ensemble, but many of these dealers also stock the Genesys w/speakers. This is the same instrument as the Genesys Pro but with internal amplification. So putting you hands on a Genesys is not necessarily that hard.

As for service, we have service centers all over the US. In most cases, these are the SAME service centers that supply service to all of the other brands as well!

The Genesys Pro S is 41 lbs. “?” I suppose if we made the case out of plastic, took the lead weights out of the full size keys, removed the CD burner and internal hard drive, and maybe replaced the floppy disk drive with an SD card reader…………… on second thought, I think we’ll just leave it as is.



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Wm. David McMahan
Nat'l Product and Support Manager
Generalmusic USA
GEM Community Forums

[This message has been edited by WDMcM (edited 08-28-2005).]

Regarding the seemingly high prices of pro arranger keyboards;

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is the coast of manufacturing. I am not just referring to the hardware manufacturing, but also the software design portion of manufacturing.

An arranger keyboard shares a lot with what is commonly known as a workstation keyboard. It has keys, wave tables, knobs and sliders, display, etc. and also the software to make all of that function. But in addition to those things, the arranger instrument also has additional hardware in the way of arranger control buttons, sliders, etc. not to mention the styles themselves.

Anyone who has created their own style "from scratch" realizes just how much time and hard work it takes in coming up with a good usable style that will sound right no matter what chords are used to trigger that style. And since most arranger instruments these days have over 200 internal styles on-board, that means many hours of work to put the styles together.

It has been mentioned in other posts within this thread that manufacturers need to approach high-end arrangers as professional instruments. What about the retail outlets? In my position, I travel the US providing product training to digital keyboard dealers, both home and pro stores. The high-end arranger keyboards are typically displayed in among the rest of the “lower priced, easy play, one finger chord, yes your 4 year old can learn to become a concert pianist with this instrument” type keyboards. Store employees need to become more familiar with the true capabilities of the pro level arranger/workstations so they can better serve their customers.

And the current professional consumers of high-end arranger instruments need to realize that as long as comments like “the price to too much” or “it is too heavy” etc. are being tossed around, then many of the so-called professional level arrangers will continue to be made out of plastic, with cheap keys and controls, poor MIDI implementation, etc.

BTW: The Genesys is an all metal chassis with wood side panels. It uses a high quality keybed featuring full length and width keys with weights added to the underside of each key to provide a more solid and playable keyboard. The 32 track sequencer features full editing capabilities, much of which you would expect on a computer based sequencer program. The MIDI implementation goes beyond many of the workstation keyboards on the market. The point is the basis of the Genesys has grown from professional synthesizer/workstation instruments versus being based on an upgraded version of those “lower priced, easy play, one finger chord, yes your 4 year old can learn to become a concert pianist with this instrument” type fun machines of the past that many other products have been based.


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Wm. David McMahan
Nat'l Product and Support Manager
Generalmusic USA
GEM Community Forums

[This message has been edited by WDMcM (edited 08-28-2005).]

I had to buy mine without ever seeing one. No one in my region had it in stock way back when and I have yet to ever see one in a store in a area of the country with over 2 million people.

Personally, I had a very long discussion with a Yamaha rep over the telephone regarding the then top of the line 9000. I was told that the Tyros would be released within a few months and that Tyros would be far superior and have everything someone performing or working in studios would need and it would include all of Yamahas keyboard making technology. (I paraphase but it was definitely along those lines). Yeah right.

Danny