cheating other musicians and arrangers out of some money!!

I like that I can have and "hire" an arranger on call to help me flesh out a few songs. And that "arranger" will bring excellent musicians with him who KNOW how to play a proper bass line in a specific style of music and complex drum rhythms. Not to mention some guitar parts. Country acts use different arrangers and players than pop acts for a reason.

For me its about the song. The melody and the words. I will write them and use the arranger to package them...Like most singer songwriters do anyway on a much larger scale.

Neil Diamond ,Billy Joel, Kenny Loggins don't write the horn parts or even play them, or the orchestration. The hire a bass player to do what he does best and a drummer et al All to package and "gift wrap" their song into something more than melody and lyric.

Thats why I would never consider an Arranger "cheating" and more than I would consider James Taylor "cheating" because he does not write and play every part on his recordings or the myriad of other singer songwriters in history who have done the same.

For someone like me with very limited chops and a very good depth of theory, sequencing, digital recording and now arrangers have been the only thing that has kept me interested.........Albeit I was a much better player technically when I HAD to play in real time at perfect tempo. Now I have more time to create and don't have to worry about physical limitations and the time I would have had to put in to overcome them. As well I can get around the keyboard good enough for live situations (as long as I make careful selections, LOL) Thank God the most popular music is not that difficult. The record buying Public have made "simple" the biggest hits.

Record at 90BPM play back at 120 LOL. Now THAT'S cheating. But the result is the same on a CD anyway.

"Cheating", according to Webster:
transitive verb
1: to deprive of something valuable by the use of deceit or fraud
2: to influence or lead by deceit, trick, or artifice
3: to elude or thwart by or as if by outwitting.

If you aren't doing any of the above...then you aren't cheating.

Ian

Is it Groundhog Day AGAIN...?