No doubt that's true Donny...but the question seems to be, will Roland continue making TOTL arrangers...especially since the E-80 and G70 are no longer produced?

Ian

Ian just be patient Roland won't let us down
..G70/E80 are still awesome units in their own right & can make beautiful music in the hands of an experienced player.
Just wait & see is all I can say.

I'd be surprised if Roland abandoned a segment they utterly dominate in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

I predict they'll wind down their manufacturing presence in Italy, perhaps retaining R&D there, while tooling up for the next generation of E-series in China.

As an aside, and FWIW, an ex-colleague of mine who works for a large European Roland dealer reports they're still listing and selling E-80s, with no supply problems.

Does any one think for one second that if you had a hip-hop style comparable to a hip-hop song in 2009 that that style would be able to be use for more than one song?


The reason why arrangers work for the type of music they work for is that most songs in a particular genre work the same.
For example you can play a number of songs on a ballad style (Misty, Teach me tonight).
With Today’s hip-hop, To play an already existing song, you can probably only use one style to do so.
If modern styles were really needed for playing live, you would see a lot of persons playing Motif xs live or Korg M3.

Lets face it, to play an already exiting hip-hop song, people want to hear the original sounds that are in the song. Hence you have a DJ.
And a hiphop song today would be old news tomorrow.
Even Workstations are having a hard time keeping up with modern loops.

Agreed younger people do not buy or play Arrangers,They are stuck with the pre programmed (tame) loops which are goo for sing some modern "sounding" dance tunes like the Cupid Shuffle maybe. WS have far more flexibility and now can also be an arranger.

KIds want to CREATE not PLAYBACK. They want original loops not those found in a million other pre programmed keyboards. Every occasion I have I demo an arranger to a kid they ask "How do I create my own loops"
Now that I have a Motif I "get it"

The beats makes the Tyros appear like a PSR 313.
I send them to a WS. Case close,

I don't know about Asia and Middle East, but Roland certainly is not the dominant brand in Europe where it comes to arrangers.

------------------
- THE DUTCH KEYBOARD FORUM
http://www.keyboardforum.nl
Happy owner of a Roland E-80 V2

Well, they certainly have been far from dominating the arranger market here in Canada and also the USA.

Ian

So where is ROLANDs strenght is sales in the world?

Roland is not about arrangers only....

------------------
- THE DUTCH KEYBOARD FORUM
http://www.keyboardforum.nl
Happy owner of a Roland E-80 V2

Some time ago Roland had 90% of arrangers market, here in Brazil (E70,E86,E96,G800, G1000 times)
Today, Yamaha has the same 90%.

Chico