I think that the future for current organ/arrangers (Closed or Open) is bleak and they will most likely become extinct. (Youngsters just don’t want them)

The Organ keyboard/Single keyboard will however continue as controllers, with a high power computer/memory system inside (With full internet connectivity) combined with an iPhone/Touch docking station. (Competitors will no doubt get a look in in small numbers)

Users will then just pick the style and layout of keyboard/Organ they require, and then just download the Apps they wish to use. (Whether it is a Loop station, Arranger, Workstation etc.)

Downloading of Apps is so ingrained in the Youngsters of today that anything else will probably not be accepted by them. (Kids today want download what THEY want, not what the manufacture tells them they can have)

The above is purely my opinion, but after talking to many youngsters, it seems that this is what they want, and there is no chance that they would ever consider a Closed/Open keyboard/Organ that had anything other than the basics on it, so that they could add what they want.

Bill

You could very well be right, Abacus, but it does lead one to wonder; at what point does a kid stop relying on technology so much and actually sit down and learn to play. What kind of music will he be able to produce? Will that spell the end of classical music composition? Will the great mathematicians of the future be able to skip learning to add, subtract, multiply, and divide?

I know I'm old-fashioned and probably not able to think outside the box, but I still see the role of a musical instrument as being able to produce various sounds that we can manipulate to express certain emotions. The voice is one of those instruments, which is one reason why I hate vocoders.

It just seems to me that we are putting too much emphasis on the wrong thing. We're pushing our engineers and programmers when we should be pushing our musicians. We want more and easier ways to replicate someone else's ideas when we should be developing our own. As we all know, in sampling technology you need to start with a good sample to get superior results. Who is going to provide that 'source' music for the engineers and programmers to help you replicate?

Before we decide or speculate on what the future of arrangers will be, we should first decide what we want their ROLE to be in the future. THE FOLLOWING IS MY OPINION AND MY OPINION ONLY, BASED LARGELY ON WHAT I HAVE SAID ABOVE.

I think the future role of the arranger keyboard should be similar to what appears to be Roland's vision of the arranger's role in the (future) music scene. An affordable, easy-to-use, relatively good-sounding instrument, designed from the ground up for the HOME USER (GW8/PRELUDE). Synths/Workstations dominate the PROFESSIONAL studios and stages of this world with nary an arranger to be found. I know this, you know this, the manufacturers know this. More importantly, the KIDS know this. The Daytona 500 should never be run with cars driven by computers. Great ballets should never be performed by dancing robots or computer animation. A fine Stradivarius could never be mass produced. Some things need human fingers, toes, brains, emotions, to bring them into the realm of true artistry. Arranger keyboards may shine the light on someones artistry, but not yours. Just the opinion of someone who loves to PLAY with arranger keyboards but don't regard them as legitimate instruments WHEN USED IN THEIR NATIVE MODE (PLAYING STYLES).

chas

Abacus,

You are right ther'e far too complex, too time consuming, was it you who said you never stop learning with something like MS, well I have stopped learning. Doh! left myself wide open!

[This message has been edited by Tony Hughes (edited 03-28-2010).]

Well when you have some proponents of arrangers classify an arranger as content driven therein lies the problem.


If you say an arranger is all about the content, then you are saying it is a glorified Ipod or CD player. You are concentrating on what the instrument can do for you rather what you can do for the instrument.
If you think of an arranger as content driven, then it does not become a musical instrument but just another play back machine.


What open arrangers try to do is bring back the artistry in electronic music.
An electronic musical instrument is a bit different from a standard acoustic instrument. On an electronic instrument while some of the things you may have to do is none musical, it is still an art form since it is something you do to help your music to sound unique.

Quite frankly, even acoustic instruments have none musical things you can do to them to make them sound your own.
Take a drummer and an guitar player for example. Look at all the none musical things they do to their instruments to make them sound different.

With respect to keys, synthesizers have shown that other skills can be used to get different sounds.
Is subtractive synthesis just getting on the keyboard an playing? No. There is an art form that is involved in creating the right sound for you and making it work for your style of playing.

An open arranger is no different.
Is styled modification (changing sounds adjusting sounds playing with effects) musical?
Probably not. But it is an art form that helps the player be more unique and expressive in his or her playing.

It always baffles me why a person would want 1000 of styles and song specific styles for their arranger. It defeats the purpose of an arranger. If one needs songs specific styles, then midi files would be the way to go.

If people continue to advocate for the arranger to be an Ipod and demand content, (like what Yamaha arrangers are), then yes there is no future for arrangers as a legitimate musical instrument.
It would only lead to arrangers being an extension of a DJ machine.
Song specific content would be the order of the day. An it would include the actual audio from popular songs.

The art form of playing a song with your interpretation as a musician would be gone.

I still see a future for arrangers...

Overhere in Holland they are actually still popular by the youth, as they get their basic musical education on keyboards these days..

Same goes in Asia, but there they use Organs in schools.

I still see a future for the arrangers if only the arranger will be able to evolve... something like a mix between Karma and an arranger. If the arrangers don't evolve they will extinct as goes with all species...

So Arrangers need to addapt to the youth, they need to be innovative, and the music stations descibed by bill are just a form of innovation. There could be an arranger in the package... there could be not.

But the basic idea of arranger : adding a band to your lead imstrument. that follows your chords is just to good to ever let die.

Couldn't disagree more.
Open keyboards cannot be labelled as “Arrangers” for a start because that's only one function of an endless list of possibilities they can be used for. The way I see things going is that workstations will evolve into Open keyboards, and the arranger functions will make their way into an equivalent type Open product purely for the hardware controls and dedicated buttons.

There will still be dedicated closed workstations and arrangers, but they will survuve only as lower end models.



The name Organ will die, but controllers will become far more popular as more options like the Lionstrac Rack, Open Labs Sound Slate, V-Machine / V-Rack come on the market.



Agreed, and because of the open platform they have to run all the software on, you will see many of the big names in the business right now die off too as in the future they will have to compete with one guy sitting at home in his spare time writing VSTi's.

Look at Super Wave P8 for example. It's one of those DIY Synth Edt creations that was probably knocked together in a few weeks of spare time and it's one of the most popular free VSTi's on the face of the planet.



As with everything I said about, it's only my opinion.

I just think the days of having incremental upgrades is no longer good enough. People want more. The limitations in workstations and arrangers right now is totally unacceptable considering the technology available. Think about it, the Audya with it's 64MB of RAM for example, and me loading sound over 1GB in size into my little V-Machine and even more into the Meidastation.

Regards
James

The problem lies in music EDUCATION. This is being decimated in the US, programs are under stress in many other countries, too. While the technology marches on, and greater and greater power to make incredible music rests in the hands of people that need less and less money to get these tools, unfortunately, due to teaching programs becoming close to extinct, making music on a computer or open keyboard is becoming little more than manipulating what other, more skilled players have already DONE.

They aren't making the music themselves, they are manipulating loops of REAL musicians, they are creating 'mash-ups' and calling it 'creativity', they are making music where possibly up to 75% of it or more wasn't performed by themselves. They think that holding down one finger, while a loop plays, and twiddling a filter cutoff is 'playing music'.

Now, if arrangers are being used to teach music in Europe, you can hardly blame them... There are many even HERE that think that holding down ONE finger while the machine plays 90% of what anyone hears is 'making music', too. But unless you COULD play all those parts yourself if you HAD to, you still aren't 'playing' music. You are 'triggering' music that someone else played...

Maybe we don't have as much to learn from the kids as we think we do..?

Overhere in Holland the public musicall education is partly funded by the government and in general viewed up on as a wise investment.

Parrents get to choose what instrument their children learn and keyboard lessons are very popular because of the versatallity of the instruemnts and the rather low prices of the instruments combined with the quick results.

Still i think its a pitty that most people overher base their opinions onn the US market... which is allready nonexcistent for Arrangers.

Where US is Synth country, there Europe is arranger country and Asia is Organ country.

Piano's are equally popular everywhere...


But everyone must agree with me that arranger keyboards are the ultimate instrument for children to get their basic music lessons, and that is the reason that arrangers will survive.

And i disagree with Diki's opnion about what is music making?.... Young people like Tiesto (Deejay) make great music without being able to even play an instrument..

As long as it triggers emotions, its music and wether its the prehistorical african drums or a computer creating it... that does not matter to me.

[This message has been edited by Bachus (edited 03-28-2010).]

If you can't read music or know what notes the keys on a keyboard represent and how to play a bass and melody line, then I don't know how you can call yourself a musician.

These are pretty basic concepts for creating music and if you can't do that then you will never create music of your own.