That was pretty sad. All I mostly here is drum patterns, yes they change, yes a little accompamyment , but nothing like an arranger as I know it. Maybe good on stage to augment a band performance (if you could even hear it) but not for one man band full performance.

Could you do it, sure, a talented musician can just use a piano, maybe with a PC on the side with Midi's or MP3's.

Wouldn't work for what I want...and I have the wonderful Kurzweil K2600 for that kind of playing if I want. It has drum sequence, arp, full PRO level 16 trk sequencer and awesome sounds.

And ask yourself this...out of the box...does it have content to just set down and pay thousands of songs with full auto accomanyment...with a push of a button or music finder selection (songbook in my case)NOT. Just to figure out which patterns to use & which ones fit a song...would be very time consuming.

Todays WS's have some arranger functions and todays arrangers have some WS fuctions.

But they are two different animals dsigned for different purposes.
Who knows some day there may be combined...the best of both worlds..it would be nice but don't count on it in our lifetime.

Lee S.

oh for goodness sake lee !! Noone is saying it is EXACTLY like an arranger !!! How many times does that have to be said ?????

It could not replace a fully featured arranger in its current form.But it does have arranger features, drum fills, styles of increasing and decreasing complecity that follow chord progressions as you have just seen. Is that clear enough ??? Or did you not see that ???? I almost think that blindness is catching ha ha :-) (i am just kidding with you Leeboy , dont be offended)

I dont know how old you are or how long you are intending to live but i gaurantee you that fully featured arranger functions or their equivalent will appear on workstations in my life time and the profit driven separation between arranger keyboards and workstation will disappear. In fact there is a song book feature on th XF but it is not desribed in those terms it...oh never mind !!!

You are right though , it was not a great presentation. Not quite sure if yamaha are willing to let the lucrative arranger market die just yet. But that market will die eventually . There are only so many times that the current owners of yamaha arrangers will be prepared to buy the mext arranger model that contains 90% of the same features as the last arranger model. That can be said for their workstations too as the XF is a minor incremental advance on the XS. However workstation owners are continually coming into the market as more young people tend to buy them and upgrade as new models come out.

I suspect (dont know for certain) that the arranger market is a shrinking one as us more mature buyers get older and not enough younger ones come into the market to replace us and purchase new arrangers. For example ,the demise of top arrangers from manufacturers such as roland ,Gem,kawai,casio and quite possibly in the future ketron.

Dont look for a lot of updates for your audya , it took Ketron nearly 4 years to complete the Audya from the time they anounced it. They will need to sell more and bring out new models in the future to make profit. Free updates dont make good business sense to a small company like Ketron.

But thats another topic.

Thanks for engaging in the discussion.


[This message has been edited by spalding1968 (edited 09-10-2010).]

[This message has been edited by spalding1968 (edited 09-10-2010).]

Unbelievable!! So because the XF has less arranger tracks than today’s arranger means it does not play styles?
There have been demos and written explanation about the XF and XS using styles and some people choose not to get it.

Whether it has a song book or music finder feature is completely irrelevant. When arrangers of yesterday did not have song book and music finder features did they still not play styles.

But then again I should not be surprised with people not understanding what is an arranger. A while back I had asked a question what is an arranger and gave different instruments and ask why and why not those instruments are arrangers. And no one appeared to be able to articulate what is an arranger.

One thing you have forgotten, maybe?
Arrangers are played by MANY older people and just folks of all ages that want to play Home On The Range! They do not want or could grasp any of the complex features, programming and learning curve of a Motif XF, Kurzweil PC3K etc.

The arranger is here to stay.
If you are heavy tech. and PRO player..just move on to a Motif XF..leave behind the true style playing machines. I think the home keyboard is very well received?

When refering to styles, it would be better to call it something else...AH...Yamaha did...Patterns, Sections etc. So did Kurzweil and Korg. Actually I think in the PRO board market Karma is very creative. One of my close friends has a M3 and the Karma is pretty cool. But there is a learning curve.

Remember there is 2 Lee's on here. I am Lee S. not Leezone.

Lee S.

You can say it as many times as you want, but the WS does NOT have fills like an arranger. In an arranger, you hit for the fill any time you want it, and it drops in, in perfect sync with the beat...

On a loopstation, you HAVE to call the fill up a bar in advance, it takes a FULL bar (or whatever length it is) to play, you can't call the fill up on beats 2 or 3 to make a pickup out of a full fill. You want a pickup, you have to program it up in advance.

Just this ONE glaring omission on contemporary arranger's current capabilities is enough to cripple the WS as a live performance tool. Can you play music with it? Of course. Can you do what YOU want to do, when you want to do it? Not a chance.

Loopstations are VERY good at doing music built completely around the loops. Once you decide to go with what they do, rather than what you might WANT to do, they are fine. But, personally, I prefer a machine that does what I want it to do, when I want it to do it, and with a minimum of interruption to my playing. Making the triggering of loops as complicated as a WS makes it is all well and good for the guys you see hardly PLAYING anything, choosing to make their creative input the controlling of the loops (more DJ-ing than playing, IMO), but if you want to PLAY, and don't want a machine to dictate to you what you can and can't do (and when you can and can't do it), these loop playing WS's are a VERY poor substitute for an arranger.

Once again, I REALLY encourage you to actually try this stuff for yourself in a live situation BEFORE you start to make judgments about it. It SEEMS like it (the WS) ought to be able to be an adequate substitute for an arranger, but I have actually tried (and several others here, too) and I find it somewhat insulting to hear our actual practical experienced dismissed so casually, by someone that it is utterly obvious they have never actually tried it themselves...

The devil is in the details. To be honest, you could take a first generation arranger and make music. And it would STILL probably be easier than trying to play live on a WS with it doing chord following accompaniment. Twenty years ago, with sufficient time, I could do home production music that comes fairly close to what I can do now... but it got a LOT easier, so I don't use the gear from twenty years ago. And modern WS's are about twenty years old in their chord following and live accompaniment generation capabilities. So yes, you CAN use them. But WHY..?!

Take a MoXS to a gig before you tell us how easy it all is, eh? You know, like some of us already HAVE

i give up with you dikki . My brother has a motif XS. I play his.

You put up too many straw man arguments and i have no burning desire to debate with you .

In your zeal did you not see me say this to Leeboy

'It could not replace a fully featured arranger in its current form.But it does have arranger features, drum fills, styles of increasing and decreasing complecity that follow chord progressions as you have just seen. Is that clear enough ??? Or did you not see that ???? I almost think that blindness is catching ha ha :-) (i am just kidding with you Leeboy , dont be offended'

If you think i have insulted your experience with the XS then sorry. That was not my intention but never mind. We are all big boys here i hope.

Anyway its late and i have lots to do. Have a great weekend genuinely.

Worth



[This message has been edited by spalding1968 (edited 09-11-2010).]

No one ever said the XS is a perfect arranger.
And it is incorrect to say that styles would be equivalent to Patterns and sections on the XS.
You do not have to go in the pattern mode on the XS to play styles.

And remember all an arranger is a loop station customized for live band like playing.

If you could have played an arranger professionally 15 years ago you can do it on a XS with no problem and have much better sounds doing it.
This is not just theory but from actual experience playing a lounge gig in arranger/performance mode on the xs.

"Is that close enough?"...

Sorry, guys. NO.

And you may have PLAYED your brother's. Have YOU tried to gig with it? Big difference, IMO.

Look, we can go round all day long, but if your sole point is to say that, as long as you work within the drastic limitations that WS impose, OK, you CAN use a WS to 'sort of' substitute for an arranger... But WHY? Even YOU don't have one or use it that way, live. You've got more sense than to do that, why criticize the rest of us for having the sense not to use one, either?

When you give up on your arranger, and gig solely on a WS, come back here and tell us how good it is. Until then...

i cant tell if your comments are geared to me or not Diki as they bear no relation to anything i have said. You have created these straw man arguments that i never made . I dont recall stating that the XS or XF could substitute an arranger . Do you ? I know i said that it could be used as an arranger and posted a demonstration to illustrate the point. I thought the clip was quite arrangersque but obviously not in your eyes. I thought the clip was pretty clear whatever the limitation. I dont recall critiscing anyone for not using the XS XF as an arranger , this is news to me . But i guess that it must have said it somewhere. When i started this thread i mentioned that my next arranger is likely to be a motif but i had not finished with my PA1X yet. But in your eyes i guess that might have meant that my next arranger purchase WILL be a motif and that it WILL replace my PA1X.

I am sure you would not put words in my mouth just to support your points......

Thats why there comes a time where i have to just let stuff go .

Its nothing personal but when you get into your zone you see stuff that isnt there (i am sure you really believe what you are seeing) and cant see stuff that is there .

I am done with this one but thanks for the polite debate. Two people can disagree without getting their knickers twisted :-)



[This message has been edited by spalding1968 (edited 09-12-2010).]

If you (the both of you) don't want to be refuted, don't post stuff like this...

Look, I guess as long as YOU proffer the definition of 'arranger', you can make it anything you want, and no-one else is right, are they?

But look at the response from EVERYONE on this thread other than you and to the genesys (I guess it's simply more FUN to pretend that this argument is solely between you and me, but aren't you insulting everyone else ignoring THEIR refutation of your points, aren't you? ), and you can see much more of a consensus...

Just because the XS/F offers primitive chord following abilities similar to a twenty year old arranger doesn't make it one. Any more than the primitive WS capabilities in a modern arranger makes it a proper WS. Who, in their right minds, wants a WS as 'powerful' as an 01w? In TODAY'S environment?

You offer a FAR too narrow definition of 'arranger', simply to try and make your point. But even that twenty year old arranger had capabilities FAR beyond the latest XF. Maybe if the XF did EVERYTHING the prehistoric arranger did, you MIGHT be able to call it an arranger. But modern arrangers have audio capabilities and samplers equivalent to a WS from say fifteen years ago... Doesn't make THEM real WS's in any sense of the word.

If the XF was released fifteen years ago, no-one even THEN would have called it an 'arranger'. Why you choose to do so now is no more correct. My K2500 has had chord following abilities for over ten years. That didn't even REMOTELY turn it into an arranger!

I guess, if you choose to make the definition of a product SO broad, almost anything can be CALLED an arranger... An old home organ with the most primitive of auto-accompaniment should be called an 'arranger', then, I guess. Or the first monophonic synth with an arpeggiator hooked up... That's an arranger, too.

By YOUR definition.