Same old story guy's, and it's been that way forever. Many people just don't want to change their way's. They have learned to do a particular acconmplishment in a certain way, and seeing their world slowly change right before their eye's, both frightens and challanges them. They become uncertain and weak, where they once had confidence, and strength. Many persons are for nothing and against everything. It takes a lot of courage to cope with the rapid technical advancements in music and all other fields this day and age. It's later than you think, and if you don't stay up to speed, you will soon be lost in the shuffel. Advise your teacher to try everything at least once as she (he) travels on this road of life.
Happy Holiday's----ARJ

Hi guys,
this is a very interesting topic, although in my opinion its real place should be the General Arranger Forum (and not a specialized Forum like this one).
I am not a pro myself, but I know quite a few of them; one of my friends composes jingles for TV commercials and he uses his arranger to build up a kind of "musical skeleton"; he then adds manually other tracks and nobody, listening to the final result, would be able to tell that he used just an arranger keyboard to lay down the whole arrangement. He uses to say that he would be much more expensive (and time consuming) to hire real musicians to lay down all the rhytm tracks.
The same goes for live performers; unless you are into hard rock or progressive jazz and perform always with at least a couple of musicians (i.e. drummer and bass player) you can save a lot of time and money playing with just your arranger keyboard in front of your audience; the quality of the final result will be up to you and to your musical/vocal abilities.
I tend to agree with Fran, Dave, Sami, Arno and Arthur on most things they wrote; in particular I think that using an arranger keyboard means "cheating" only if you use it to mask your (limited) musical skills, rather than a tool to extend your possibilities.
Friendly,
Andrea