Yes, I'd wouldn't be performing either, Gary...at least, not in the same way.

I do love to play solo piano, but I wouldn't want to do it as a job.

Arrangers do make playing fun..that's why it's called "playing".

Workstations are just too damn tedious for me.

Ian

Hi Ian,
actually PG must have a lot of faith in their program, they currently don't have a demo version because of the huge audio file library, they gave a 30 day money back guarantee instead.
( don't know if there's any fine print involved haahaa )
http://www.pgmusic.com/salesfaq1.htm#3

It together with Real Band sequencer is a good combination. ( they're both part of the same package).
Real Band is similar to their Powertracks sequencer, with one big exception, Real Band can generate a BIAB style track ( based on the song's chord progression) wheras Powertracks can't.
In short, you could actually load in a midifile, ( it will create a chord track if the midifile hasn't got one ). Then if you wanted to replace just say a guitar track, with a Real Track audio file, you choose the one you want, press generate, and it creates a guitar part, based on the chords in your chord track. You could replace drums or bass or anything, provided you find one that suits of course.

From reading some of the comments, the guys create the song in Band in a Box ( ie just type in chord progression , pick style parts etc , then load it into Real Band for fine tuning, then you can save it as an mp3.

As you said, the one big draw back is it can't be played in realtime, but, playing along to a backing track ( music minus one, I think Scott called it) is fun also.



I'm much the same, Rikki...I can use a workstation, but, I really wouldn't want to.

I used one of the very first versions of Band In The Box, many years ago when working in Newfoundland...it was impressive back then, and now, it is a real mind-blowing program.

Only thing is it's not in real time, but it is still a lot more fun than a workstation...they are boring to me, and as you say, I'm not that creative with them either. Plus, in my case, I'm very lazy as well.

After my year's financial check-up, I may invest in the latest BIAB.

I've read your glowing appreciation of it, and agree wholeheartedly.

Ian

[/quote]

Thanks again, Rikki...it's looking even more interesting now...it is, and was, a very clever program.

The BIAB inventor/programmer was a dentist. Cool!

Ian

Hi Mike,
are you sure? My PA800 has a sampler. Not part of the main manual. Sound editing, sampling etc has it's own manual which was on the rom disk. Wouldn't be surprised if some of the owners weren't even aware of it.

Sort of be a step backwards if they've dropped the sampler on the PA3X.

Hi Ian,
now that's interesting.

Hope he was paying more attention to his patients than one of ours was.
Big headline yesterday " Man swallows dentist's drill " I was too squeamish to read further. eek!

Buddy of mine had problems with his teeth...went to the Dentist.

He said: Doctor, I have yellow teeth, what do I do?

Dentist: Wear a brown tie! Yuk yuk!


Ian

Is this the guy?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYzuchDBvCs
DonM

Although not a workstation, maybe I'd go back to a Hammond...the XK3 perhaps?

Don, that was Tim Conway's funniest sketch...a true comic genius.

Good find.

Ian

The thing about an onboard sampler is, nowadays, few actually USE the sampler as a 'sampler'. Few record the sounds using the sampler any more. It's so much easier and more convenient to use a digital recorder, DAW, field recorder, whatever, and then fly the samples into the keyboard AFTER you have done your layout and even maybe some basic programming and looping them in a nice, big-screened computer.

All a sampler on an arranger really needs to do, for probably about 99% of us here, is load in sounds the arranger doesn't already have. This is where the flexibility of access to different multisample formats is critically important. Yamaha's loses a LOT of it's usefulness by arbitrarily restricting its multisample import to its own proprietary (and somewhat underwhelmingly supported) format, ignoring Akai, Soundfont, and GIGA formats.

Korg improve a bit by adding Akai, though. With sampler RAM being at a premium, those older Akai libraries are our best bet for fitting as many good sounds in as we can (they used to have a 32MB limit on RAM in older Akai's, so sound design was RAM efficient, usually), and this format should be on as a minimum, IMO.

But we have gone beyond the old school sampling in the sampler itself for most practical purposes.