This is why everyone that composes music should have an arranger.... its so easy to try out new things on the fly....

What some people might fail to recognize, is that these so called "easy play" features (that make amateur or less skillful players allegedly sound wonderful) on an arranger offer the advanced player even more scope than what could be found on a workstation or organ based instrument.

One can also plug bass pedals in an arranger and forgo some, or all, of the auto features, or mix in whatever amount the player desires. It's easy, as Jimlaing has showed us, to attach another keyboard to give further potential during live, or recorded, play.

Like any other musical instrument (organ, piano, guitar), the potential of the arranger keyboard is only limited by the talent or creativity of the player...witness advanced musicians like Peter Baartmann, Marty Harris, or our own Telmo, Tostie, Jim and Rico and how they exploit so called "easy play" features to their advantage.

There are lots of mediocre piano and organ players for every advanced player, and it's no different when it applies to arranger keyboards. For every critic who thinks a player using auto play features is somehow "cheating", there are many excellent players (as mentioned above) who creatively apply such attributes to make incredibly listenable music.

As I said earlier, I feel that arranger manufacturers are burning the midnight oil trying to come up with new features to make the arranger more playable to the beginner, and more exploitable to the advanced player.

Time will tell what's on the way, but it sure will be interesting to see what comes along.

Ian

You can do pretty much anything you want with any keyboard, however it is easier if you use a keyboard that is designed for the job in hand, hence the different groups.

Arrangers are designed for the home player and thus the manufacture has set everything up to make this simple.

Workstations are designed for production and live band play, which means having everything setup (As in an arranger) is a hindrance not an asset.

Combining the 2 would be great, but no pro musician is going to pay arranger prices for stuff they will hardly ever use, and home players usually complain at why they should pay for all the in depth editing and production (Workstation) software that they don’t understand.

This is the reason manufactures produce 2 separate lines, as otherwise they would lose sales all round.

Adding a pedalboard to an arranger has been common in Europe for years, as it gets rid of the boring & repetitive bass lines that arranges produce, (A lot of manufactures support team produce USB sticks that users can purchase to set up the arranger for a pedalboard with no setup required) over the last couple or 3 years adding a second keyboard has also started to become common. (They are bought mainly by those who used to buy organs but have now moved over to arrangers, but after a time finds the flexibility of the arranger to be too limited compared to organ, but still want all the arranger features)

Bill

...But here's the thing. With all the features and potential attributed to the Arranger, why hasn't it taken the keyboard world by storm. Even after at least ten years of modern, capable arranger keyboards, they still haven't been able to make any kind of meaningful inroads into overall electronic keyboard sales. According to it's small but devoted following, anything any other keyboard can do, Arrangers can do as well or better, and yet.......

Apparently Donny really enjoys being the bearer of bad news and sad tidings, but in this instance he's probably correct in predicting the gradual downslide and eventual demise of the arranger keyboard (in it's present form). There are already, and will continue to be, easier and cheaper ways to accomplish what arrangers can do. For (most of) today's audiences, only the extreme optics of a live band or the extreme audio of today's DJ's, will do. As Donny pointed out (and like it or not), in these situations, a OMB with an Arranger KB just won't cut it.

But what is the REAL reason Arrangers never really penetrated the market (at least, the PRO market) and seems destined for extinction? One word...STIGMA!!! This single thing has kept more than one good product from achieving market success. You can make all the arguments you want about it's professional features, it's stellar audio qualities, it's flexibility and ease of use, ect., ect., ad nauseum, but if most musicians and the general public still consider it an expensive 'toy', it will never achieve the kind of legitimacy that will make it acceptable in the marketplace.

As Tony said, when he goes out to be entertained, he wants to hear 'live' musicians, and I feel the same way. But until the general public reverses it's current trend and starts feeling the same way, the DJ's and KJ's will continue to rule (with LOUD Rock bands a close second---Jazz only seems to do well in concert and festival settings). So, aside from OMB's playing the Nursing Home circuit, where do Arrangers fit in? Beats me?

chas

Workstations are sub par for bands live use compared to stage pianos, like the nord stage 2, which is superb for live keyboard use as long as you dont need any sequencing..

Topline Arrangers are curently way to expensive, just look at the MOXF, its available umder 1000 euros and has all sounds and features of the Motif XF, except sliders, build quallity and aftertouch... (If it had aftertouch it would be a nobrainer in combination with Varranger, but i cant stand keybeds withouth aftertouch)


But then, one also must admit that current totl arrangers dont leave much to wish for... But then, yamaha surprised many with the T5, i think the ensemble feature is the most innovative arranger feature we have seen in a very long time... And when you just look at the T5, what could one wish for?

- better and more in depth edditor
- touchscreen
- some knobs to comtroll parameters in real time
- better PC integration ( same as the Motif would be awesome)
- some arranger features like a chordsequencer are still missing..
- more sample ram.. Or even better, an SSD to replace the flashram..
- 8 elements/ sound like the motif
- more polyphony
- instant startup feature

And then none of those are a musthave, they are just wishes, not even supported by most players...

If they want to keep people upgrading their arrangers everytime they sell a new model, then they must add more drool features in the future... And if they want to pull the youth to arrangers, they need to do some serious promotion with those new drool features...

When you look at the Motif or MOFX, young people call the arpeggios one of the coolest features of the board.. Yet they dont seem to realise that those arpeggios are nothing but a very waterred down version of an arranger style...


I personally made the move to workstations a few years ago, but i returned to arrangers combined with VSTs, because this allows me to do what i want to do most, make music and toy with sounds. Back then soft arrangers where really underperforming, and failed to convince me... Yet these days Varranger combined with the MOFX performs stellar, for €1300 it really is tempting.

Again, the potential of the arranger is only limited by the talent and creativity of the player...which is much the same for all instruments, including piano and organ.

I liked the flexibility of my Electones (D-85, HX-1, E-75) especially the three manual versions, but since I also wanted to play out on gigs as well as at home, the arranger was far more feasible, especially so since they have really added some incredible features and styles.

As far as boring bass lines...that's what the instrument's Style Creator is for...making more interesting bass lines and other components of the style. You have up to at least 32 bars (over 4 Variations) to put in whatever you think will be more interesting. Then, of course, there is the addition of bass pedals if so wished.

Storage is no longer an issue, so if a player so wished, he/she could use several styles during a tune.

The arranger has a sequencer like a workstation, but I like being able to incorporate a style (or use it as a basis) for recordings, whether at home or in the studio...I also have the use of multi-pads.

The Tyros4 replaced several keyboards we used in the studio, and it not only makes a great controller, it works well being operated by a weighted action controller.

By far, the nicest aspect of the arranger, is to be able to sit down, switch on, pick a style and play a complete tune, using whatever chords I want and in whatever arrangement (or genre) I choose to play.

As I said earlier, its immediacy is one of its best features, but certainly not its only feature.

Ian

I love arrangers. I want one of each.

Or at least two...one for each hand!

Very true, chas ... I look at an Arranger as being analogous to the "Saturn" automobile - a fine product, with a sort of 'cult' following, that never caught on with the general public ... and eventually fell into oblivion - not that I feel AKBs are going to be extinct anytime soon, but I do think that as the current 'young' generation grows, venues for AKBs will be harder to find - ... Even as Saturn engineers improved the design of the car to compete with the Hondas of the world, the general public saw it as a 'poor man's auto', and would not be seen driving one ... Much like the situation with some 'pro' musicians and AKBs ...




Not so true, chas ... while the Arranger may have LIMITED appeal, OMB players do fairly well in restaurants, Country Clubs, and other venues ... just ask some of the OMB guys here who DON'T only play NH/Assisted living establishments, etc. ... but, as I alluded to above, how long that will last - who knows? ...

Arrangers! Stigmatized? No doubt in some circles they are.

I know if I mention Wersi to anyone who plays keyboards, they immediately think of polkas, beer garden music, shiny suits, or Blue Spanish Eyes/Tico Tico played with vigor and/or drama...

The stigma factor never occurred to me when I played a high end restaurant for nearly a dozen years using an arranger keyboard...I laughed all the way to the bank!

Ian