The last answer i heared about this from a developer on gearslutz, .....

Its because of the styles, espescially the song styles, he claimed that Yamaha is paying the digital rights to the owners of the music titles that belongs to these styles...

So if they removed all the specific song styles, would arrangers be just as expensive as top of the line synth workstations?

I think i could live with that....

Earlier arrangers had generic styles and none were song specific, yet, arrangers were still more expensive than synth workstations.

All the same, perhaps the added cost pertains to the content and development (and perfecting) of the technology needed to produce the styles, most instruments being made today using up to 8 tracks for a style.

Style parts on most instruments can have their own effects set ups, and, of course be re-voiced or completely changed by substitutions from another style, or physically recorded (played in) by the user.

Workstations, on the other hand, are pretty much empty musical content-wise (except for those with arps), and all content must be physically played in by the user....so that would effectively keep the cost lower, in my point of view.

When you consider all that happens when a style is being played (with all the chord recognition, their inversions, and the perfect interaction of those 8 different sounding tracks going on) it still is an amazing bit of technology.

I suppose that's why I'm still fascinated by arrangers, in spite of the alleged stigma, and I also suppose that is why forums dedicated to its use still flourish.

I really enjoy the instrument and appreciate what it does for me and my music.

Ian

Well, a workstations like the Motif comes with almost 7000 arpgeggios, i guess that is almost just as much content as 500 styles.

However.... I must admit that even with 4 arps and a drumtrack, you dont even get close to a style... And i do agree with you styles are like a little miracle of music when it comes to real time controll...

I fully agree with you Ian..

A lot of the stuff is already done in arrangers to sound good right out of the box. And the arranger keyboards have more SA, SA2, SN & DNC quality voices as compared to synths/workstations. And no matter how much editing is possible on a synth/workstation to sound great.. it definitely lacks the instant gratification of arranger playing And also the creative possibilities of trying different styles to play the same song is a breeze in arranger keyboards.

By the way its not a typo in the title.... Overhere in europe we call arranger keyboards..... Simply " keyboards"

We called them "portable keyboards" (Yamaha still has a "PK" division) before the name "arranger" was stuck on them.

I think Roland came up with the word "style" for the accompaniments.

Arrangers sure have come a long way from the cheesy "boom-ticky-ticky" sort of "fun" keyboard from which they started out from.

Ian

If Yamaha is paying royalties for the styles.
Why are they doing good job at changing intros a little bit, and changing the song names too in the finder.

I think they are pretending too...

They sold more Tyros5s this year then Motifs... So not selling that many Tyros is also not the reason they are expensive..

The only reason why the Tyros 5 is so expensive is the fact that people are willing to pay this much for the best homekeyboard in the world... And Yamaha adds enough stuff to make everyone want the new modell as soon as it release..