Hi Mark
Either the above , or if they have to sell it with styles, just say a minimum of a hundred or even 200, at least let you choose the genres that you want. Somebody who plays modern dance music or funk, isn't likely to be interested in Ballroom . The scope of what they include , is too wide. I 've sort of gotten over, I must have every style I can lay my hands on, even if I'd never use it in a million years.

I think the same could be said of some functions.
ie I want the top end arranger, for the quality of sound, but I may not require the harmoniser , or I may not require the sampling function, but one has to pay for it because it's included.
Some functions should be optional.

I really like what Yamaha did with their expansion packs. Not that the ones they've got suit me, but if they had them for more general use,.

Thats allready available on the Ketron and to some extend on the Korg pa3x/pa4x... switching out parts between styles and or creating your own parts... espescially the system on the Ketron seems to work nice and is much used by some members on this forum

People buy arrangers with content for a reason..

Half the price? that does not sound very realistic, does it? 95% of styles are free because they get copied from earlier models... selling witouth styles does not bring a company much...

In current day arrangers there is more then enough room to add hundreds or 1000's of your own styles...



No, i think selling arrangers witouth content would be a fail....



However, adding an arranger with only a minimal amount of content to a proifessional workstation could be a great idea (because 89% of current styles does not apeal to a workstation player, those in generall are not the players wayting for ballroom and german Schlager styles)... Those workstation people allways boast their own ego telling everyone they create their own content.. well, then just a dd the pro feature, and allow people to create their own content.. But then again.. adding arranger features witouth the content does not make the instrument any cheaper, its just that many of those "pro" players are offended by the genre of most of the styles..

Would like Stephen Kay, the KARMA developer to have his karma in an arranger without needing a computer. Would be my dream. Anyone ever tried the YAMAHA KARMA arranger mode?

Actually Kay once made Korg Italy an offer to add Karma to The PAx range...

Korg Italy refused and told Kay their customer base was not interested in Karma...

What was the reason Karma failed
? Discontinued, etc,..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUwbfODjj84

Karma never failed... But its expensive and not owned by Korg, so Korg only uses it in their high end workstations... After the Karma (in the video) karma technollogy was used in M3, Oasys and Kronos.

Yamaha refuses to pay for 3rd party stuff... kar,a for Motif was not a yamaha thing, but a stand alone application on a pc by Steven Kay. ... However the Montage motion sequencer has copied many things from Karma...

The biggest problem with Karma is that it is extremely hard to program in a way that we are used... Normally our mind creates something and then we will use our tools (in this case Karma) to recreate what is in our mind... The randomness of Karma prevents younfrom working this way...

Karma is a creative tool, you play with the tool till you find something that can be usefull, many people are not used to this kind of workflow.. Karma is like a box of chocolats, you never know what you are gonna get.

So Montage is everything karma wanted to be?

Younger players playing for audiences under the age of 80.

Hi Bachus.....I didn't mean that literally (sell the keyboard for half the price). I meant.....deduct whatever monies a manufacturer spends in style creation from the retail price. Throwing this out there....just figure out how much of the selling price of the keyboard includes styles development and deduct it from that selling price. You'll make more money by selling the styles a la carte and the player will then be a happy camper also. A win-win situation to me.

Look at what they did in the computer world. Previously you could buy a program like MS WORD and own it and the license from now until forever. No more costs. Now you buy the package cheaply and you renew the license (to use it) every year. Point being......for good or bad, Microsoft changed its marketing. The arranger world has learned nothing....been slogging along in the mud forever. For "good or bad" change SOMETHING. Catch our interest with something innovative. Wake us up. Save us from the drudgery of "same old, same old!"

I for one, don't want to pay for a keyboard that has features and styles I'm not going to use. Like that complex operating system on the PA4x. I'm wondering how much of the cost of that keyboard can be attributed to such complicated (mostly unneeded) software. And, it IS complicated. There are options in there that a rocket scientist will never get to (nor have the time to get to it).

I bought the PA3x with the intention of customizing the sounds and styles, etc. I'm now finding out you either spend whatever time you have working on getting better musically or working on learning a new operating system and keyboard features. Not enough time for both. And now I think someone mentioned that the PA4x is different even from the PA3x and you now have to learn that new one. Not for me anymore......I just want to play music and let the good stuff come out of me and not the fancy overpriced keyboard.

Using the PA4x as an example, I'm saying......why pay for 10,000 sounds, 10,000 styles, 10,000 ways to customize, etc. Just give me a shell of a keyboard and let me add my functions that I need. Like buying a car. You start out with 4 tires and a steering wheel and keep adding on all the options that YOU want until you're put together your perfect machine.

And......Rikki is right...not just the styles. You should have the option to cherry-pick whatever it is you need. I think that way they would sell a ton of keyboards.....a lot more than they're selling now if they adopted this method. After all, many of us ARE educated consumers. We're not going to pay extra for a generic machine that was blanket designed for everyone around the world.

Mark