I read you loud and clear Gary, always have. No surprise that you view ME as the culprit here. What's new.

chas

After this date I will no longer be responsible for what my friends say

BTW: take all political nonsense to the bar... that is also why you will not see me in the bar.

Just because I am stubborn I will push back one last time .

You will notice that yet again the folks who claim arrangers keyboards for professional use as a regular gigging keyboard for 90% of the use a pro would need (no automated Styles involved ) , have still not commented on why an arranger like the korg pa4x would be inappropriate for general professional use .

So here we are again . Strong opinions with no substance .

I had an hour long conversation yesterday with one of my fellow musician friends who is semi professional ( like most pros are as it’s hard to make living and provide for your family on just music ) .

I asked him the same question as in my previous post . He owns the Yamaha XF workstation . Do you know that when he gave examples like

“ assignable switches and controls “ I asked him what for ? And when he told me answers like “ to change filters , resonance , release and mix sounds on the fly like adding phaser and tremolo effects , mixing multiple parts like drum tracks etc “ and I told him I could do that too , he was genuinely surprised .

He told me that he sometimes used his assignable faders to control the draw bars on the organ simulations he had .I told him I Did the same . He said but what about percussion and controlling the Leslie effect or adding dirt “distortion “ to the sound ? I told him I could do that and explained how these effects can be assigned to specific buttons or directly on screen in real-time .

He said “what about customising your sounds and saving them as performances for specific songs ? “ I told him about the multiple keyboard set ups , effects volumes mixes and assignable functions I could store and recall on a single button push called a keyboard setting ,and then save them to specific or multiple songs , and save set lists of songs for multiple types of gigs like Christmas songs , worship songs , dance and celebration songs etc including the optimum eq settings for the venues / rooms I perform in even down to the different amps I might be using to put my sound through .

After an hour he finally said I just don’t think arrangers have good enough build quality for regular gigging as they are often made from plastic . I told him that my korg was made from the same material as the Kronos which he accepted was gig suitable . I also reminded him that the Yamaha modx is made from plastic .

It became apparent to him ( no surprises ) that he had pre Pre conceived ideas about arranger keyboards that blinkered his view about their suitability but when pushed , it was about how he felt he might be perceived by other musicians that was the real objection , who pretty much had the same ignorance of arranger keyboards he had .

It had nothing to do with his musical needs at all .

Nobody on this forum who believes arrangers are not suitable for professional use has to respond directly to my points . I am not trying to bully anyone or sell my view above anyone else , but it would be nice if just once folkes who actually Disagree ,engaged in the specifics so we can all learn something new rather than just remain embedded in what is often an ignorant ( in the precise meaning of the word ) position .

You have obviously never used an XF workstation (Or any other workstation for that matter) as while you are correct in that the PA4x can do a number of the things you mention, it pails into total insignificance compared to what can be done with the XF.
You may not like it but an arranger is a jack of all trades, however it is a master of none, and while it can do things that specialist keyboards and studio equipment can do, it is in such a limited way that it is only of use as a very basic scratch pad. (This Jack of all trades comes from the fact that they were designed for the home hobby player to sound great without the wait, (They derive from the old entertainment organ easy play features) however the bonus of this design is that they are also excellent for OMB, (Something workstation and controller keyboard based systems are not) but you very seldom see them in live bands as most of the features are irrelevant, (Hence the use of specialist equipment in this scenario) likewise in studio production their features fall well short of what’s required, (As also their sounds) hence the reason they are not used in pro bands and studio production)
Personally I cannot see why arranger players have such a problem, (Pro musicians don’t) as they are great for the job that they do, but they can’t do everything. (It’s like driving an SUV and saying it can do heavy off roading or track racing, as it can’t, except in a limited fashion)

Bill

And that is a direct response to which element of my post abacus ? Which parts did I say the pa4x could do that you think
It can’t as you said most of the things I claimed were true . Be specific please ? Or shall we dance this dance once more without either of us learning anything ?

All of it, however if you cannot differentiate between specialist jobs that require specialist equipment, and general jobs that general equipment will do, (This applies to music, building, finance, cars and 100s of other types of jobs) then it is pointless continuing this discussion, and you can continue to believe that your arranger can do everything that every other musical instrument can do, and that anybody that thinks otherwise are dumb, and don’t know the first thing about musical equipment.
Just think how much money could be saved if we didn’t have to pay for live bands, orchestras, studio and software engineers, music computer specialist and acoustic instrument engineers etc. as everything could be done on an arranger. (What a sad world it would be where uniqueness, innovation and far out thinking was replaced with canned styles, limited sounds and limited features, so that everybody sounds the same as everybody else (Sounds like a me too movement)

Bill

Thanks bill for engaging with me at least at the level you have . I guess I dont know what a specialist keyboard musician and a generalist keyboard musician is . Do they get paid different rates ?

Whenever I get asked to play, nobody specifies ...and whenever I am asked to supply a musician nobody ever specifies . They just send me the charts or the YouTube clip and say “ sound like this “ or play like that . I guess it’s because I am not a pro .


Regards

Worth

So Bill, what you are saying is that with the aid of your specialist gear, with endless hours of work, you can get it to sound almost as good as any arranger keyboard right out of the box. ;)WOW! I'm impressed!

Another fun day in Paradise,

Gary