Since my focus is on "styles" these days, and being a "style aficionado" I thought I'd drop this comment I've been thinking about for years.

What will kill off arrangers for people like me is the lack of "pure" dance styles and the lack of diversity. Great instrument sounds will always be there but the styles are becoming more bland and more unremarkable and more complex.....and more in control of the player rather than the player in control of the style.

I've heard it said a few times here that most of us only use a dozen basic styles. That goes for me too. When I see a keyboard that advertises 20,000 styles, I already know what to expect. 5,000 C&W 4/4's, 5,000 8 beat ballads, 3,000 bossanovas, etc. They all sound the same to an audience so do you (or your audience) really care?

I find it difficult working around these contemporary jazzed up styles. There is so much going on in the style itself, that I have to "play around it." Not so with the older simplistic styles. With them you had freedom to be yourself and not be a slave to the automation!

You can always strip down the style to just bass and drum . Or even try and edit the style to your liking . There is so much there to play with , it’s hard to understand the situation you are describing being the result of the suggested styles the instrument comes with . Treat them as merely suggestions and start to experiment just swapping instruments in the style and it will open up avenues of creativity for years of fun .

Nothing will kill arrangers or other sophisticated musical instruments off quicker than perhaps lack of imagination , creativity or just lack of desire or interest or time to develops the skills needed to extract the best from these instruments .

This is the same for all musical equipment. I have noticed over the years the interest in learning to play piano , guitar etc have all decreased . Especially amongst the school kids who are focused so much on academic success . I lose most of my piano students by the time they reach age 13-14 because of pressures of school work . And it only gets worse for adulthood .

I think there will come a point where arrangers can't sound any better, just different, unlike 20 or so years ago where you could say that certain brands always sounded better over another (or more professional) than others, not so much now, they have all caught up and reached a peak. For example for me, talking about TOTL models, I noticed from the Tyros 5 onward whereby for the first time I wasn't envious of wanting the next model so much, that goes for the Genos as well, although both are fantastic, neither of them have wowed me enough to change from my T4, that's why I'm finding the mid range arrangers more exciting to experiment around these days & at a reasonably affordable price whilst still retaining a high quality. I could have easily bought a Genos recently but instead bought an S975 & PA1000 and still would of had money left over!

As off now the choices for a keyboardist that wants full accompaniment are auto accompaniment or backing tracks ( either audio or midi) There’s seems to be advances in how tracks can controlled in a live setting with looping sections and such. But you need a pre arranged track of some sort. A musician playing live will sometimes want to play something more spontaneous like maybe a special request or perhaps experimenting with an original song.

I think the instrument will continue to develop, maybe into something we can’t quite imagine now. As long as people play keyboards I see no reason why an auto accompaniment keyboard should die.

Arrangers are already dying, and just like the easy play entertainment organs they spawned from they will become a niche market, (This will happen in the next decade) as the only people that use them will primarily be old fogies and those looking for nostalgia, (Each generation move onto things anew and like the previous generation believe that what they use will last forever) these days everything involves around apps, (Even Apple is moving their Macs to full support for apps, just like Microsoft has been doing since the advent of Windows 10) which fortunately manufactures have realised and made their instruments compatible with iPads (Even organs have done the same) to stem the continuing decline.
As I have said before, before fancy styles came out you could identify a player by his playing style, whereas now all you hear is the instrument, (The styles give everything away) and if you simplify the styles then most fall apart as they were not designed to be simple. (This is the reason I prefer styles on organs, as they are simpler and designed to allow the player through with the additional keyboards and pedals)
TIP: Rather than fighting the new, embrace it and see how you can adapt to your requirements. (Be creative and don’t think one instrument fits all, otherwise you will be in trouble)

Bill

Hi Mark, nice seeing post again. I try not to get into what might happen to the arranger keyboard, and focus on how I can make my keyboard fit my needs.
My opinion:
Styles can become boring, so this is what I am doing to make them interesting.

1-I picture a live band playing, instruments do not play all the time. When someone is singing the instrumentation might be piano, bass, and drums. At another point the brass is featured.

2-I am using a Pa 1000. The keyboard has three dedicated buttons which I have set up #1 to mute the 5 Accompaniments, leaving only drum and bass. #2, mutes the bass and #3m mutes the drums.

3-Pads are next. I spend a lot of time selecting which pad will add to the style. A cymbal might be playing on all four for Jazz. Strings, and brass quietly in the background. A simple finger snapping on the second and fourth beats.

Imagination, imagination, imagination. I listen to the style with the 5 Acc. muted, then add all the pads and I have a variation of the style. Instruments, and volume can be adjusted in the style. The left-hand instrument is important, it should complement the right hand. The volume of the left hand is set somewhere between 70 to 95, I want to hear the left hand slightly below the rest of the instrument.

The last step is to setup the four OS settings, they need to compliment the style and song. This takes a bit of time, but the end product is that the style is me, and the style is not as boring.

My middle name is teaching, I love to help, John C.

PS, Bill there is so much truth and understanding in your posts, NICE.

There is so much style tracks available on my Genos, to combine
Using both the multipads as well as the arps on the modx to add some diversity..

Just create your own jazzy styles..
or in your case switch of some tracks and they are much more simplistic..
Less is more..
i think its all there in my Genos...

The only thing that will bring about the demise of arranger keyboards is the lack of creativity and imagination of users. Nothing more - nothing less. The same holds true with any other musical instrument.

When I hear a style, any style, the very first thing that happens is my aging brain kicks into gear and searches through the cobwebs of my mind for a song that fits that style. The next thing that occurs is I massage that style to make it fit even better than it did originally, tune it to perfection, then try to record that song. This could take just a few minutes, but more often, nearly an hour, or more.

From my perspective, the arranger keyboard is one of the most incredible, musical instruments on the planet. When I lose my sense of creativity and imagination, which I suspect will happen the day I die, at that point it will not make any difference to me.

All the best,

Gary

+1 agreed,......
let's add that the arranger KB is the most
MISUNDERSTOOD instrument also.

Yep, that's why they've always fascinated me - from the first moment as a child I saw my dad purchase an Elka organ for the house (couldn't stop me playing on it), and then from my first experience of a "keyboard", a Casio VL-Tone and then several years later when I got my first job and could afford my own, my first keyboard being a PSS-790 I knew I was going to be in it for life....