Let’s start off my return here with one of my favorite subjects...

It’s been about six years or so, I think, let’s take a look at what has fundamentally changed in arrangers since then. What is the ‘state of the art’? How much progress have we seen in getting an arranger to fool anyone it’s actually musicians playing rather than a box of conditioned responses?

I know there have been some advances in the raw sound area, six year’s progress has given us more sample ROM, better effects, better master effects etc.. But I’d like to hear from you how you think the state of the art has progressed in USING these sounds, new techniques in having them play realistically, more like a human...

I’ll chime back in a bit later, I’d really like to hear how you feel before I put my ten cents in! But the bottom line is, rather than endlessly debate one piano sound’s realism compared to another or stuff like that, let’s try to think about how the arranger itself plays those sounds.

What innovations are truly making you feel like there is progress in the state of the art?

I feel little has changed in 6 years. I have no real insensitive to upgrade. Sure, a newer model will have some nicer sounds, but nothing that would really make that much of a difference for my act. As always, it comes down to the musical skills and talent of the keyboardist.

In the last 7 or so years, Yamaha added the Ensemble feature, and then cribbed the idea of a chord sequencer from Roland and Korg. Korg added the KAOSS feature (which I personally doubt that I would use.) [EDIT: and they also now permit auditioning a style directly from USB, thus finally achieving parity with the other brands.]

As I understand it, the Genos metaphor is to have a more flexible, user-defined control layout that allows a player to affect the voice or pattern in real time. But not nearly to the extent of a Montage, etc. Go back a few months on this forum and search for a thread titled "Montage as an arranger." Pretty eye opening!

So frankly the Genos, Pa5x, etc., is more "innovation theater" than real innovation. The basic feature set of the arranger pretty much stopped evolving around Y2K. My perception is that it's the same old software with bigger wave ROM samples and hopefully more processing power. For a while it looked like that trend would be taken to the extreme with Yamaha's audio styles, Ketron's real guitars, etc. As a MIDI guy, I'm glad that trend DIDN'T continue. I'll take MIDI over audio every time.

Unless Roland makes another TOTL arranger or Yamaha permits more flexible chord fingering (and they won't!), I'll probably play my BK-9 until it wears out. My $.02.

I have all the biggest models in each brand and find that all have improved more or less each of their new models. There are only 3 brands left in the top range as well as Roland which has some interesting keyboards.
I'm waiting for the advent of real artificial intelligence on our keyboards without believing it too much
that is to say a beginning of real "creation" in the accompaniment.
We've been using robots for 40 years now that just reproduce pre-recorded patterns
respect rules of music. Of course this tends to become perfect but real music is much more than that.

Already getting something in the OMB's gut but playable in real time would be progress in my opinion.

oups no OMB but BAB band in a box

The arrangers downfall is still the style section which is boring and repetitive, and the only way to get round this is to turn most of it off and play it yourself, to give it personal flavour. (This is particularly important in the bass)

The other alternative is to do like Lowrey did (May they RIP) and make the style tracks 16, 32 or more bars long (Including fills) with no repeats within this range to help reduce the repetitiveness, also variations to the style with the type of chords played is another option. (Instruments have had the capability in their style sections to allow typically 16 variations/chords within each part (Variation, fill, break, intro, ending etc.) for donkey’s years, (Including the drum parts) so they need to be put to use if you want to rely on styles.

Of course all this becomes irrelevant if you just play the instrument yourself. (As it used to be in years gone by and you could tell who was playing by their playing style, now all you here is the arranger with most punters not being able to tell the difference between an arranger and Karaoke)

No matter what gets bought out it all comes down to the player in the end, do you want to follow what somebody else has programmed, or use your own creativity. (There is no right or wrong answer to this)

Bill

Ketron had the anecdote to boring styles-the launchpad that allows you to "mix and match" to easily create new styles and songs. I have been making my own backing tracks and not even using the arranger since I now just play at home. With BIAB, EZDrummer, Reaper, Sampletank 4 and a controller I can make my tracks sound exactly as I want.

Disclaimer- I'm not a musician; I have little training on chord theory, modes, etc. I don't write my own music, I just try to learn and play songs that I like. (My favorite genre is '70s Singer-Songwriter, and one of the hallmarks is a descending bass line.)

I don't understand the comments about repetitive basslines. All good arrangers have an "on bass" or "bass inversion" function that lets you force the bass to the lowest note played. So theoretically, you could play a different bass note, or ANY desired bass note, on any beat of the song. In some cases it might be necessary to customize the bass track, usually simplifying it to just the root (it could still have a little modulation on long-held chords.) And of course make sure that the bass retriggers with most every chord change. On most arrangers, changing the bassline like this isn't difficult- I've modified the bass pattern just noodling around in the music store.

But... forcing the bass like this means playing a lot of slash chords, sometimes on successive beats. To reach all of the notes on a non-intelligent instrument, your left hand would be jumping all over the chord recognition area like Daffy Duck! Which is precisely why I like arranger faculties that allow you to trigger a major chord with a single note, seventh chords with only two notes, etc. (Some of you would probably recruit your right hand to pick up the other notes, but I've never been able to play two-handed. I'm strictly a left hand chords, right-hand melody kind of guy.)

If I really had guts I would try to learn the bass pedals, which is how an independently-specified bassline USED to be played. But I'm already chest-deep in intelligent arrangers and slash chords. At my age I doubt I would ever become proficient enough with the pedals, I think I can get further by staying the road that I'm on.

So I have no problem with repetitive basslines. But when I get on a soap box about style programming, retrigger behavior, and ergonomic fingering for a wide range of chord types, now you know why! :-D

Bill makes a good point about making your arranger sound less repetitive by playing "live" bass.

Arranger bass lines can be very unmusical especially in swinging walking bass lines and certain Latin styles. The problem is the arranger doesn't what chord you're going to play until you play it. A good bass player will connect the chords with passing tones that lead smoothly to the next chord.

Confession.... I almost always play auto accompaniment bass, but someday I hope to do more LH bass.

I personally have found longer 16, 32, bar styles with fills can present problems because sometimes I end up getting fills played when I don't want them. This particularly happens when playing songs that have odd phrasing or for whatever reason you need to add a few bars at the end of the phrase.

But that's not the best option (at least for me) when performing live.