Bill

Your posts are always factual. and certainly less subjective than many others in the past. As far as Ketron is concerned, I have played their instruments for years with great satisfaction. Speaking of unique, my Audya 76 has never given me a moments trouble, and remains the best arranger ever made in it's time. It still excels in live sound, navigation, and basic features in my opinion. It reminds me of the old Technics Kn7000 I had. It to had great bones and a basis of many future improvements, had it survived.

I fail to see the distinction between what ‘pros’ need, and what home players need…

In fact, what pro players need even MORE than home players is ease of use, simplicity of operation, speed of access. The very things that also make them accessible to home players. They want sounds that don’t NEED heavy editing to be great (but like it just in case). Same with styles. Pros don’t actually WANT to have to edit styles extensively, they tend to do it when the ROM style falls pretty short.

But ‘convenience’ features cross all boundaries. Make it simple, everyone benefits.

Obviously, I am more familiar with Roland’s missteps than other brands, but let’s not be fanboys here. Every single arranger from every manufacturer launches to a litany of ‘Why did they do THAT..?!’. No matter what anyone claims about the makeup of the design team. Please also note, I did specify the head of the design team or close to it. There are always those lower down whose points may be ignored, either from a cost cutting perspective, but I rather fear more from an inability to recognize what’s important and what isn’t.

Let me give just a couple of examples.

The SX900/Genos’s chord sequencer. Brilliant! The biggest leap forward in the feature in 20 years. But… Rather than give each segment (up to eight of them) a huge display so you can name them (Intro, Chorus, Verse, Vamp etc.), they display the recorded progression in a font too large to get more than the first few changes displayed (and they don’t scroll, afaik) and they don’t transpose as you change key. The name of the segment (that you save it with) IS displayed, but in a tiny font hard to read above each segment.

Now tell me, what arranger player would ever want the display laid out that way? The whole point of the feature is to be able to use the CS more flexibly, so you aren’t forced into a linear structure. Want a second solo? Want to skip the third verse? Yep… that’s what the feature is for (and if you DID actually want it for short repetitive four bar progressions, you could name the segment that).

But apparently, a team of musicians let this slip. Please! 🙄

Let me give you the BK-9. Easily Roland’s most advanced arranger ever. Capable of doing styles, playing audio loops, displaying graphics to a connected display (thus a scan of sheet music) and storing a chord sequence (only one, mind you!). But… other than associating the loops with the Performance (eight of them), none of those features were linked to the Performance (registration). Oh, and the Chord Sequence doesn’t transpose when you transpose the arranger to ‘lift” the last verse, for instance, or need to do a blues in a different key if a saxophonist or harmonica player sits in (they tend to like different keys!).

Roland had a product that potentially could have been industry leading. IF all the pieces were put together…

Now, someone tell me that a musician made the decision that, if you wanted a chord sequence, a sheet music graphic and a style to load up for a song, you would have to do all three separately, from a convoluted folder structure. Go on, I dare you! And what musician would want to transpose the keyboard but let the CS plow on in the original key?

Okay, one more… Korg’s new ‘two styles simultaneously’ feature. Brilliant. A musician thought of this. But it has a laundry list of head scratching omissions make it close to useless as a performance tool. Maybe Korg will fix it, maybe they won’t. But I’d still like to know what musician decided that you can’t save BOTH styles to a Songbook entry, with all associated mutes and multipad settings…

These things seem so obvious to a musician, and so not obvious to a software engineer.

Let’s be honest here. Lower your hackles for a second at the thought that your favorite brand is being attacked, and try to remember the many times that you have been left wondering why some simple tweak that massively improves a feature has been omitted.

I rest my case. 🎹😎

Great post Diki,

You, of course, bring up deficiencies I wouldn't be aware of, but I am sure some would. On a layman's level, I have seen omissions and missteps myself through the years. You mention the BK-9s potential, which I agree with. It had most everything including a killer Leslie sim. Some hated the two small windows, but I looked past that to see two disparate sets of information. What I became tired of was the lack of balance in most every style. This ,however, sure didn't stop Bill Lewis though.

I just had to throw this in because I felt bad about selling it. Maybe I should have persevered and slogged through and balanced everything myself. Oh well.

Mostly, deficiencies become apparent when you actually USE something, I’m pretty sure that so much of an arranger is ignored by home users, perhaps that is why so much gets excused..?!

Thing is, make something WORK, everybody uses it. To be honest, I haven’t heard all that many wax lyrically about Yammie’s chord sequencer. And I got a feeling it’s for possibly the above reason. It’s just not as practical when it’s quite a PITA to locate the appropriate segment.

And if Roland had made a one button Performance call load up the style or SMF/MP3, the loops, the chord sequencer AND the sheet music, I am quite convinced that would have been lauded as a game changing feature. And sales would have gone through the roof.

Let a musician have the final say in design decisions, you end up with a product that musicians want to play. Let a software engineer or an accountant have it, you end up with a product not even they want to play.

People don’t use arranger features if they are badly designed.

BTW, coming from a live band background, I found that on the whole, if you just bumped up the drums about 10 in the BK-9’s mixer and turned off the style compressor, most of the styles weren’t too badly mixed. That mastering compressor was quite a bit too aggressive for me, especially if you had a pro PA or good home studio monitors. Basically, the settings on it were optimized to play though crappy small computer speakers like so many do (and the settings were a hangover from the crap built-in speakers in the BK5/3).

But you’re right, it’s a damn good B3 sim for an arranger. I have sat in with live bands just playing its organ, and many have commented about ‘What kind of Nord is that?!’ 🎹😂

This is just speculation on my part since there's no way to know what the 'truth' really is, but...in my experience and from my observations, NO feature that I know of has been a 'game changer'. What seems to have the greatest impact is sound quality and STYLES, STYLES, STYLES. I'm guessing that less than 10% of average home arranger players use the chord sequencer....or SAMPLING....or LOOPS...or any of the so-called super features. Why? In some cases they don't feel that the benefits are worth the hassle of learning to use/navigate the system and that it may even add to the performance workload. This may be different for 'pro's' but not many pro's use arranger keyboards (that statement may upset some people but it's the truth).

Bill (Abacus) is correct when he says that the volume manufacturers, ie. Yamaha and Korg, design these things for their primary (and target) market, the HOME PLAYER. As evidenced by even the responses HERE on THIS forum, most people are pretty satisfied with their offerings. Their design philosophy is driven by their marketing philosophy which is driven by the BUYING public. They are not going to be swayed very much by lone wolf techno-geeks whose ideas may be sound but buy one keyboard every 15 years. Regardless of what you think about the manufacturers, they DO know how to 'read the room'.

As far as "musicians having the final say in design decisions", I think most ARRANGER-playing musicians get more of a kick out of seeing/guessing/anticipating what the next iteration of their favorite 'board' will be. You know, like "surprise me". I mean Christmas wouldn't be nearly as exciting for a little kid if he already knew what was in the presents under the tree. JMO.

chas

A game changing feature is only game changing if you play the game 😂

I think you are wrong about demographics driving design, Chas. Let’s face it, if arrangers were designed around what the vast majority actually use, there would be a sound button, a style button and a ‘Play’ button! There would be no samplers, no editing, no loops, no chord sequencers, no footswitches, no bender, no microphone inputs, no aftertouch, no bass inversion, no nothing!

Yes, there ARE arrangers designed for the vast majority of home players. They are the absolute bottom of the line models. By your reasoning, that’s the only models they need to make..! Toys for kids and barebones models for completely unschooled home players.

I also take exception to pros not using arrangers. Unless they are piano bar entertainers, I think the majority of SOLO pro keyboard entertainers use arrangers. I can’t say I have seen a single solo keyboard player use anything else for decades. Now admittedly, some like me don’t use the styles very much, but they still outperform workstations like the MODX’s and Fantoms or Kronos/Nautilus’s for the solo player.

Truth is, who was the last solo keyboard musician using some form of backing you went to see, Chas? Doesn’t sound like your cuppa tea unless he was a Hammond player using a drum machine!

Yep, it’s rare to see a pro in a band using an arranger, but outside of piano bar players, it’s getting rare to find a solo keyboard player anywhere, these days. This has been the decade of the acoustic guitarist/singer for the majority of solo work lately. At least in the USA. Europe seems a bit different, and they probably drive sales in the pro and semi-pro markets nowadays.

We both have our reservations about arrangers, and our opinions of the skill and musicianship of the majority of its players, and I feel that in truth, a large degree of their popularity comes from people that couldn’t play to a backing track because they rush the count and skip bars, which doesn’t faze an arranger!

But for decades, since the inception of the type, we have had models made that the average user has no use for. They are supposedly designed for the more skilled home player and the gigging professional. Which brings me back to my original point. Given the undoubted market they are supposedly designed for, how do these incredible blunders still occur at every release? How could a skilled musician supposedly in charge of the design team let them slip? 🎹😤🙄

Yeah, everything in my post is wrong, nothing new there. But let's be clear; I never said arranger players didn't WANT all the super features, just that after experimenting with them shortly after purchase, they rarely use them in normal everyday playing. Heck, my last couple of cars have/had shift paddles which I NEVER EVER use (I'm not even sure why they're needed). I never asked for them and even questioned why they'd put them on a luxury sedan (old person's car) in the first place.

IN MY OPINION, arranger keyboard design and features are driven by COMPETITION (with other manufacturers) for market share in a relatively small market. We like our burgers with 'all the fixins' and our toys loaded with the maximum number of 'bells and whistles'.

I've reached an age where I don't go to clubs anymore but I do go to 3-4 jazz concerts a year at the local universities, mostly Georgia Tech (my buddy is on the board of directors and gives me his free tickets - he's not a jazz lover ). So because of my lack of experience seeing arrangers in a professional venue, I guess I have to accept that my opinions on anything arranger related are by definition, valueless.

chas

. So because of my lack of experience seeing arrangers in a professional venue, I guess I have to accept that my opinions on anything arranger related are by definition, valueless.

chas

Chas, You appear to be about as humble as I am, and I know it is sincere lol

Hi Diki

You make some valid points from a US perspective, however sales of arrangers in the US are minute compared to Europe & Asia, thus US views have no relevance to manufactures (When was the last time something suggested by a US player was added to an arranger).
The closest to the US is probably the UK (Which itself is quite different from the rest of Europe) however this still deviates a lot from the US.

BTW. The main design centres for Western style (Voiced) arrangers are Germany and the UK, and they have a completely different outlook to the US.

Bill

If we go back to my original point, whether from a US perspective or a European one, the problem seems to often be features released with glaring musician unfriendly designs. To reiterate, I rather feel that if a feature is tried but not used a lot, that’s often down to little missteps in its implementation rather than the basic idea in the first place. Features that DO seem popular would probably never have got that way if some of the poor design decisions crippled them when first tried out.

I have never found your opinion valueless, Chas, your perspective is always one I look forward to. But… I always view it from the perspective of someone that doesn’t really like arranger playing much (your audio posts rarely use any at all), and doesn’t go to venues where they are used much. To be honest, you don’t see them in clubs in my area, but then again, clubs (not restaurants) aren’t really the venues you see ANY solo stuff, it’s either a band or a DJ.

Now, nothing wrong with that, quite the contrary! But your low opinion of most of the arranger player base may color the way you look at how useful or used many slightly more advanced features actually are. Since the Great Migration, we have very few actual performing arranger players left here, and their perspective seems sorely missed.

Personally, if I were doing a solo jazz gig with an arranger, the chord sequencer would be my #1 used feature… Play the head on piano in full piano recognition mode while you sing, record the changes, hit play on the CS and blow as many solos as you want over those changes. If I had a Yamaha, prerecord the changes for a few different heads in separate sections, and improvise a medley on the fly. Drop out of the CS if I want to stretch out, come back to it when I’m done. All with full control of style, variations, fills and the like. A jammer’s paradise..!

But I’d find using that Yamaha CS a lot harder than it needs to be because of the difficulty in identifying which segment is which. Maybe even too hard to use on a gig. And that might lead you to believe it’s an unwanted feature. Quite the contrary. But good design makes the difference.

when we disagree chas, I don’t think you feel MY opinion valueless. Not really sure why you think I’d feel that way about yours. Sorry.