Just a few musings, but I have often been left scratching my head by seemingly obvious bad design about features on arrangers. There are times when I have to think that there isn’t a player of arrangers at the head (or close to it) of the design team.

I know we all got our long list of head scratching moments in every design team, all of us coming from a background of actually PLAYING them. How these obvious errors slip through the design path and QC process is hard to believe, if they are designed by actual players.

I suppose that a large degree of the problem comes about because product design and coding is a young person’s game, the vast majority of people working in the field are probably in their 20’s or 30’s. And that must cause problems, as that is not the generation that uses arrangers (on the whole) or grew up with them.

It’s hard to imagine a guitar being designed by someone who doesn’t play guitar, but more and more, we seem to face arrangers designed by people that obviously don’t play them.

The danger, as I see it, is that it’s a self oscillating feedback loop. A poorly designed arranger sells poorly, and attracts fewer and fewer people to the type. This reduces the budget for future designs, which means even less experienced designers, which means even more poorly designed future products.

I think this is what happened to Roland, and to be honest, I see the beginnings of it happening to Korg. I am not familiar enough with Yamaha’s to comment, but I’ve read some complaints about design decisions that probably a player wouldn’t have allowed to be designed in if they had any input.

So, what’s the remedy? Are arranger design teams so divorced from actual user input that they run the risk of alienating their already shrinking base? Should arranger design teams (not the PR or sales divisions) make greater efforts to reconnect with those who actually use arrangers?

Your thoughts?

you bring up some good questions. i recently heard two terms"making music" and "playing music. i think "making music" is the new norm in selling equipment by manufactures. its easier to get a finished product (by throwing together a few samples and add a vocal etc. ). im not discounting the talent in doing this. but im seeing a transition here over the years. the companies make a fortune with repetitive samples styles and such to recoup their investment with equipment that makes music for you with very little input as opposed to spending years to learn a musical instrument like guitar piano horn etc. with regard to design of equipment to "make music" using computer based design .this design is merging with traditional keyboards over the years and todays equipment and the way it is used (played as a keyboard or used as a DJ machine or combo of both is the result . i agree that there should be some input from both musicians and "music makers".

Diki
I have no doubts about the accuracy of your musings, but rectifying these design flaws is a lost cause in OMH. Considering that a relatively small number of arrangers make up their customer base, and the only hope of sales in the future would be designing something to appeal to the young, which sure ain't us, I don't see a turn around in the offing. Since Europe is a bigger market, perhaps I am too negative, but I believe I am somewhat representative, and never use the Korg KAOS, for one thing.

Diki, I realize you have a huge grasp of the workings of an arranger, and your view is from that position. I have to believe that the majority of us arranger users are in my category, and I am not hopeful.

Having said that, I am very satisfied with my cadre of arrangers as they are, as I can't think of any feature I don't have that I need.

I thought I was wrong once, but was mistaken.

Agree with Bernie 100%. Sounds like a solution looking for a problem. The biggest flaw for most arranger players is the sticker price.

chas

On my YouTube channel I puting a video that describes working with Yamaha arrangers. If I look at the age of the visitors in the statistics, more than 50% of them are under 45 years of age. This confirms that arrangers are not only played by people in their later years.
The second thing I would like to point out is that those who know the least are always dissatisfied. They are very loud so it just seems like there are a lot of them. I think that the new keyboards are good and that you should not be dissatisfied if some little thing that we are used to is missing.

My first Yamaha PSR60 from '88 year has only 30 Style and one sliding potentiometer of 4 centimeters to determine the tempo. My the guests didn't complain that something was wrong.

https://app.box.com/s/gea37in9xewqbehcmyrhtw78acft52jn

Hi Diki,
I think as far as Yamaha goes, a few of us were a bit bemused with the sx series, in the way they categorised some of the styles ie no actual Country section for instance , they were mixed in with other categories. In the earlier model I had, it was a bit more straight forward. Still on the whole the sx900 is a brilliant keyboard, so no complaints .
( still, it couldn’t have been a player that sorted what styles went into which catergory. Haha)

Don't be too hard on the engineers who create our little miracles. After all, even Laurens Hammond was reportedly tone-deaf!

+65% of the Engineers at KETRON are Engineers during the day, and musicians using these same instruments (and others) at night, hence some of their unique features.

Yes... Ketron users know their keyboards offer things the other brand have not.
I don't speak about sounds, styles, ... but about praticity, convenience...
Just one example : the whole set of functions available with a foot pedal .... foot pedal available on the next Event, as seen on the first pictures.

The arranger keyboard developed from the easy play features of the old home organ instruments, so are designed for the home hobby player. (Not the pro player)
While the hardware is designed by engineers, the software and layout is designed by players that know what the home hobby player wants. (The pro player is not really considered as the amount that are used out live are miniscule in comparison to the home hobby player)
Ketron is weird as they came from Solton which was more pro orientated and so tend to have features not used by home hobby players or pro players, (They try to combine the 2 which limits sales in both camps) thus people are confused as to what they stand for, even though they have some fantastic instruments with unique features. (Never miss them off your list though if you are looking for a new keyboard)

Bill

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.

Thanks Bernie I'm still loving the BK9. I have yours in my studio and my first one packed up for gigs. I don't mind editing Styles and SMF's and the organ section is great. It would take a lot for me to change platforms at this point

Having tried editing styles and sequences on most brands except Ketron, I am beginning to understand why so few try to do it..! Except Roland users.

Why the Makeup Tools workflow isn’t on everything I’ll never understand. Editing a style’s sounds, dynamics and drum kit on everything else takes hours. Korg make you do it individually for not only each division, but also each chord type within a division..! Roland does it globally. Takes a few minutes.

As I’ve been trying to say… if a feature is designed well, it becomes popular. If it isn’t, most players will try and say it isn’t popular. Design makes the difference.

I also have two BK-9’s. I doubt I will ever want a different arranger. I know what I need, it covers my needs perfectly, and the amount of work to migrate to a completely different brand would be Herculean. For live band work, the Hammond is my workhorse sound, and this little light arrangers does it better than all others, IMHO.

Stick a fork in me. I’m done! 🎹😎