Hi all fellow keyboardists.
I thought sharing my opinion on the subject and see what you guys think.
I always find myself asking that same question, during the announcement for the launch of the next best "insert any Yamaha model/series" like the recent PSR-SX series.
Yes, undoubtedly there will always be people who would rather cash out for a keyboard that will do the job for them, until the next one comes out to offer some more 'bells and whistles' over the previous one....I was 'almost' that person for more than 20 years. I was happy with the quality of the sounds most of the time, so with the features of the particular keyboard that I was working with...but that has changed for me after a eye opening realization.
I have a friend that I knew for years who is an audio engineer working in his own studio, and we've been talking about instruments and sound over a glass of beer. I was complaining about how little upgrade I was getting from buying the 'next model' keyboard, and I've been talking hypothetically about how cool it would be if I could have a keyboard that had such and such features that would help me be more flexible on stage and be current in terms of sound for years to come, on which he replied something like: "You would never find such keyboard, but you can get fairly close to that if you are ready to change your mind about what you've been used to so far, make a step aside and think again what is actually the MOST important for you during live performance?"
I almost stopped using styles any more because I prefer to make my own MIDI's for the songs I play because I want to have fluidity and freedom to change the feel of the song instead of using only 4 variations of the style and repetitive arrangement that comes with it. So I changed the way I use my keyboard by just using it 80% of the time basically as a bulky and heavy MIDI player that already have fairly outdated sounds anyway (Tyros5), and wouldn't let me shape these sounds during live performance to big extend, nor I am able to change them with better ones in future. So he suggested I could buy a MIDI keyboard controller which would have enough keys, knobs, sliders, buttons...etc, and running the sounds from a laptop that instead of playing MIDI's, It would play the same tracks but in audio format so it's lighter on the CPU. The heaviest job for the laptop would be running few VST's which I would play live on the keys, and I would have all that control at my disposal. I can tweak basically everything to my heart's content without being limited by the keyboard itself in terms of sound and the control over it, not to mention the future-prooveness and quality of those sounds, comparing that to an arranger keyboard, the difference is like night and day. Add to that that most of the MIDI controllers are waaay less bulkier and are lighter than any arranger that you want to use in a professional manner. You can do your maths on how much you would need spend in order to cover your personal needs for software and hardware. I did mine, it came out very close but less than 4.000€ if I want to have the cream of the cream VST´s, new more powerful laptop(although my current one is very well up to the job) and fancy MIDI controller. With that investment I'm covered for life in terms of software and sounds, and can easily go for at least 5-6 years with that hardware if I'm not being too picky, or technology makes a giant leap in that direction, as it is very obvious that we are progressively getting more and more bang for our buck, unlike I personally get from the arranger keyboards.
So in conclusion, I think that probably any of my future investments going towards instruments, ain't gonna be into buying any other arranger keyboard anymore.
I hope you find this useful, and I wonder if there are others here that see themself going this direction too? Let me know that you think.
Yours,
Valentin