Sokratis
I agree with you that everything I have seen so far indicates that creative use of the keyboard functionality is much improved on the Ketron compared to a Yamaha.
But the bigger question is how important is that to the average arranger buyer. The vast majority of arrangers are currently bought by people who want the instrument to be easy to operate and play, and sounds good when they do play, even if they have limited skills. They often have little or no interest in spending time becoming creative via the keyboard operating system. They would rather this was all done for them so they can just press as few buttons as possible and put their effort into just playing. An good example of this is that there are many more posts asking for a suitable style for a song than posts asking how to make or change styles.
I don’t dispute that there are also number of potential buyers who wish to be able to produce better styles, midis, voices etc etc. But they are a relatively small number. You can see it on this forum where deep discussion of keyboard functionality attracts a lot of posts - but from the same small number of members and not from the majority. And the danger is that the technical people - advanced users like yourself - that are driving development may not think like the person that is and has been the main arranger market target. Truth is, Eileen may be much more representative of the main arranger market than they are.
It’s a thought.
Mike
Dear MikeI would totally agree with you. And maybe the right thing would be to make a distinction between people who buy an arranger just to play and nothing more which is completely respectable and legitimate because what we care about is music, and people who want to create through this instrument. Probably, as you rightly said, the second portion of people are less, but due to the musical culture of my country (Greece) as well as all the Balkan countries, Turkey, and Arab countries, much more things are required (styles, sounds, etc.) to meet these needs and which of course, in no case can any company cover these needs. So, the solution in our case is two things: 1) Sampler which is necessary for creating new sounds that we need, 2) Many and specialized possibilities in style creation.
So, I come to the following conclusion: When we talk about a flagship arranger and especially when we talk about Arranger/Workstation then both portions of people should absolutely be covered. Because it is not possible for any company to talk about a professional flagship Arranger/Workstation and not provide you with all the tools one needs to create. Here I would also like to point out that I think the only company that provides you 100% all the tools (onboard) and the best OS environment to build (from scratch) is Korg. Regardless of the new data that Ketron brings with the Event (Real Audio Chord, Real Audio Bass, Multichord etc.) Korg is the only one that provides you 100% of what you need without the need for any third-party program, nor do you encounter any limitation in capabilities (midi programming) etc.
Of course, lately a lot of things have gone wrong with Pa5x, and it is certain that Korg was in a big hurry to release an instrument that has a 100% new operating system where many functions that Korg arranger users knew from old times are absent as well as there are still several stability problems operating system. I was lucky enough to have the Pa5x 61 in my house for a month and all this I found out as a very old Korg user. Korg has promised that everything will be solved through future updates, but the user who paid 4700€ for a Pa5x 76 is not satisfied with the company telling him that (they will) be fixed. But that is another discussion.
Finally, I would like to say that I realised that a completely civilized dialogue can take place here, and that makes me especially happy. Through our disagreements I found with pleasure that everyone when they express what they think always gets something, someone who reads it learns and personally I always revise opinions when there are civilized dialogue.
And as the ancient Greek philosopher, legislator and poet
"Solon" very wisely said
"Γηράσκω αεί διδασκόμενος" which means:
"I'm getting old but learning all the time".I personally learn from wherever there is something that will help me learn something that makes me revise what I currently know. So, in the essential dialogue there will always be something in which you will put we thoughts and opinion about something, in another dimension that we might not have realized on our own. And this is excellent!!
Thank you very much!!
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!!
