I’ve got the music in me?

My bro and I messin’ around on the keyboard

My mom’s side often had big Christmas parties with extended families by renting out an American Legion Hall in North Industry.  It was good times; the grown-ups liked their Rolling Rocks, as I do now.  Between sliding around in our socks on the waxed wooden floor, a good amount of time was spent at the honky tonk piano.  Great Aunt Catherine and several other were pretty darn good!  Between this and grade school choirs, I grew interested in music and especially the keyboard.

In 1979, synthesizers were just hitting the scene (remember the Split Enz?).  Naively, I decided to build my own synth with a Radio Shack chip and a circuit board.  I was very proud, so brought my work to my HS electronics class show & tell; the teacher did everything to not laugh.  While it was electrically accurate, I hadn’t used any good practices and so never got it to work properly.

But this didn’t deter me!  I had started working after school at Roadhouse 77 and then Miller’s Warehouse at Belden Village Mall; I begged my parents to loan me the money to buy a new Yamaha keyboard.  Mind you that they were expensive at the time, about $1000.  But I had proven myself by saving for my Panasonic MCS stereo system.  They agreed, but it was deeper than that — looking back, I recognize that they meant to be caring parents by buying me a musical instrument — and I think I never paid the loan off in full.  My Yamaha keyboard opened up a new world for me; I taught myself music theory, took piano lessons in high school and college, and took a college course in music theory.  I never mastered playing the keyboard, but did master the theory theory of the keyboard.

I later traded in my Yamaha for a Cascio, but that was a bad mistake.  It was plagued by hardware problems and evetually became a foul buzzy sounding lump despite taking it to the shop. But a few years later, the prices had dropped a lot and so I bought a little Yamaha that has a custom FM waveform synthesis.  Wow!  I can still hear the sounds of some!

I got very busy over the years and my musicality lay dormant.  But recently I found an old 222 guitar in the trash and restrung it.  I have been making very good progress with actually playing it because all that theory is already under my belt!  And it’s all due to dear ol’ Mom and Dad.  Thanks!