Hi everyone,
My name is Yvon, I’m in my sixties, a retired electronics technician, and I play music just for fun, but seriously!
Like many on this forum, I started playing music as a child; my non-musician parents bought a piano when I was 7, and I started piano lessons, but that didn’t last long: I wanted to play music I knew, not those boring obsolete kind of Classic pieces!
But that piano had a very special feature: it was a player piano ( with paper rolls, the ancestors of MIDI files )! That became my piano teacher; I played along with those wonderful performances: we had over a 100 of those rolls. What a treasure this was!
At 11, I was more serious about learning music theory, so I got into accordion lessons for a while, with Palmer-Hughes books, but I preferred playing by ear, so I built a growing repertoire I enjoyed to play. My parents were very happy.
A neighbour had something very interesting: a Farfisa organ! My father gave me a challenge: if I learned 100 melodies, he would get me one
Before long, I told him I was up to 150!
That was my first « arranger keyboard ». Really enjoyed it many years, eventually connected to a Leslie 147!
Years after, I wanted a keyboard, got a Lowrey, cute but limited. Bought a Yamaha PS-6100: what a step forward! But it was defective, and I wanted better sounds and styles, so I bought a Roland E-70, their top of the line arranger then, and years later, a FP-80 and a BK-9, and finally, I’m back to Yamaha with the Genos, my only keyboard now, since may 2020. What a wonderful instrument it is!
I was a guest on this forum until two weeks ago; really impressed by its ambiance and resources, and wanted to share anything useful I have with its members, so I happily joined. So, hello everyone!
Yvon