Hello, fellow musicians! I am self-taught on piano & keyboards (53 years), drums (47 years), bass (45 years) and guitars (40 years). I started playing in bars with adults years before I was old enough to get in to drink! I played mostly bass in groups through the '70s, until my bass got stolen. I got a Les Paul Custom, too, and it was also stolen. Six years ago, I bought a Korg M50 keyboard workstation, and I've been playing that exclusively since, for my own amusement. I don't know any musicians anymore.
I gave up on the dream of making records and getting on the radio. Now there is no radio format to play what I write, and I couldn't go on tour, as everything I've recorded was me playing all the instruments. The more I learned about the music industry, the less I wanted to be a part of it. It has screwed over a lot of people, and I couldn't be another one of them. I still play because I can. I don't know how to shut it off.
Mainly, I am committed to learning how to play songs I didn't think I could play. I have a whole arsenal of vintage keyboard sounds in the M50, and if I need a Fender Rhodes suitcase with Mutron wah and phase shifting, or a Hohner Clavinet or a Wurlitzer electric piano or any number of organ sounds, they're right here on a button. So I have a blast playing songs with instruments I could never have afforded to amass individually. I've spent the last few years trying to decipher the Donald Fagen Secret Chord Progression method. I've made some headway, but I'm never going to understand music on his level. In fact, he is one of the people who I hear playing and ask myself why I even bother. Robert Fripp is another.
The CD recording sounds so compressed by comparison. Something got lost in translation....
