I took up the electric guitar at the age of 15, and after 2 or 3 years was doing occasional gigs for which I got paid! When I started working for the BBC then I could no longer play very much with a band, as I worked so much in the evenings. (I do remember playing for a deb's ball in Dorking - playing the blues in a cellar, while the orchestra played upstairs in the ballroom!) But I had plenty of chance to practice, and when I left London to work for the Post Office I started playing in public as often as I wanted. I then took up pedal steel guitar, and started playing in several bands, playing rock music, country music, jazz and dance music. I had made a strategy decision not to become a professional musician, as I had a full time job and was doing electronic repairs as well as my music making!

This activity was maintained until about 12 years ago, when I became disillusioned with smoky night clubs, carrying gear, and late nights, and stopped regular playing altogether. Along the way I did a little session work for local radio, and took up the "Spanish" guitar. I still play electric guitar at home, but haven't played in public for about 5 years. I don't miss the gigging, but I would quite like to play with other musicians occasionally - in smoke free conditions!

When I retired (nearly 2 years ago, now - how time flies when you are enjoying yourself...), I took up piano. 2nd December I took my Grade 3 exam, which is the level of about the average 10-year old! (I await the result with some trepidation....) I have an excellent piano teacher who was an examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music in his spare time, and can strike fear into me with a glance! ("Have you been practicing your scales?" "N-N-N-No, Donald".) He is a wonderful character who ran the City of London Choir for decades - with a rod of iron, I'm sure. As an experienced classical musician, with anecdotes about everybody from Andrew Lloyd-Webber's father to Leslie Garrett, his musical life has been very different from mine, and my piano lessons are quite an eventful time for both of us! He has difficulty in reconciling my knowledge of music by less popular composers such as Herbert Howells, Ligeti, Finzi, Cage and Charles Ives, with my inability to play quite simple pieces on the piano. I have difficulty in understanding how he can't recognise my embryo masterpieces as more than simple errors of judgement! Ah, well, back to the exercises...

I now play mostly piano and Spanish guitar at home, but it will take a long time for me to become as comfortable on the piano as I am on the guitar.

I have a Gateway P5-60 PC with Ensoniq Soundscape sound card. I use a Roland GR-09 synthesiser with an Antoria guitar as my MIDI input device, being a guitarist rather than a keyboard player. I am using Mastertracks Pro 6 sequencer, from Passport.

I had some trouble using my Ensoniq card with the Roland as MIDI input; this was mostly due to poor documentation from Gateway (and Ensoniq, come to that), but it's O.K. now.

I have a number of other guitars, including a Fender 2000 double-necked pedal guitar and a Takamine Hirade "classical" guitar, which gets the most playing. I used to have quite a lot of guitars, but now I am down to 5 and a mandolin. A few miles from where I live, a luthier called Andy Manson has a workshop; I would love to be able to ask him to make me an instrument, but I need to win the lottery first.... I do have a few bits including some 30-year old necks, waiting for me to make my own!

I have started collecting MIDI files from various magazines and from the net, and would like to carry out an analysis of the musicality of some of them. Presumably, most are accurate performances of the music as written, and yet some sound - to put it bluntly - fairly dreadful. Although I recognize that some of this is in the sound - i.e. pianos that don't sound like real pianos - much of the musicality would seem to be inherent in the amount of deviation from the written music which the performer applies. The corollary for this is that, by careful notation, it is possible to compose and perform great music - in the sense of the Goldberg Variations as performed by Glen Gould, say, - on the computer.

I will let everyone know when I find the true source of musical expression!

In the meantime, my first sound sample is an audio recording of a MIDI-generated contrary motion chromatic scale played across the full MIDI note range, on tubular bells. I am fascinated by the ending, which is probably due to aliasing of the tubular bell synthesis on my sound card. Try it (150k), and let me know what you think.

I will put in some of my compositions, here, when I get round to it, there are some in my unusual musical ideas page!

I have found a useful GM/GS description, which has tidied up some loose ends for me.

Copyright © 1996 Roger Yeates
Most recent revision 2 December 1996