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vinito

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About vinito

  • Birthday 01/01/1964

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  • Location
    Kansas
  1. Thanks Lindaru. This evening I have been working on getting Green Onions worked out. Probably a cliche' tune, but if Booker T. can still enjoy it after a hundred years, I won't feel bad at all about still digging it either. I never played it before, so it's new to my fingers if not my ears. Come to think of it, it seems that maybe another one or two Booker T. and the MGs tunes might be a good intro to my learning at this point. Boy am I rusty. I never was too skilled on keyboard, but as life tends to do before you know it, I figure I have been estranged from music for over a decade now and it sure shows. But progress is happening regardless and I have to say, it's pretty cool to hear even my rough attempts at Green Onions coming out of the speakers. This little SK1 just sounds great to me. One tune and three sets of pentatonic and blues scales seems enough for me to be working on at the moment. So far it appears my brain might still have a little plasticity left after all. This is going to be fun I think.
  2. Hey kids. I say that because I have the oldness enough to be so bold. I've been lurking here for a few weeks. I don't have much to offer, but I may try anyway from time to time. Back when I was younger I was a musician and woodwind teacher. I fiddled with keyboards now and then, and indeed cut my teeth in a very half-hearted way on the piano for a couple years when I was in the single digits. I found the one-note-at-a-time thing with the clarinet so much easier to deal with that I got lazy and gave up the piano . So back then my hero was Keith Emerson and in fact my first concert in life was ELP (Welcome Back ...) as a 10-year-old I think. But even though I loved that stuff so much, I never figured out how to bridge the gap between the stuff I was trying to read and the stuff that would be funner (for me) to play. Just ignorant about how to start, so off this other direction I went. Anyway, long story longer, today I make a better living working in the industrial mechanical field and finally earn enough to buy a decent axe, so I thought I might take a stab at keyboards again. This time my goal is simply to get enough in my fingers to be able to play barely convincing enough with others to make it through some simple tunes (i.e. not Karn Evil 9) and maybe even improvise a solo here and there. In other words, no setting the world on fire but rather just having a little fun. So I picked up a Hammond SK1 and I love how it feels and the sounds are just superb to my ears. In the past I bought and still have a DX7 and a Korg 01W that I fiddled with a bit. They are "loaned out" and I could get either back easy enough, but I kind of had a jones for the Hammond sound and action anyway so I rationalized the expense and figured I'd just bite the bullet and make the investment. I know that for my skill level, about anything with full size keys would be adequate, but I have been around B3's in the past and this thing feels much more like it did. The main point is I've found that hearing a good sound when I press those keys adds some amount of inspiration to spend a bit more time in front of the thing, so I don't mind being just a hack with such a nice instrument. I'm probably a little better player than I make it sound. Being a trained musician I know what a good player is and isn't and I was sooo much better on clarinet and sax that I kind of beat up on my keyboard abilities. But I'm not much - trust me. Anyway, it's been fun for the week I've had with it so far and I want to just spend consistent time on it for a while and see how far I can get in this round. There is one obvious difference this time - I'm picking tunes that I always liked and exercises that support them and it may seem strange, but it's kind of a whole different set of tools than what I studied before. By the way, I'm kind of a geek and know myself well enough to know that I'll want to fiddle with a 2nd manual at some point. I've already scrounged and found a Hammond XK2 parted out for dirt cheap that I'm hoping to DIY a MIDI controller to accomplish that. Should be cool with similar keybed and action. I can make a tight little rig with that hopefully and still grab the SK1 by itself for super easy transport when the need arises. I'll probably have questions on this project. I'll probably have tons of questions on everything. Anyways, that's my extremely verbose intro. I'm enjoying the posts here a lot.
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