Hello everyone. My music non-career started with playing violin in 4th grade. I soon got a VL-Tone for Christmas. I had a great time picking up melodies by ear from the radio. Then a couple years later I got a Casio MT-40. I actually played a "gig" with these two "instruments". My dad helped me make a plexiglass keyboard stand that held both of them. I remember one of the songs we covered was by Aldo Nova (anyone remember them?). I guess this was 7th grade or so.
Around 8th grade I got my first "real" keyboard, a Poly-800. Chuck Leavell came round to our local music store (Lentine's) to demo the instrument. I had to have one after seeing that. The highlight of my music career at this time was playing "Jump" with a high school band at a talent show. We won, of course... how can you go wrong with Jump. I thought I was pretty cool, hanging out with these seniors while I was just a chubby 13 year old.
In 9th & 10th grade, I was playing with a country band, doubling on fiddle. I don't know how I got into these bars, but they let me. Many were just short of having the chickenwire on the stage. I got a Mark II Rhodes with extremely stiff action. I didn't know you could fix that, so I just banged on it with two hands, often two fingers on one key to get enough velocity. It did a number on my playing style... I'm still stuck with a bizarre fingering style to this day because of that stiff Rhodes.
Later in high school, I got a DX-100. At one point, I had a buddy who had a Minimoog. He really liked my DX-100, and suggested that we trade. I told him I had to think about it. About this time, I played with a rock cover band that played 60s-70s tunes.
I got a Korg M1 right out of high school, and played with a band that did oldies (1950 to about 1963). This was a real musical education, as I learned about Fats Domino, Johnnie Johnson, etc. I used a series of piano modules in place of the lousy M1 piano sound: first a Yamaha EMT-10 module, then a Emu Proformance, and finally a Kurzweil Micro Piano.
Then I got my beloved ASR-10. I had the zip drive SCSI and all. It was a great keyboard. By this point I was playing with 2 or 3 bands, country, rock, a little blues/jazz.
I had a Yamaha CP-60M for a while. I regret selling it more than any other piece of gear.
Now that I'm a 40-something with a decent day job (college professor), I am fulfilling my gear wishes. I have a couple Wurlitzer EPs, a Super Continental that needs work, various controller keyboards, Omnichord, softsynths & Macbook, etc. My latest acquisition tops them all: the A-100 you see in my avatar.
These days I am playing with a Zydeco/Cajun band, a country-rock band, and a NOLA funk project that is just getting off the ground. My keyboard of choice has been the NE2 for the last 6 years or so.
