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Old 02-24-2009, 04:42 AM   #916
Brinty
Avalon Senior Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Blackbutt, Queensland, Australia
Posts: 1,004
Default Re: _AVALON LOUNGE_ Open 24 hours

So, it's musical confession time is it? My sister who was six years younger than I, decided she wanted to play the piano. So our parents bought a piano and Eve had lessons for a few months. She got out of bed one morning and said she'd had enough of "scales and all that ****" and never touched it again.

The piano held one end of our carpet down for some years after that. It was in the house for maybe 12 years and I never even lifted the lid. Then one afternoon, I brought a friend home to listen to a new record I had just bought. This was back when 78s were the only discs you could buy.

When Bob walked into our lounge, he spied the piano and asked if he could play it. Well I said, "sure, go ahead while I get the record player set up." You could have knocked my socks off. Bob played that piano and almost made it talk. I asked where he had learned to play like that, and he told me he taught himself - that in fact he played by ear.

So we listened to the record. I went to turn it over to play the other side and dropped it, of course it shattered as only a 78 could. Bob then pointed out how to pick out a melody on the piano with the right hand and how to add pretty basic sort of cords with the left.

I was hooked. After a few weeks of perseverance I could knock out a fairly decent tune and was quite proud of my new talent. About a year after this, Bob called in again and we took turns at playing that old piano. Then Bob said, "do you remember this tune?" and started playing. I listened and said that it was familiar but I couldn't think of its name. He then floored me again when he said, "that's the tune on the record you played the first time I came here. Remember, you dropped it and it broke."

Well, I carried on playing piano by ear until I was introduced to a Lowrey organ in 1975. I thought I was in heaven. Finally, the damp got to the Lowrey and keys stopped working. But before that happened, we took that organ with us in the back of our pick-up truck everywhere we went.

We currently have a more modern Lowrey, an Elka organ, a Yamaha full size piano keyboard and a smaller Yamaha organ keyboard. I'm currently working on trying to get them all hooked together so Elaine and I can really cook up some good entertainment.

Isn't life strange futureyes? My main desire, from when I was a kid, was to play a piano accordion. Something I have never done.

What say we get together and swap our abilities?
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