Hey Mac, we must be of the same generation !

I'm envious of you. I was never part of any band, but contended myself to playing recorder or flute of easy Mozart pieces or slower parts of Brandenburg Concertos, using a Wollensak tape recorder with playback set to 1/2 speed. The music dropped an octave and was half the tempo. Later on, when I had saved up money from cutting grass, snow shoveling, and a summer job working at Bond's Clothing (a men's clothing store) on Times Square, to graduate to a Tandberg tape recorder. It was dream-come-true technology for me.

More than 20 years later, I bought a used alto saxophone from a classified ad, repaired it, and learned to play it on my own. That's when I discovered Music-Minus-One, and Jamie Aebersold records. Sometime later, I came across Band-in-a-Box, at a NAMM (National Association of Music Manufacturers) show in Chicago (McCormick Place). It was one of the first DOS versions. I was in heaven, even though, these early versions sounded very mechanical and lo-fi compared to todays versions with Real Tracks. Nonetheless, I could now play songs at any tempo with a lot of instrumentation choices, including substituting harpsichord for the piano. I put chord progressions and melodies from hundreds of songs from various Fake Books, into BnB format. This was way before the internet.

Some years later I heard about the Yamaha WX7 windcontroller and bought one, but was very disappointed with the sounds produced with the TXZ1. It was not much better than a kazoo. Time went by and I discovered the EWI-3020 & 3030 interface box which had far better sounds, went on to various hardware synths (JV-1080, other Roland boxes), got Patchman JV-1080 sounds which were really good, then I discovered the Ketron SD2 (which is still the best-for-the-money hardware synth I think). Finally I found samplemodeling virtual instruments which were even better than anything I had dared to imagine. Fantastic sound authenticity, super low latency, and special features just for windcontroller users. I had arrived in heaven and I love it! I can't play anywhere as well as many of the musician on these forums, but when it comes to passion and enjoyment I'm up there with the best of them smile


Last edited by Dan Tong; 01/01/14 08:38 PM. Reason: typos
Dan

https://soundcloud.com/dstong