Keyboard Replacement

After the unfortunate refusal of my keyboard to play all of the notes it should the other week, I've decided to have an early Christmas present!

It was looking extremely like a duff printed circuit board. The Korg keyboard was not exactly intuitive to use and I'd found it very hard to get to grips with.

The new one is another Yamaha and whilst it's totally different than the old one in terms of controls, at least it's easy to find your way around.

I've managed to get it to play all the backings we use in the band. The only thing I haven't found yet and suspect I may not(!) is how to turn off the bass for when Bob is with us. It may well have such a feature for music recorded on it but there seems to be no way of taking it off the pre-recorded midi files I recorded on the PSR 630. There was a separate control file that had a switch in it for that and the new keyboard doesn't recognise the control file. Could be a lot of work for me!

But the progress I made in just one afternoon was excellent and a heck of a relief after struggling with the Korg.

Birthday Booking in Freckleton

We had a bit of help from some enthusiastic singers last night as David and I performed at a 40th birthday party in Freckleton.

An interesting gig - the SatNav took us down some narrow country roads to get there and then once we were playing the keyboard decided not to let me use several keys - which meant we had to rely on the pre-recorded keyboard sounds whilst I played guitar almost exclusively during the night.

I now need to find a spot with at least a fortnight free to get it repaired and am wondering whether to make my Christmas present this year a somewhat emergency purchase! The Korg doesn't like the files from the Yamaha so will have to plump for another Yamaha.

Whichever way I go, it will mean learning a whole new set of procedures for recording and style setting.

A Winter's Tale

Yes I know it's only September!

That's the title of the second Christmas song we are doing for the Billy Fury web site this December.

A Winter's Tale was a hit for David Essex in the days when he had hair on his shoulders. Well... so did I! None on my head, but there was some on my shoulders...

I've used the Korg keyboard on this one and it will be our first track using the Korg rather than the Yamaha. Very orchestral and quite different to our normal stuff. Moya! Have you got your Billy alerts tuned in? It will be BILLYant!!!