Music

I've been singing for as long as I can remember and my love for the piano started when my parents bought a small baby grand piano for the house as my sister, Pam, was taking lessons in school (Milwaukee Public Schools - Hawley Road). She got through several grade levels and I thought played really well. I got the chance to take those same lessons when was in the second half of 4th grade, but unfortunately my training ended there because the family moved to Wauwatosa. In that one semester. I did do really well in the class, but technically I was cheating, though I didn't know it. It turned out I could play by ear and I already knew the songs ahead of time because Pam had played them all before!

One of my fondest memories is playing Heart and Soul with my sister, Pam. She played the left side while I played the right as I could already improvise. She would start playing her side which was my queue, no matter where I was in the house, to come to the piano.

For years I simply played the melody for some songs and played the songs I learned from that one semester ad nauseam. I think I was in 11th grade when I learned that Steve Allen simply played by ear, and he could just play a tune almost automatically. How cool was that? I knew from the basics that you normally play the melody of a song on your right hand and the chords on the left. I could play a melody with ease, but the corresponding chord was often a complete mystery.

That mystery got solved by accident. I bought a piano book of tunes by the Carpenters and just told myself I would try to read the notes. I was especially keen on being able to play Rainy Days and Mondays which turned out to be an exercise in frustration. But as I looked they had the guitar chords listed along with the music. Couldn't I just play those chords if only I knew how to form them? It didn't take me long to figure out the scheme! For a long time I thought I had discovered this big secret, but of course what I had really done is simply figured out how to play by lead sheet. From then on, all I needed was a fake book which is simply a collection of lead sheets. 

Growing up, though we had a piano, it was often unplayable because it sat in the living room which was also the TV room and that TV always had priority. I really started to learn how to play in the summer of 1976 when a summer job earned me ehough money to by a used 65 key electronic piano from Lo Duca Bros in Milwaukee. It was really an awful instrument because it didn't have touch sensitive keys, play every note at the same volume, just like an organ. But it had two big features: volume control and headphones for absolute privacy so I could play whenever I wanted. 2 years later, also with money earned through a summer job, I purchased a Rhodes Mark I Stage Piano. This is not designed to reproduce the true sound of an acoustic piano, but it had a nice sound and the keys were touch sensitive. Shortly after I purchased my first house I bought a 5'8" Grand Piano from Sherman Clay. Though it was labeled Sherman Clay, it was actually manufactured by Daewoo of South Korea. This could hardly be called a great instrument, but it was a real piano and I was euphoric to have it. I would have that piano for 12 years when I purchased a used Yamaha C7 (7'6") Grand Piano. Then in 2007 I traded that C7 for a brand new Yamaha CFIIIS (9') Concert Grand Piano with a Disklavier recording / player piano. In the Gene's Piano section you can hear recordings made on the C7 and CFIIIS pianos.

Two views of the Yamaha CFSIII 9'0" Concert Grand Piano in the living room in Arizona.

 

The Music