Reeves Piano and Synthesizer Music Album 22

Album 22 - 1986 Cover Art in Color as shown on the Reeves Motal Piano and Synthesizer Music Website

I had tried out the various synthesizers and similar stuff, Moog, Minimoog, KAT, ATX, Roland, Mellotron, etc., and they were all (very) expensive and very limited. Mostly you could only play two simultaneous notes and getting anything except a "synthesizer" sound out of them was almost impossible.

Then in 1986 I bought a new computer with an early Sound Blaster sound card. Roland had been championing a new Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) protocol that allowed digital instruments (synthesizers) to talk to each other. I added a cheap program that could read and write MIDI files and a FM synthesis module that would throw parameters at the sound card when triggered by a MIDI event.

VOILA!! I had a synthesizer that could play more than two notes at a time and that was affordable. I "borrowed" one of my kids' toy keyboards which had a MIDI socket on it and I was in business!

Well - sort of. The sound wasn't very good - the strings sounded more like the cat getting its tail stepped on than a Stradivarius - but Hey - it was a beginning.

I used a TEAC reel to reel 4 track tape drive with sound on sound capabilities to record the accompaniment from the computer speakers, then played along with my piano and I had a one man band. Unfortunately, one wrong note and you had to start the whole process over again. I was a virtuoso at playing wrong notes so this was a source of certain frustration.

But help was on it's way.

Reeves

PS The album photo not only celebrates my musical experience of 1986 but the return of the ultimate "rock star" comet, AKA Halley's Comet. It is the only short period comet that can potentially be seen twice in a human lifetime. If you're around, look for it's return in 2061.