Project Spotlight #18: Early Keyboards

In the year 1986, Harry and Jason went to Brad's house a few times for Pheonix jam sessions. Harry would take his Korg DW-8000 synthesizer but Jason had no instrument to take (he only played piano at this point). So he received his birthday present early that fall, a portable Yamaha keyboard, so he could participate in the jams.

In addition to Pheonix, he also recorded his own solo music at home with the keyboard. He hooked a microphone to his stereo and put it next to the keyboard's speaker and recorded four tapes of songs this way.

The first tape he finished was a collection of Christmas songs called Merry Christmas to Me. He finished this first because he gave a couple copies out as Christmas gifts to various family members that year.

He also finished his first tape of non-Christmas songs before November of 1986. It was called The Deuce (named because it was tape number two). A few of the early songs on the tape were covers he enjoyed playing out of his piano books, but the rest were songs he wrote himself.

In 1987 he finished his third tape called Diversity au Troi, part of this title coming from the French class he took during the 1986-7 school year. These songs were a little more complicated. He even experimented with some layering by recording the first "track" on the left channel of the tape and then recording a second "track" on the right channel. He also experimented with multitrack recording be recording to one tape, then recording himself playing a second keyboard part while playing the first tape back on another tape deck.

It was some time in 1987 that he finished his fourth and last keyboard tape. It was titled Quadraphonic and contained more examples of experimental recording techniques.

It was in March of 1987 that he also recorded a tape called Songs to Enjoy. These were cover songs from his piano books including "Moon River", "Alley Cat", "Somewhere, My Love", and eight more.

In early 1988 Jason borrowed an electric guitar from a friend. Then he concentrated on guitar which led to the formation of the band The Two-Tones in early 1988. Thus the early period of keyboards came to an end.