One of the highlights of my week is my jazz music lessons with a fantastic musician named Brian Hayes.
Each week I bring my WX5 and he teaches me as he plays along on Guitar, Sax, Flute or Clarinet. I find it really enjoyable, and am continually amazed at his wonderful musicianship.
Late last year, Brian suggested we record our session. He played some tunes on his guitar, and got me to improvise on the WX5, playing whatever I wanted. I made lots of mistakes, but we decided to record it “as is”, and these songs are the result. We called the collection “Warts and All”.
Thinking of Lizzie
Elephant Blues
Cheeky Liquorice
Black Brassy Blues
Frightfully Flugel
Laid Back Fanfare
Morning Reed
Not Quite Danny
Saxsquito
Sunset Blue
For each song, I chose a different voice on the VL-70m synthesizer – the challenge being to select the most appropriate voice, and to play it in such a way that my style suites it. I find brass, clarinet and flute voices fairly easy. Sax voices are difficult to do well.
If you can look beyond my mistakes in these songs, I hope you can get an idea of how much fun this is!
