Hello from Minneapolis, the city of lakes and of course, the hometown of Prince!
Living here, it was fairly common to see Prince out and about. In his hey day he owned a club here called Glam Slam where he would often make surprise appearances to jam up on stage. That was always a thrill, but a bigger thrill was getting into the after hours party at his Paisley Park Studios. At one such party, usually held in a small party room with a dance floor no bigger than 30x30 foot, Prince showed up at the DJ stand to spin some records. He chose, not his own music, but records of other artists he admired. There were only about 35 guests total at this party and I had the hots for one of them - a girl in a polka-dot dress. Chairs were arranged around the dance floor as if we were back in high school, and my polka-dot girl was sitting by herself, as conspicuously as possible, in Prince's direct line of sight. She had a sound strategy and Prince was close enough to notice her. Would he take the bait? Well, before she could ever know, yours truly barged into her fairy tale to ask her to dance. With a disappointed look, she tilted up her nose up in the air, gave her head a quick side-to-side shake and turned away. It was clear, as I sheepishly walked away, I was not her prince and she would not be my princess. Or would she??? Not two songs later, with the dance floor clear, Prince put a record on, grabbed a girl and took her out for a dance. I knew this was my chance to redeem myself. So I whisked my back in front of miss polka-dot and once again asked her to dance. This time her expression was gleeful and the nod of her head was up and down. So out on the dance floor we went. And there we were - just four of us out on the dance floor - I, with the polka-dot girl and Prince with his girl.. To this day, I’m pretty sure Prince got that dance move from me.. - just kidding of course… 
After Prince’s death, a local radio station played his every one of his songs from A to Z. I recall it lasted something like 27 hours. I wasn’t much of a Prince music fan, but it was fascinating listening to this broadcast. In his early and obscure songs, every so often I would hear one of my Korg or Roland patches. It made me think of what an unusual time it was in the 80’s when keyboards suddenly became affordable with amazing sounds, such that everyone from huge megastars to lowly folks like me in basements were all working off of a fairly limited collection of patches.
Although I am very much an amature musician, I’ve always loved to sit down at the piano to compose simple melodies. Without the advent of MIDI, my musical interest would probably never have gone beyond the an occasional sitting at the family piano. But MIDI gave everybody the ability to produce a song from start to finish. And when you popped your first finished production into your car stereo you were hooked.
My first keyboard was the Roland D-50 and my first computer was the Atari - the first computer with built-in MIDI ports. With Notator as my sequencer and the D-50 as my controller, I began buying sound modules - a Roland JV1080 and Korg M3r.
Incidentally, I bought them from a humble on-off store called The Sound of Music in Roseville, MN. Those of us living in the States all know of the giant retailer, Guitar Centers. But I’m pretty sure most of you do not know that they used to be The Sound of Music. The story goes like this.. One summer day I was on my evening shift at my job as a CAD operator/mechanical designer for 3M (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing) - the company that invented sand paper, masking tape, magnetic recording tape and Post-It Notes, among other things. We got a tornado warning announcement over the PA and were told to immediately go down to the basement. So I and several workmates immediately to roof for a front row seat. Off in the distance, in Roseville, we could see the tornado swirling around, and along with it, the first and only Target store, and my beloved Sound of Music store. They were both completely destroyed. However, armed with the motto of never letting a good disaster go to waste (or something like that), a chunk of insurance money, both companies demonstrated to business students what is known as leverage.
I digress… My next two purchases were sound modules that quickly became favorites: the Kurzweil 1000PX and 1000GX. I loved these modules! The sounds, albeit 14 bit, were the most realistic pianos and acoustic guitars my inexperienced ears had ever heard. Of course, Sound of Music always let its customers finagle a good price to make us feel less guilty about pulling out our credit cards.
About a year ago, I retired the my trusty D-50 and significantly upgraded to the Kurzweil Forte. I did a fair amount of research and decided I really wanted more than anything the truest piano and string sounds I could find. It was easy to choose Kurzweil, but difficult to choose between the PC3 and Forte. The Forte had the humongous flash memory and large LCD, but the PC3 had tons more patches, a sequencer, and riffs. Ultimately, I chose the Forte after a conversation with a Kurzweil techie who explained to me that the forte had all of the raw sounds of the PC3 and some of those even resampled to take advantage of its much more lavish, 16GB, memory capacity.
I love the sound quality of the Forte, but I really wish it had a DAW plug-in for Logic, and conversely, a simple record button for when I need to capture a melody line before it slips from brain as I struggle to get Logic booted - let alone get it talking to the Forte. I would be happiest with the latter.
When I see the vast list of string sounds contained in the PC3, I get very jealous.. That’s why I’m here. I would love to get some of those sounds. I’m not yet sure what technical hurdles I will encounter trying to load PC3 programs onto my Forte, but from what I’ve read it’s possible and keeps getting easier. My fingers are crossed.
I’m glad to be part of this community!
