Back in the day I’m talking late 90s, I convinced the powers that be of my local Catholic church to buy a Korg X3 synthesiser workstation type thing, complete with speakers, mics, essentially for the choir, it was basically because I wanted to use it for my own music projects. They agreed. My offer to them in return was I would orchestrate and record all 799 hymns in their celebration hymnal for their choir leader to be able to load up and use during mass or whichever music based performance they were performing for. The X3 allows 16 track recording on to floppy disk and held between 5 and 10 recordings. I would teach the choir leader how to use the keyboard obviously and so, true to my word I waded my way through all that was available and wanted for future use. Please note there is in fact 800 hymns in the hymnal at the church I’m talking about (or there was, I’ve not attended in many years), the 800th hymn right at the back of the book was in fact the national anthem, I most likely recorded that too, though that’s easier done live and on the spot if you have an organist (or similar/compatible) because people tend to be quite passionate about and therefore have a tendency to do things at their own speed regardless of everyone around them, so it sometimes requires direction, quite often by the priest himself or the choir master. Anyway, Literally this week based on nostalgia I managed to source and purchase the exact same keyboard for myself. Lovely bit of kit. I will now attempt to attach a recording of a song I wrote and recorded back in I imagine c1998. Now yes, it does sound like something from amateur panto or indeed a sitcom or similar but was originally intended for a girl who I had a thing for, we never did end up together but I do hope it wasn’t this music which helped her to decide to reject me. Judge for yourself, it was called (for want of a better title) “If we just stood back”

Since that, I added some orchestration to my first musical – “80 Days The Musical” which you can hear on the soundtrack by watching Eighty Days – The Musical

So long story short, in a fit of nostalgia, I decided seeing as I’ve been in a creative mood for some time now that I’d revisit my roots by getting my own Korg X3 and not too soon! The main reason? I’m scoring my 4th musical project, called “The Ghosts of Paris“(l’avoir), but more on that another time.