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#197852 - 08/22/03 06:43 AM A great day with Joe Waters...
travlin'easy Offline
Senior Member

Registered: 12/08/02
Posts: 15556
Loc: Forest Hill, MD USA
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to meet with Joe Waters and his lovely wife at his northern Virginia home. They are wonderful, gracious people, welcomed me into their home and invited me to stay for a sumptuous steak dinner with all the trimmings.

Joe is an excellent musician and extremely tallented. His keyboard skills are only surpassed by his computer knowledge and dedication to his wonderful site. We spent lots of time talking about different ways to make the site somewhat more informative, he showed me how to easily modify styles and I learned a lot. Later, we played a few songs, sang a few country tunes and before I knew it, eight hours had quickly passed. It was a wonderful visit and I hope Joe and his charming wife can find time to make the 2-1/2 hour drive to the frozen north and visit the Diamond Ranch.

Thanks again Joe for all your help and for creating www.psrtutorial.com

Gary

[This message has been edited by travlin'easy (edited 08-22-2003).]
_________________________
PSR-S950, TC Helicon Harmony-M, Digitech VR, Samson Q7, Sennheiser E855, Custom Console, and lots of other silly stuff!

K+E=W (Knowledge Plus Experience = Wisdom.)

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#197853 - 08/22/03 06:51 AM Re: A great day with Joe Waters...
Dnj Offline
Senior Member

Registered: 09/21/00
Posts: 43703
Gary,

Sounds like a good time was had by all. Getting together with other musicians is one of my favorite pleasures. I urge everyone here on the SZ to make an attampt to do it for sure!

Mmmmmmmmmmmm Steak ....

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#197854 - 08/22/03 07:44 AM Re: A great day with Joe Waters...
AlexGreen Offline
Member

Registered: 05/07/00
Posts: 187
Loc: Beachwood NJ USA
To do what Joe Waters has done for all PSR players and would be players by creating and maintaining his truly outstanding PSR site makes for a very special person and Joe is just that.

As Gary said he is such a gracious person and that come across his site when you pay him a visit for he does this without any hint of compensation in any form.

Joe you are one in a million.

Alex

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#197855 - 08/22/03 07:46 AM Re: A great day with Joe Waters...
Dnj Offline
Senior Member

Registered: 09/21/00
Posts: 43703
Alex,,

Are you still playing the KN7000? Or a PSR2100?

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#197856 - 08/23/03 07:13 AM Re: A great day with Joe Waters...
AlexGreen Offline
Member

Registered: 05/07/00
Posts: 187
Loc: Beachwood NJ USA
Hi Donny.

I am mostly on the 7000 but do jump on the 2000 occasionally. Great keyboard.

I am going to be playing the 2000 at Renaissance in September at a block party.

Do you still play there on Sunday afternoons at the Gazebo?

Play music every day.
Alex

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#197857 - 08/23/03 08:40 AM Re: A great day with Joe Waters...
Dnj Offline
Senior Member

Registered: 09/21/00
Posts: 43703
Hi Alex...

Good to hear your enjoying both Kb's...
I just finished performing at the Gazebo for the summer, it was lots of fun.

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#197858 - 08/23/03 10:23 PM Re: A great day with Joe Waters...
Joe Waters Offline
Member

Registered: 01/08/01
Posts: 225
Loc: Sterling, VA USA
I saw Gary's post at the psrtutorial forum last night and I posted a reply there. I didn't see the post here until this evening. Let me reproduce my reply, which was entitled "Renaissance Man", in this forum as well:
---------

After yesterday's wonderful visit by Gary, it was difficult to go back to a regular day of work, but I did. I didn't get a chance to check the forum until this evening, when I spotted Gary's note. You all know Gary, not only from his posts in this and other forums, but also from the wildly popular "Gig Disks" he created. But now, let me tell you the rest of the story about this modern day "Renaissance" man.

Among his many professions, Gary is, of course, a performer. And when he sat down at my PSR-2100 to try out this PSR-2000 clone, he was surrounded by my collection of some 11,000 songs in a couple dozen different fake books. He didn't need any of it. I swear he must have had most of the song library tucked away in his head. No matter what song title I, or Joyce, tossed his way, he could not only play it, he could sing it complete with all the lyrics.

But Gary can not only drive this car, he can also tune it up and change the tires. He told me about the "box" he built Donny to help him put all the components of his rig together in a convenient on-stage assembly, about how he had redone his own assembly with newer more lightweight parts, about a footswitch assembly he had put together for ??? -- I already forget. Of course, he also wrote the lesson on how to record your performances to an MP3 file and then onto CDs. Gary understands the electronics of this environment far better than I could ever hope (or want) to. This led me to speculate about perhaps adding a section at the tutorial for home handymen that would give some schematics or building plans for those hobbiests out there who like to put things together.

But Gary's expertise is not just music related. As he told me about being his own general contractor when building his house a couple of decades ago, he mentioned that he had done his own landscaping. What was that? Landscaping! Here was an opportunity I didn't want to miss. We have a sump pump that goes almost non-stop and my wife (who really is the commander in this household) had been talking to various people about what the cause might be and how to fix it. I figured I'd better get Gary in talking to Joyce! She relayed our story and Gary really was a font of knowledge. After some inspections around the house, he had diagnosed the problem and laid out some very sensible plans on how we could get the problem fixed (which had to do with the drainage patterns around the house and how to fix them.) I"ll have to make sure I don't misplace that napkin! That was a very pleasant bonus!

Some of you may know that Gary is the author of quite a few outdoorsman / hunting / fishing columns. I knew he wrote a fishing column for the Washington Post -- I wasn't aware, however, that he also wrote columns, all different, for a couple dozen additional publications. I was also surprised to learn over lunch, that Gary had spent many years writing a cooking column. Gary keeps not only lyrics in his head, but countless recipes as well. He was able to give Joyce several cheesecake receipes, including all ingredients, right off the top of his head. In fact, she described a cake, which she had many years ago at a party, that she loved and had always been meaning to get the recipe for. From her description of the color, taste and texture, he was able to give her a pretty good guess at how the cake was made! I jokingly commented that he had enough cheesecake recipes to make a cookbook! It turns out, he does! Gary said he had some 25 cheesecake receipies -- hey! maybe we need a PSR Performer cookbook section ??? -- maybe not quite enough to put out a cheesecake cook book, but getting there. (Of course, Joyce had just come back from the grocery store where she had purchased for dessert that evening, you guessed it, a cheesecake! Oh, well.)

On the day of Gary's visit, I had just about completed the update of my fake book index. Of course, knowing what "book" a song can be found in is not very useful to those players who, like Gary, play by ear. So we also discussed what other infromation would be useful to include in a music finder database. For non-book players, it seems putting performer information, as well as song year, could be useful. Using the Search facility, one could then quickly find all the song records of Frank Sinatra hits, or Sonny & Cher, or the Temptations, etc. Or all the songs in the database from the 1950s or the 1970s. You get the idea.

It was a terrific visit, Gary. I'll look forward to visiting your "estate" some time. In the meantime, let's see, how many of those ideas can I start working on .....
_________________________
Joe Waters
http:\\psrtutorial.com

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