Still Here, Still Playing

 

I recently sold my Yamaha PSR E453 (the one on top) and I'm getting a new PSS F30 (the one below the E453). It's like downgrading from a superbike to a moped. But sometimes, maybe a moped is all you really need 

The first time I saw a musical keyboard was probably in 1990-91, when I’d just started going to college, in Lucknow. There was this one time when I’d gone to my friend Shobhit’s house and there, for the first time, saw a small, compact Casio keyboard and immediately liked it very much. With all its lights, buttons, switches and fancy sounds, the little Casio looked quite cool and I absolutely loved it right away. I think that keyboard belonged to one of Shobhit’s elder brothers and I assumed it might be fairly expensive. So, while I wished I could have one too, I didn’t really imagine I’d be getting one anytime soon.

However, I soon got lucky beyond my wildest dreams. A few days after seeing that Casio keyboard at Shobhit’s house, I mentioned the whole thing to one of my best friends, Manish, and told him about how fascinated I was with that Casio and how I wished I could have one, so I could learn to play. Immediately, he said he had one too – his father had got one for him from the US – and that since he wasn’t really very keen on playing music, I could have it for as long as I wanted! The next time Manish came to my place – I was living with my grandparents at that time, since my father had been transferred to Bareilly and my parents had moved there – he got his keyboard along with him and handed it to me. I have to admit, I was very, very happy! This was also a small, compact keyboard, white, and every bit as cool as the one I’d seen at Shobhit’s house. However, I don’t remember if it was a Casio or a Yamaha – this was 35 years ago after all – but I think it may have been a Yamaha keyboard. 

With that keyboard, which Manish gave to me – and which I think I kept for almost two years – started my lifelong love for playing music. While I was certainly not exceptionally talented, I did have an ear for music and used to practice playing that little keyboard for 2-3 hours every day. For me, the process was magical – press certain keys in a certain sequence for a certain period of time, and familiar tunes would emerge – and tuning out the outside world, I’d remain lost in that magic for hours on end. It’s just as well, I suppose, that my grandparents had very kindly given me my own room and I did take care to keep the volume low, otherwise other people in the house might have gone mad because of my endless ‘practice’ sessions.

I did not enroll in music classes and never did learn formally and can’t read sheet music to this day. But then I enjoyed playing by the ear. Whatever song or piece of music I liked, I used to listen to it carefully, multiple times, hum the tune in my head, and would then play it on the keyboard. There was, of course, much trial and error to begin with, but with dogged persistence I soon got to the point where I could play the lead lines (without playing the chords) for any song fairly quickly.

Back then, in the early years, I had no idea of what chords were and only used my right hand to play the lead lines. It was only much later, when I moved to Bombay and bought a much bigger, much more advanced Yamaha synthesizer, that I started to try to understand the concept of chords and, with some improvisation, would often try to play the accompanying chords along with the lead tune as best as I could. With no formal training in music, playing chords has, for me, remained a process of trial and error and a lot of experimentation, with wildly varying degrees of success… :-D

Two years after Manish had given me his keyboard, I graduated from Lucknow University and it was time for me to move to Bareilly, where my parents were at that time. The keyboard that had served me so well, on which I had played hundreds of hours of music, went back to its rightful owner. However, within a few months of moving to Bareilly, I happened to go to Bombay for a week. There, with some money that my father had given to me, I bought a small, basic Casio keyboard (an SA-21) from the Heera Panna shopping complex and brought it back to Bareilly. That little Casio stayed with me for the next 7-8 years, even as I completed my post-graduation from Bareilly, moved to Baroda for my first job, then moved to Lucknow to set up my first business venture and then moved to Bombay to work with a computers magazine. Over the years, my playing technique improved a bit, though of course I wasn’t always able to practice regularly.

After moving to Bombay, I used to often think about saving some money to buy a bigger, more capable keyboard – a proper synthesizer from Korg, Roland or Yamaha. What I really should have done, perhaps, at that point was to invest some time and money in music classes – a good teacher might have helped me become a much better keyboard player. But what with a very long commute and the always-on pressure of work (excuses, I know…), I did not have time or the inclination to join classes. Spending money is the easiest thing to do, right? It’s easier than having the dedication and the commitment to properly learn something and invest time and effort in doing that. So, I decided to do just that – spend some money.

One day, after work, I went to the Furtados music store, which wasn’t too far from my office. There, I paid around Rs 18,000 (a fair chunk of money at that time, since this is the early-2000s we’re talking about) and got myself a nice, new Yamaha PSR 290 along with a height-adjustable stand on which I could keep it at home. I took a cab that day, rather than the usual dheemi local from VT to my house in CBD Belapur, New Bombay, and brought the Yamaha home. The amount I’d paid for that keyboard was more than half my monthly salary at the time and my mother, who was in Bombay with me for a few days, definitely wasn’t pleased with the purchase. She made her displeasure quite clear but, I have to admit, I couldn’t have been happier!

The shiny, new PSR looked cool and sounded way better than my old Casio (which it should have, since it also cost about 10 times as much!) but it did not do much to improve my playing skills – I was still barely an average player at best. But the new keyboard, with its vast array of features, did open up new avenues for me – things to experiment with, as well as trying to learn to understand and play chords. During the week, I used to play the keyboard for 30-40 minutes every day after coming back from work in the evening. And weekends meant longer practice sessions. The old Casio, in the meanwhile, went to a friend’s son, who was just beginning to learn to play the keyboard.

That Yamaha PSR lasted for around 14-15 years, after which it became a bit rundown – some keys stopped working and some controls would no longer operate the way they were supposed to. No complaints there, of course. Fifteen years is a long time and the PSR had served me well. It was time to get a new keyboard, even though by that time my interest levels in playing the keyboard had declined a fair bit – the pressures of everyday life had taken over and music had taken a distant second (or perhaps even third, fourth or fifth…) place in my list of priorities. Still, I’d always had a keyboard for almost 25 years by then and the thought of not having a musical keyboard at home, to play whenever I fancied, was difficult to deal with.

This time, I was based in Greater Noida and there are no stores here that sell musical instruments. Also, by this time, almost all my buying was already happening on Amazon. So, I ordered a new Yamaha keyboard online – a PSR E453. Much more advanced, more sophisticated, more all-around capable than my old PSR. And yet, much as I hate to admit it, I never really got on with the E453. It had everything – and probably more – that a keyboard player could ask for, but somehow I never enjoyed it as much as I had enjoyed playing the old PSR. Maybe it wasn’t the keyboard, maybe it was me. No, I think it was definitely me. I’d become older (physically) and very, very old, tired and worn-out (mentally), bogged down with the myriad troubles that life sometimes brings with it.

I had resigned from my full-time job at the end of 2017 and haven’t been able to find full-time work since then. My wife was diagnosed with cancer in the year 2020, received treatment and was doing okay – things were beginning to look okay. But in a life-shattering development, she was then diagnosed with a certain neurological condition – one that is quite rare, is currently not treatable and which may have, according to doctors, substantial long-term implications that we have to be prepared to deal with. My own health has declined over the years and I’m the only one who is to blame for that – I have not done what I needed to in order to remain fit and healthy, and now I’m bearing the consequences of that. There are also other issues in the family that have compounded our worries and it’s been an incredibly stressful environment overall.

In all of this, playing the keyboard took a distant back seat and the E453 had been, for the most part, left parked in a corner, hardly ever used, gathering dust – bearing mute testimony to the downturn my life has taken for the last few years. Gradually, as I grew disillusioned with everything and everyone – became bitter and depressed, lost hope and lost the will to even live anymore – I stopped playing the keyboard almost completely. And yet, I did not let it go – the keyboard remained in one corner of our living room, standing quiet and forlorn, waiting for someone to once again run their fingers over its keys and make it come alive with sound and music. The music had, however, gone out of my life. I simply did not want to play the keyboard anymore – there was no joy left in it for me.

Earlier this week, I gave it a lot of thought and finally decided to sell the Yamaha PSR E453. I was no longer interested in a large, fancy, complex keyboard with hundreds of settings and functions etc. I came to the conclusion that what I really wanted now was a smaller, lighter, simpler and much more compact keyboard – maybe even something like that old Casio SA-21, which I had in Bareilly in the early-1990s. Now, all I need and want is something very simple, which I can use to play along when I’m singing. Yes, I also sing. Or at least try to, though I know I’m not a great singer by any stretch of the imagination. But while my life has been completely wiped out in many ways, listening to old songs and sometimes singing along is the one small, bright spot that’s still left. And when I do sing, I often feel the need to have a small, light, portable keyboard with me, which I can use to play along with my singing.

And so, the E453 has been sold – a gentleman bought it from me for his 12-year-old daughter and I hope the keyboard brings her a great deal of joy and fulfillment. And in the meanwhile, I’ve again ordered a new keyboard for myself – the small, light and compact Yamaha PSS F30. Yamaha says it’s a very basic keyboard, meant for beginners. And that’s what I want to be – a beginner. I want to reboot my life, begin again and once more try to do things that used to make me so happy. Maybe this small new keyboard, which will hopefully be delivered to me in the next 10 days, will help me move on in life and learn to live again. I know, things are not going to be easy in the months and years to come. But maybe my wife and I will learn to deal with things and cope with whatever life chooses to throw at us.

And I can’t wait to start playing a keyboard again.