I Heart Yamaha

When I’m writing music I usually set up a studio somewhere around the house with whatever equipment I need. At the moment it’s in the spare room and I’m using my most rare and valuable keyboard, a Yamaha VL1. It is a physical modelling synthesiser, great for woodwind sounds, and was so expensive (£4000 in 1994!) when they brought it out that they didn’t sell very many at all. You hardly ever see them for sale but I was lucky enough to be feeling rather flush when my friend Rick Chew decided to sell his about ten years ago. I don’t use it very often and about five years ago I knocked it off its stand and cracked the LCD screen. I thought it was doomed but the brilliant people at the Yamaha Music service department shipped over the last remaining spare screen from their head office in Japan.
Anyway, jump forward to yesterday. It’s my little daughter Amelia’s birthday party. Children all over the house. Boys. One of them comes and says that he wants to show me something that one of the other boys (who shall remain nameless) has done. I go into the spare room and there, on the floor, is my precious VL1, shards of broken keys lying alongside. I felt faint and sick, not metaphorically but actually like being sick. I didn’t shout at anyone but I was grieving all night.
This morning I phoned up the Yamaha spares department with not much hope in my heart. “Which keys do you need?” said the woman, “An F and a G? We have them both in stock, £3.25 each.” I couldn’t believe it. I was so overjoyed I could barely contain myself. So hooray for Yamaha and don’t forget when you’re shopping that it sometimes pays to spend.