It was too good to be true . . . .

Mister Santa Claus had seen fit that I receive a new toy for Christmas since I'd been such a good boy during the past year. I'd asked Santa for a CD recorder so that I'd at least be enabled to transfer my old audio (cassette) recordings to digital and also record my live audio dilly-dallyings to digital.

The main reason I bought the CD recorder was, well Hell, . . I'll just tell you!

The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is sort of THE Olympics of piano competitions and it's held each year in, of all places, Fort Worth, Texas. There was even a movie made about it in 1980 starring Amy Irving and Richard Dreyfus titled, "The Competition".

I hated that movie because Amy Irving's character won the competition by playing Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto. She blew Richard Dreyfus out of the water during the 3rd movement of Prokofiev's Piano Concerto.

I never got past the opening of the first movement of that damn thing, even though my piano professor thought I could compete with it.

Anyway, the Van Cliburn has opened up an amateur division for people over 35 years old who are not professional pianist. Perfect.

So, yeah, I want to compete in it. I'm definitely over 35, but I know I play better now than I did back when I was in college.

(At least I won't be performing while on "yellow mollies" like we did back in college in 1979. )

I have to submit a fifteen minute recording of myself playing examples of the four musical eras: (1) Baroque (2) Classical (3) Romantic (4) Modern

Anyway, I bought this new CD recorder and it didn't work. I needed it so that I could submit the required fifteen minute audition recording for the Van Cliburn.

I was hoping to play from my digital piano straight into my new digital recorder. Back when I was a young, lithe, piano-competing-college-age-machine, all you did was play in your teacher's studio onto a cassette recorder and he'd send it it.

I thought I could do the same with the CD recorder nowadays.

Boy, was I wrong.

I didn't have the right kind of compact disc Cd's.

I needed "audio" CD's. Or audio CD-RW's. I didn't know that.

Okay. That's fine.

Now, apparently, my new CD recorder couldn't record, namby-pamby, straight away from my digital piano. I seem to require an additional receiver-player in which to input my piano which will record my output from the piano (which will actually be out-putted into the CD recorder. Got that?).

When I got this thing, I just KNEW it wouldn't be that easy!

Being "that easy" never is.

But here's a benefit. I was forced to dig out lots and lots of cassette recordings of myself playing the piano. And, you know? There's some pretty good stuff there.

Once I obtain a receiver/player-type-thing, I'll be able to post some recordings on here for you all to listen to.

I doubt it. It'll probably take another gazillion dollars worth of equipment.

It always does.