The two most famous keyboard solos performed by Tony Banks of Genesis are those in Cinema Show and In The Cage. To some, they are familiar in part from a medley that he often performs live in concert (with one additional brief motif from “Riding the Scree” sometimes thrown in for good measure).
I promised a week ago to try working on the In The Cage solo next, and it is coming along. And so last night I tried recording it a few times. One of the biggest challenges was keeping the left hand part in sync with the right, since I had to record them separately. At home I only have a small USB keyboard that I can’t split and which would probably not be long enough to split effectively for playing Genesis solos anyway. At some point I’ll get access to a larger splitable keyboard or multiple keyboards and try recording myself that way.
Just to include an academic point (for those who have no interest in Genesis unless it is the book rather than the band), one of the hardest parts to learn has been a portion of the solo that I tried to figure out by ear as a teenager, and “learned” incorrectly. Learning may be challenging and at times difficult, but when we have to unlearn first, that’s much, much harder.
This also gives me a chance to try embedding playable files in a blog post. We’ll see if this works…
The second recording might have been the best if the computer had not glitched up at times. I am really looking forward to Windows 7 – could it really be that Microsoft is going to make amends for Vista?
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