Roy Beardmore

Roy's Musical Background

I was born in Stoke-on-Trent, England but I am now retired and living in the north of Wales. I had piano lessons for several months when I was a young boy, and it was enough for me to get familiar with the basics of reading music and playing the piano.

As a teenager during the 1960's, I used to play the pop music of the time on the family upright piano, mainly by ear but sometimes using sheet music. I believe my piano playing style was defined by bashing out this pop music by ear during these teenage years. At this time I also tried to teach myself to play the guitar. However, I never managed to get my short fingers to bridge properly and also got into the bad habit of some lazy, unconventional chord fingering, so my guitar playing never really progressed very far.

From the late 1970's and through the 1980's, I had a succession of cheap, Italian home organs from unfamiliar manufacturers until, around 1990, I bought a Yamaha Electone HS-4. I had this for several years until the end of the 1990's when I bought my first arranger, a General Music WK-4 workstation arranger. However, I always yearned to go back to playing a piano, so I bought a very cheap portable electric piano to go with the GM WK-4.

I loved the GEM WK-4 and, in my opinion, it had an advanced specification for that period and was more than a match for the top of the range competitive products of the time from the more popular manufacturers. Following the WK-4, I had a Yamaha PSR-3000 and Yamaha P-85 digital piano, which I also used as a basic MIDI master keyboard with the PSR3000. I continued to hold on to my WK-4 until I eventually gave it away to a good home a few years later.

Following retirement from the chemical/lubricants industry at the end of 2014, the PSR-3000 + P-85 was replaced by my current keyboards, a Tyros 5-76 + Roland FA08, which again doubles as a MIDI master keyboard for playing main piano through the Tyros. Although I bought the Yamaha Tyros 5 at the end of 2014, it was basically stored in its box for over 12 months whilst I moved house, so it was only really in 2016 that I got around to setting it up and starting to play it.

I am purely an amateur, playing at home as a hobby for my own pleasure and enjoyment. I play both by ear and from sheet music, and I try to tackle various types of music styles and arrangements .

All my Tyros recordings on PSR Tutorial were recorded using the Tyros MIDI Recorder/Sequencer and on-board WAV recorder.

I have been following PSR Tutorial for a number of years, and make use of the various free resources for Yamaha Keyboards that are available. I think a huge thanks must go to all the contributors to PSR Tutorial who must have spent (and continue to spend) a considerable amount of their time making an extensive selection of files and resources freely available to others. It is also very interesting and inspirational to listen to the recordings of the other performers, and the different individual techniques and playing styles that they use.