Spyro Gyra - Old San Juan

3-D performing Spyro Gyra's Old San Juan at a 1988 high school talent show.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Spyro Gyra
• 3-D
• Old San Juan

[m1ke3d]

Ketong71 - thank you very much for watching this and your kind words. We played this by ear - many hours starting and stopping a cassette tape to listen to the parts... I would spend several hours a day practicing along with the music on various instruments. One of my favorite performances, which I don't have a recording of unfortunately, was "Joy Ride" - where I played the saxophone for the whole song, but switched over to the guitar for the solo in the middle, then back to the sax again.

[m1ke3d]

And I would definitely agree with your recommendations of taking it nice and slow and using a digital camera nowadays...for any potential 17 year olds who can pull off a Spyro Gyra song :)

[m1ke3d]

And finally, after sitting in a box for a long time, I found a way to transfer it to MPG to my computer, and then had to edit just the one song out, and save to another format and lessen the quality so the video wouldn't be hundreds of megs in size to post to YouTube, the purpose of which, was to share with my band mates, and family and friends, not to showcase my band to the world. So it is a pleasure to know someone else watched it.

[m1ke3d]

Old San Juan, while a very beautiful song, is also a long song - and so, combined with nerves, we played it faster in order to get the whole song in. As for the quality of the video, it was taken with a home video camera (which was not very good back in 1988) and recorded in a dark auditorium onto VHS. That tape was then dubbed to one that my family got a copy of, and watched hundreds of times since then.

[m1ke3d]

This was 1988 - 22 years ago, at a high school talent show. My band members and I were 17, playing to a bunch of 15-18 year olds who never heard of Spyro Gyra, and thought we made up the song. We were given only a certain amount of time to perform, and we did two sons at each performance to showcase different styles.

[m1ke3d]

Pena3d - Thank you for taking the time to watch and comment on this video. I suppose I should have put more in the description that would have perhaps made it a little more clear as to the reason for the rushing and the video quality...

[ketong71]

@m1ke3d -- I applaud you and your band mates for the time and talent you guys have to painfully go through each note and nailing the song like that. I remember when I did the same thing for Grover Washington, Jr.'s Winelight. But, I never sounded half as good as you guys did. Any chance of doing a reunion gig?

[lookingforronfalter]

Excellent!! I loved this song.

[ketong71]

Wow! You guys did this when you just 17? Great work! Where did you get the sheet music for this? I've always loved Old San Juan? Or did you guys just jot the notes by ear?

[pena3d]

And the video quality sucks