Hi Fred,

I like the harmonic sound of both Stella and Laura, though miss the ambience of Spring...which is a great lesson in the sound that can be got out of midi with work at it.

As I was listening to Stella yesterday, I found myself chuckling as I remembered my theory lessons and all the rules regarding chord progressions. My teacher was classically trained and followed the text book (which one of these days I'm going to dig out of the box it's been stored in for years, just for fun) strictly. He was also a wonderful cocktail pianist who, with Deep Purple, Warsaw Concerto, Rhapsody in Blue thrown in now and again, favored the heavily arpeggiated style that R. Williams later made famous (his Tenderly was absolutely beautiful). As a reward for a lesson well done, he would loan me pages, to play for fun, out of his big fat fake book in which I would find chord progressions that broke all the rules we'd studied during the theory part of the lesson. It was all very helpful in working out the attitude toward harmony I later came to.

That thunderbird really got around in those days, didn't he?

all best,
mgj