Hi there,

this is Franky from Thailand checking in. I was born in Germany in 1965 and emigrated to Thailand in 1991 and am living in the area of Khao Lak, north of Phuket with my Thai wife and our two sons, Martin and Christopher. My wife and I run two small family resorts in the area and are also into real estate and construction. I’m basically my own boss for 24 years, which is nice but also comes with the hefty price of carrying a lot of responsibility…

I found Johnny’s site when searching for the Foreigner solo of “Urgent”, a solo that I wish to master some time in the future… I am an “on and off saxophone” kind of guy, who started playing sax quite a while ago in 2001. I had a very good first year with a great teacher (Gerard Cornielje, who – when he was young – was a student of Hans Dulfer). Gerard pumped me from a total beginner to int. music standard level 3 (even had to do an evaluation and got a cert. from a british examiner), but then lost contact to the sax due to being self-employed and overwhelmed by work 24/7. I then had a few episodes with touching the sax in between for a few months or so, had a band, but it never really worked out, until I started to regularly jam at the Happy Snapper, here in Khao Lak.

The jam nights showed me two things – one was that I am not as bad a musician as I feared and that I can handle stage fright quite easily, but secondly I realized that I am faaaaaaaaar far away from calling myself a proper sax player. I usually play by ear, am bad with reading notes, and can play a relatively simple solo by just finding my way in, or do covers of songs like Baker Street, Smooth Operator, who can it be now, food for thought, etc. but – honestly – have no idea what I am doing (with the sax).

I feel like a person driving around in a Ferrari in first gear only, knowing that there are so many more gears and that this f$#@ker could really drive fast, but I lack the knowledge and skill to switch into gear two, three and further up from there… I hope that this site, Johnny’s lessons and perhaps this forum can help me to get on my way and to connect me with fellow sax players who experience the same struggles and obstacles that I do.

I have the full range of saxes from Soprano to Baritone, but feel that the Tenor really is an extension of myself. I love the mature and masculine presence and the fat sound of my tenor which is a Cannonball Brute (Big Bell Stone Series). It’s one of the best saxes ever made imo… Sorry for babbling along – and hi to everyone and thanks for having me!

Franky