Home: Sterling, VA -- a suburb in the Washington DC metropolitan area. Joe is married and has four grown children and, as of September 2006, one grandchild!.

Musical Background: When I was 12, I launched my music career with soem free lessons on an accordion. By my senior year in high school, a few friends and I managed to spend a number of Saturday nights providing dance music in a local bar in one of the Chicago suburbs. But a musical career seemed risky, so I went off to the Univ of Illinois, then on to graduate school at Cornell, and then spent four years as an Asst Professor in Economics at Middlebury College, Vermont. In 1974, I moved to Washington DC where I worked as a federal employee until my retirement in 2004. Since then, I have been employed by General Dynamics as a Lotus Notes developer. .

In the late 70s, my interest in music was rekindled when I discovered the Lowrey Holiday organ. I didn't care for organs much, but the Lowrey could pretend to be all kinds of other instruments, complete with a rhythm accompaniment. That's what I really liked and so I spent several years learning how to play the organ, but eventually job requirements (and computers) took over and the organ sat idle. In my spare time, I became very involved with Atari computers and for 10 years published a magazine (called Current Notes) for fans of this terrific home computer.

In 2000, I happened to stumble upon a "digital piano" and once more, I was hooked. I couldn't wait to get one of those things. I discovered, however, that a keyboard would do everything the digital piano did, but was considerably cheaper. I bought the Yamaha PSR 540 for Christmas 2000 and then spent most of the next year learning to play it and find out what features I wanted in a keyboard. I upgraded to the PSR2000 the following November and then upgraded to the 2100 as soon as it was released. Similarly, I moved to the PSR3000 when it was available and now I have the new Tyros2. Part of the reason for the regular upgrades is my work in developing and supporting this web site, which now takes up almost all of my "spare" time and, unfortunately, limits the hours available for actually playing my keyboard.

I play primarily for my own enjoyment. The radio in the DC area never seems to have the songs I like, but now, I can simply play what I want. I play by sight-reading from fake books. Since I don't normally perform for anyone, I don't work on memorizing songs; I simply flip through my fake books playing one song after another. I'm only an amateur player, but when I started the PSR Performer section, I was encouraged to provide some songs, so here they are. I hope you enjoy them. There aren't very many volumes, but I'm always hopeful I'll be able to "catch up" with things some day and be able to record a few more!

Earlier volumes from Joe Waters

	Convert MIDI files to sheet music with MidiNotate Musician

To Download: The songs in each volume are compressed into one ZIP file that is downloaded by right-clicking on the volume title.  Review the Download and WinZIP lessons if you need help. Note: All 4,000+ PSR Performer songs are provided on the PSR Tutorial CD-ROM unzipped and ready to use.