Florian Pesth wrote:

> Yes, it is recognizable.

Yay! :-D

(Unlike my attempt at pronouncing some of the stop names on this 
instrument...)

>> I always think that if a tune is similar enough that people recognise
>> what it is, that's a solid way to start.
> 
> It sure is! I would think that already the different response of the keys 
> makes it a completely different (and more difficult) to play. Do you have 
> chance of getting there more often and getting used to the instrument? 

Yeah, but... the organ is in need of repair. This is due to happen soon. 
I think I'll wait until after that happens. Right now, too many things 
don't work right. (E.g., I discovered that with a certain combination of 
stops, the F3 key "sticks". As in, you press it and it doesn't release. 
Until you play some notes next to it, which unsticks it.)

> Yeah, muscle memory is amazing, isn't it? But without it I guess you 
> really couldn't play time critical parts on any instrument - it is just 
> to fast to think about it.

The bizzare thing is that it's difficult to play it slower - I keep 
forgetting where I've got to! ;-)

> Do you take (or took) classes or are you learning completely on your own? 
> Maybe it would help to take some lessons (not necessarily regulary, but 
> sometimes it is good to get some hints and correct some mistakes).

Organ lessons seem like an appealing concept... Not sure where to get 
those from though.

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> That sounds great! Better than I would be able to play it :)

Yay! Thanks.

You know, when I first heard this at the Royal Albert Hall, I just 
assumed it was impossible to play. And now I'm playing it! o_O

> Also good job on getting a decent video quality for YouTube (it looked quite
> good), although it started to screw up near the end just as I was typing
> this sentence :D

Yeah - the video on my HD is perfect, but what actually ended up on 
YouTube breaks up in several places... WTF? Still, at least the sound is OK.

(You know that the crackling is only in the normal-quality version, 
right? If you select "play in high-quality" the crackling goes away. You 
still have to put up with the compander and the limited frequency 
response of my camera tho...)

> BTW, the way you wrote the video title, you probably WILL get 12 year olds
> saying you suck. People who would click on "nerd playing the organ" are the
> people who would then post saying "haha nerd!". Don't be so hard on
> yourself.

Well, everybody else is pretty hard on me... :-S

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> 
> http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Z-mokvpoo
> 

Not bad. A couple encoding errors toward the end, though.

I have tons of questions about the organ. You mentioned stops, once ... 
how do stops relate to the keys on the keyboard?

I know the consoles to the left and right of the keyboards have to do 
with selecting timbre of the organ, but what do the knobs below the 
keyboards do?

-- 
~Mike

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Well done!  BTW, that was quite the maniacal laugh at the end!  Classic.  :)

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Kyle wrote:
> Well done!  BTW, that was quite the maniacal laugh at the end!  
> Classic.  :)

Thanks!

The laugh was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I didn't plan it at all. But I 
think it really adds something to the performance! :-D

If nothing else, I can tell who watching all the way through... >:-D

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Kyle wrote:
> Well done!  BTW, that was quite the maniacal laugh at the end!  
> Classic.  :)

Oh yes.. I quite liked the maniacal laugh at the end :)

-- 
~Mike

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Mike Raiford wrote:

> Not bad. A couple encoding errors toward the end, though.

Those encoding errors don't exist in the file I have on my harddrive. I 
watched it end-to-end to check. I can only imagine that either a few 
packets got lost during uploading (how??), or YouTube itself did 
something wrong when transcoding the video. (I uploaded it as an H.264 
AVI. I have no idea what YouTube transcodes it to.)

> I have tons of questions about the organ. You mentioned stops, once ... 
> how do stops relate to the keys on the keyboard?
> 
> I know the consoles to the left and right of the keyboards have to do 
> with selecting timbre of the organ, but what do the knobs below the 
> keyboards do?

Well now...

The organ contains several different kinds of pipes - long thin ones, 
short fat ones, metal ones, wooden ones, some with reeds, some with 
fipples. That all sound different.

The pipes are grouped into "ranks". Each rank (usually) contains a pipe 
for each key on the keyboard. (On the organ *I* played, a few of the 
ranks are incomplete, so some keys actually don't produce a note.)

The "stops" are what connects the keyboards to the ranks. With all the 
stops closed, the keys make no sound at all. If you open a particular 
stop (by pulling the "drawknobs" to the left and right of the 
keyboards), then pressing a key causes the corresponding pipe in that 
rank to speak. It's like selecting a sound preset on an electronic keyboard.

However, you can open *several* stops at once. This causes several pipes 
to play the same note when you press any given key. (Actually, this 
organ also has a "mixture" stop which causes several pipes tuned to 
different pitches to speak when you press a single note. Personally, I 
don't care for the effect too much.)

Now then, the ranks are grouped together into "divisions". And each 
keyboard controls a different division. The organ I played is about the 
smallest kind you can get: two manuals and a peddleboard. (I.e., a set 
of keys that you're ment to play with your feet.)

This particular organ is so small that the peddle division has only 1 
rank ("Bordon"). And half the notes don't work properly. And the peddle 
action is pretty busted.

The two manuals control the "Great division" ( = lower keyboard) and the 
"Swell division" ( = upper keyboard). Each of these divisions has a 
seperate set of ranks/stops.

Modern organs have the keys connected to the pipes electronically. 
However, the 151 year-old organ I'm playing uses metal connecting rods. 
This results in the keys being seriously heavy to play! But if you look 
closely, you can see the keys of the Swell manual actually move when I 
play the keys of the Great manual. (BUT NOT THE OTHER WAY ROUND!) This 
is because I have engaged a special drawknob called a "coupler". And the 
next effect, obviously, is that now even more pipes play when I hit a key.

In this recording, I have the organ configured almost to "full organ". 
(Full organ = every rank plays when you hit a key. Actually I don't have 
*all* the stops open, so not quite. But nearly!)

The *other* thing the coupler does is make the keys even heavier - since 
  am now providing mechanical force through my fingers to oeprate two 
sets of rods! (The action probably needs cleaning and oiling.)

I can also connect the peddles to the Great manual with another coupler. 
However, when I did this, I discovered that some of the keys start to 
jam in the on-position. This organ really needs some serious TLC! But 
you can see that by this method, I could actually use the peddles to 
play pipes from a rank not in the peddle division.

On really large organs, you can swap the connections between keyboards 
and divisions around, transpose up/down an octave, and do all kinds of 
other crazy stuff. It's a really complicated machine! But this is only a 
small organ in a local village church, so its capabilities are far more 
limited.

The "knobs below the keyboards" (which this particular organ doesn't 
have) are called "thumb pistons". (You also get "toe pistons", which you 
push with your feet. See the Widor Toccata at the Newark Basilica for 
this and some generally good close-ups of a large organ being operated.) 
These select predefined combinations of settings.

On mechanical organs, these are predefined by the organ designer. On 
modern electric organs, they are computer-programmable. If you find a 
close-up shot of the Grand Organ at the Royal Albert Hall for example, 
there's a *disk drive* slot on the console to load/save stop settings! o_O

Does that answer your questions?

(Heee... I sound like an expert! Wikipedia FTW!!)

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Mike Raiford wrote:
> Kyle wrote:
>> Well done!  BTW, that was quite the maniacal laugh at the end!  
>> Classic.  :)
> 
> Oh yes.. I quite liked the maniacal laugh at the end :)

I'm really quite glad I put that part in! ^_^

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4912b9a8$1@news.povray.org...

Nice  play and all by memory wow!


> Organ lessons seem like an appealing concept... Not sure where to get 
> those from though.

I know there is an organ school  for children as well as adults in my small 
town (I recorded and burnt a CD of their annual concert)
I guess there is one not so far from MK

Marc

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m_a_r_c wrote:

> Nice  play and all by memory wow!

Heh. Well... I mean... you play each chord several times, with the same 
rhythem. Just gotta remember what chords those are, is all. ;-)

> I know there is an organ school  for children as well as adults in my small 
> town (I recorded and burnt a CD of their annual concert)
> I guess there is one not so far from MK

Mmm, I'll Google it...

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