Organs (cinema, theatre, church, etc)

Hi Philip I was once fortunate enough to take a hobby and turn it into a career. The problem is that you don't always enjoy it anywhere as much when it is your career as the "fun" element can disappear quickly due to the pressure of having to earn enough money to live on from it. I changed paths and it became a hobby again which I still enjoy to the day.

Hello Philip. I really envy you and your ability on the keyboard. As a child I was sent to piano lessons, one shilling a lesson with a woman in Windmill Road. Don't know if it was me or my tutor but I didn't learn much. At the age of 15 we bought my son a Korg keyboard that he got quite proficient at playing but years later it developed a fault and that was the that. For myself I joined the Boys Brigade at the age of 10 and was taught to play the trumpet. Sunday mornings we would march the streets around the Bell Green area, forcing residents to listen to our awful cacophony. My friend Brian was on the big drum beating it for all he was worth. Others played the trombone and an assortment of other instruments, or at least pretended to. There was also a couple of triangles. No one had the full uniform, we were a right rag tag army. At times people would shout abuse at us but this only made our leader encourage us to greater efforts. I think there must have been complaints about us because we suddenly stopped marching the streets Sunday mornings. The fun went out of it so I handed in my BB sash and resigned. My father bought the trumpet I had been using but as I was not allowed to play it at home it was pointless.

Hi all I have not had so much fun in years. This is like a dream come true for me. Without the kind services of a software engineer who just happens to live local, this might have been a branch of hi-tech that would always been out of my reach. I understand that one of the sampled organs which I have, which was sampled in 2007, no longer exists, so just as film records past events, we now have the facility to listen to a church (or a theatre) organ, just as it was. I am sure that the rush is on for sampling engineers to sample instruments before they go to the scrap yards, as church organs are doing in their droves just at present. PS. All of my yatter about cinema organs has just brought to my attention, we have not got a cinema in HallBrooks. Now where the heck can that go?

Good evening. I thought I'd post some pictures of the Old Cathedral Organ at Coventry. Built by Henry Willis & Son in 1887 and rebuilt and enlarged J. Charles Lee Coventry in 1914. I've attached the correct Stop list with Pictures. Pedal 30 note Double Open Diapason 32 Open Diapason 16 Violone 16 Bourdon 16 Lieblich Bourdon 16 Octave 8 Violoncello 8 Bass Flute 8 Ophicleide 16 Clarion 8 Solo To Pedal Swell To Pedal Great To Pedal Choir To Pedal Choir 58 Notes Contra Gamba 16 Open Diapason 8 Lieblich Gedact 8 Dulciana 8 Gemshorn 4 Lieblich Flute 4 Piccolo 2 Corno di Bassetto 8 Tremulant Solo To Choir Swell To Choir Great 58 Notes Double Diapason 16 Open Diapason 8 Open Diapason 8 Open Diapason 8 Open Diapason 8 Claribel Flute 8 Octave 4 Principal 4 Flute Harmonique 4 Twelfth 2 2/3 Fifteenth 2 Mixture IV Trombone 16 Trumpet 8 Clarion 4 Solo To Great Swell Octave To Great Swell To Great Swell Sub Octave To Great Choir To Great Choir Sub Octave To Great Swell 58 Notes (Enclosed) Bourdon 16 Open Diapason 8 Lieblich Gedact 8 Vox Angelica 8 Viola d'Orchestre 8 Viole Celeste 8 Geigen Principal 4 Flageolet 2 Mixture 3 rks Contra Hautboy 16 Hautboy 8 Cornopean 8 Clarion 4 Tremulant Octave Sub Octave Solo Concert Flute 8 Concert Flute 4 Orchestral Oboe 8 Clarinet 8 Vox Humana 8 Tremulant Tuba 8 Tuba Clarion 4

Hi all & Hi Organcrazy26 Welcome to our forum. Thank you for the detailed description of the Cathedral organ. We have copied the technical detail of the organ from the Coventry Cathedral topic. When ever I am inside the ruins of the old cathedral, my attention is always drawn to the area of the ruin, where the organ was positioned, as that is the part of the cathedral that burnt most fiercely. The pipes acted as chimneys, drawing the air currents which fuelled the combustion. What a spec for an organ. What a waste too as it went up in flames. I remember not long after I was married, walking home on a miserable evening, only to find a local church fully ablaze. Holbrooks Evangelical in Parkgate Rd burnt in the same fashion, where a three manual pipe organ drafted the destruction of itself. Later that evening when the flames were out, I walked around to see the damage & I wish that I hadn't. It was an electrical fault that started that fire, not a German incendiary. PS Here is a link explaining a bit about organ stops.

Hi all In life, how often do we experience sheer delight of one thing, but the delight is tempered by tragedy, family unhappiness, or any number of issues that can & do pull us down? That I am sure is one of the reasons that we have hobbies, interests or even a side-line. I am sure that most of our members can identify with me on this. I am so delighted with my "organ-toy" to the point where I cannot believe that an outside rank novice player like me, can sit at my Yamaha EL90, select anyone of four classical organs, all ranging in size from Cathedral to a chapel & then select any one of a number of theatre organs, & play to my hearts content. No cold dance halls, village halls, converted barns, just my music room at home. No joke, I just cannot believe it. I am so grateful to the services of our member "Organcrazy26" who has showered his kindness onto me, devoting hours & hours to installing the computer software for my enjoyment. Especially knowing that I am a computer friendly user, user friendly bod, who would run a mile at most computer & IT jargon. Just now & again, when we have all of the disappointments that we experience, we come across someone that knows his stuff & delights in making folk happy with their skills. My comments here are not an advertisement, but they are a statement of fact. Ten years ago, because of a debilitating illness, I thought that my music playing days were finished. Three sets of circumstances changed all of that. First was & is our forum, so thank you Rob. Second was being asked to play for two special & specific church services. Thank you Tony. Now right up to date, the man who brought me the technology, thank you Organcrazy26. All I have to do now is to shut up talking, get on with some practise, & try & scrape more of the rust off.

For those folks who want to hear a real cinema organ being played - there is one located not far from Coventry at Fentham Hall in Hampton in Arden. The Cinema Organ Society moved their Compton organ to the hall many moons ago and keep tweaking and maintaining it to keep it sounding great - they even have it on a powered lift so it rises through a stage like all cinema organs should. You can find some contact details here - clicky and from memory they hold a concert on the first Sunday of each month. I have to say (and I'm not connected to the society other than I supply the Solihull branch with theatre lighting and some video know how via my day job) that it's an impressive instrument and they really do keep it in great shape.

Hi all Classical or church organs have never been my forte, but we do have a professional classical organist in our current membership. He supplied the info on post 64. on this topic & 164 on the "Old Cathedral topic. The word "Stop" as used here is simply that it controls or "Stops" the flow of air through or over a set of pipes. Sets of pipes are often referred to as ranks. Some pipes or ranks have the air blown through them, like a flute, some have vibrating reeds, like a clarinet, some the air passes over the top, similar to a panpipe or when you blow over the top of a pop bottle. Some stops control what other stops are doing, like coupling one manual (keyboard) to another, or coupling pedals to a keyboard. So, if you press note C with your foot on the pedals, the same note C will play on the keyboard, or all of the keyboards if so set. Some stops couple octaves, so, if you play a C on one keyboard, the next C up will also play. You might be by now, if you are still conscious, realising where the word organ comes from, "organisation". Hope that helps.

Hi all It was the development of the theatre organ or cinema organ, sometimes referred to as concert organs, that made so much headway with classical organs. Originally, in its simplest of terms, an organ was a keyboard sat next to a set of pipes. The player pressed a key, which then moved a wooden rod to activate the pipe cover. That is called a tracker organ. Very limited as it has all to be confined in one massive jungle of push rods & levers. A hopeless state of affairs for a theatre organ. The theatre organ uses electrical solenoids to control air valves, which meant that the keyboard & pedals can be sited any where. They do not have to be mechanically attached to the pipe chamber. This also made it possible for the keyboard to play any manner of percussion instruments. Enough rattle from me. I will post a YouTube link that will show you a cinema organ works in action. Sambalina Spectre on the Spree Looking Around The second of these links shows two performers, piano as well as the cinema organ. Often, the piano would be controlled from the organ if the organist is playing on his/her own. What the linked videos demonstrate is the complexity of these instruments & why they are so costly to maintain. Church organs generally lacked the added percussion instruments, but still needed expensive tuning maintenance. Sampling electronics may have saved on high cost maintenance, but may have arrived too late.

Hi all Now for something quite different - Welsh born celebrity organist, Carol Williams, shows her mastery of the Walt Disney Concert organ. Of late, the US has upped its game on pipe organs, with many cast off instruments being brought out of storage, overhauled & put back in to use. This Walt Disney organ was new in 2004. Many of the blockbuster films that you see, are using sounds from this instrument. Carol Williams is brill! PS Hi-fi speakers or earphones please for listening pleasure.

Hi all I am so enjoying my rejuvenation with my music playing. So much has happened in the time since I became a forum member. I was not playing anywhere at that time. I have enjoyed sharing with you my aspirations as I have picked up the pieces of my one time moonlight & weekend hobby, which was in tatters. Two decades ago, there were six big organ shops in Coventry, leaving out Bedworth & Nuneaton just now. I think that only Greens are left in Coventry now. In all of that time, I never owned a home organ. I did not like them, as I much preferred the crisper sounding synths. I had several of those, all in a stack system, along with pedals, connected to a Yamaha state of the art CLP piano, that doubled up as the amplifier. That kept me happy for two decades. The snag was that the music room, now a model railway & music room, came to resemble a telephone exchange, with so many wires draped across them all. It was as tidy as possible, but it was so complex. Each synth had cables such as midi in & out, audio two in & two out, as well as power leads. The midi was fed into midi-merge boxes, then into a distribution box. All of the audio cables went into a twelve to two mixer. You can just picture it, I am sure as some members saw it for themselves. That has all gone. After a miracle, all because of our forum, my interest in organs was picked up when two years ago I saw these amazing deals from an organ friendly business in Whitley Bay, where old instruments were being sold, fully overhauled, guaranteed as new & at prices that were almost silly. The basic organ that I have here is a Yamaha EL 90. A robust instrument that when new in 1992 was nearly £10,000. I bought it for less than £700 a year May ago. The sounds are a bit dated, but because it has midi, it is a fabulous controller which will connect to any midi instrument, as you see from the photos of my current setup, with any sound that I want, which includes my new laptop. So I now have much more than ever before, without the room degrading into a telephone exchange. I am rusty, but practising hard to get back to something of what I enjoyed before my illness robbed me of what I so enjoyed. We are not an advertising site, but it would be inappropriate for me not to mention my gratitude to Whitley Bay Organs, who have been superb. The dealer still has EL 90 organs at the same silly price. Now the crunch. Yamaha, right at the end of the European organ days, produced the EL90 in 1998 with their then latest sound systems. The layout is identical but they called it the EL 900. An even bigger price tag at that date, but guess what. They are now being overhauled & sold by the same dealer. Obviously, a higher price tag than the EL90. You now know what is going through my mind. Whitley Bay Organs - pre-owned organs Cost when new & spec data.

Hello everybody This topic reminded me about St. Cecilia and how she became the patroness of music - by a linguistic error. I'm not an expert in Latin but the word "organis" used in a work about her was misinterpreted. I've found a useful link that tells some of the story - The Academy of St. Cecilia

Hello Maisha & welcome to our forum Thank you so much for your post. I loved reading about St Cecilia. Saint Cecilia (wikipedia) Cecilia (Simon & Garfunkel song)

Hi all An updated picture to my music hobby, showing the laptop, which houses Hautpwerk sampled software, which literally means that I have access to a host of both classical & theatre organs. On the organ thread topic, I have posted the disappointing state of affairs where theatre organs have all but gone, & church organs are following them at a great rate of knots. During the seventies, home pianos were being chopped up, as more homes took delivery of electronic organs, even into homes which lacked a player. It seemed to be the in thing to have. Watch any older episode of "Last of the Summer Wine" where you will see an organ in most of the pubs that the trio go into. The totally inadequate Yamaha spinet organ in my church is almost a case in point, forty years old & left to the church by a family that had no use for it. There were organ supplier shops all over Coventry, Bedworth & Nuneaton. Just one in Coventry now, on the day when I have learnt that another major manufacturer (Roland) is pulling out of organ supplies in the UK. Yamaha have not supplied new organs to the UK for over a decade. My instrument came from a dealer far away in Whitley Bay. So the question that I am asking is, what is going on? I have never been a professional player. Played in bands more as a hobby, except when I earned a few bob in my early days. Yet, right now, I am being asked to play at events like never before, even with the issues of my poor vision. Is that because of such a shortage of players? Technology is such that the quality from these instruments today is unsurpassed. Is that the problem? Are these instruments too complicated both to set up as well as to play?

Hi all This is a photo of my laptop, the screen showing a Morton cinema organ console, which is what my Yamaha is set to play just now. All of the stops, notes, pedals & controls are all active, you can watch the notes going down as they are played. There are a multitude of other screens, all involved with fine tuning & settings, like what pre-sets are linked to my Yamaha. Pam pictures me here, enjoying myself, but in quite hard practise. I need to know what I am playing inside out as I cannot rely on sight reading. I sometimes do have written music in front of me, but I only used it as prompts as to where I am. When I tell you that the sounds are both impressive & authentic, they really are. I can see even from that photo that the top manual had a dominant Steinway Piano setting, if you notice one of the pre-set white lights shows pre-set 5 is lit brighter than the others.