Organs (cinema, theatre, church, etc)

Hi all, Do you remember buying a video machine years ago, throwing the instruction manual at someone & just pressing a few buttons on the machine. After recording three hours of jackanory a few times, you soon got the hang of setting it. Musical instruments are very similar. Keyboards you at least don't have to generate the sound. It's all about hitting the right notes in the right order. Where have we heard that before! Twenty years ago, I was teaching Cubase, technology at several colleges around the Midlands. My job was to crash course students into basic keyboard & harmony, so they could use the IT music packages. In just a year, half of the students were about piano grade 4 or better, from a starting point of not knowing one note from another. Some of those students were very mature. My teaching cert was adult only, until I passed level three in 2001. I visited several schools after that. Get your keyboard down, plugged in & dusted, we can do broken chord therapy, that breaks your mind into the logarithm pattern of sound & harmony. I'm not exaggerating.

You'd be throwing the keyboard at me in about 10 mins. You might not believe me but I have a terrible memory. How many times did I get Rob's name wrong? I don't retain stuff. I do remember that stuff exists and roughly where to look for it. A music keyboard and written notes for that matter are too featureless for me to retain anything useful. People ask me how to do things on a computer and I can't tell them. I have to walk through the menus to get what I want. For some reason, that sticks but without seeing each menu, I can't remember what the next step is. The same with directions. I'm a great map reader but couldn't tell you a list of directions without the map or follow someone else's told to me. Two instructions in and I'm a blank.

Lesson one, after switching on. Find middle C with your right had thumb. Find the next C above it, with your right had pinky. Rock your wrist between those two notes, humming the natural sound so as to harmonize with both of those notes. You are humming just one note, which sits with both of those notes you are playing. Don't play them together. Rock from one to the other for just five minutes. Your hum will find its common ground. That's the end of lesson one. Carry on with your forum duties. That harmonizing pattern will set like jelly in your mind.

Just a word of explanation, whilst the jelly sets overnight. Most guitar players are able to hit the big time, with just four chords in each key. That's not hard. There are twelve major keys, oh & there are twelve minor keys. Once the pattern of broken chords starts being absorbed, our minds soon learn that the patterns are the same in every key. Most tunes are made up of those basic four chords, but they are being assembled into the tune from all of the keys. That's the difficult part. But, once our mind has the pattern like jelly, our mind does the searching for us, instead of having to read the notes off sheet music. Now a bit of arithmetic says 4 X 12 = 48. Plus the minors, another 48.That's not bad! Arr? How come the organists playing in those videos, are generating around 12,000 chords. I will use over a thousand in the hymn "Praise my soul the King of Heaven". If I play Over the rainbow, about 5,000. It's the suttle variations that come with practice.

Hi Helen, I'm being really honest. My weakness with musical instruments is remembering the melody line. I can play any harmony until it comes out of my ears, all day long if needed. I'm so used to playing accompanying rolls, either for singing or in bands, that the melody line wasn't important. An accompaniment is just that, it doesn't duplicate what's being sung, or played by a solo instrument. My vision unreliable sometimes, I simply forget what I'm playing. I've enjoyed some fantastic accompanying rolls over the years. Westminster chapel, with a full military band. The London Emmanuel Choir, I accompanied them there for several years. Whilst at Leeds, at weekends I played the Compton in the Harrogate winter gardens, now a Wetherspoons, organ long gone. Closer to home, Marston Green Maternity hospital, had a compton, that I played on Saturdays, which was a hospital request show. I played for my daughter in laws degree ceremony at Coventry Cathedral. I've so much to be grateful for. I've just thought. I played for several graduations at De montfort. One of the district nurses who came to treat Pam this year, remembered me! I nearly cried. She remembered the Entry of the Queen of Sheba. I loved playing that. It's a show off piece, quite difficult & very fast. This is not me! I wish it was.

Hi all, & To emphasise that our forum shows no gender preference, you might enjoy this delight. This is not me either.

I think you're trying to misdirect. I think one of these is going to be you and we'll have to guess which one. I think you are the one in the wimple. You've dropped hints that you're a master of disguise.

Hi Helen, Just like our voices, music styles are like fingerprints. I never attempted disguise whilst playing anywhere.

A morning interlude. I first met Richard Hills at the Wolverhampton Town Hall theatre organ many years ago. Some days, to which I'm so guilty of sometimes, there's so much info about everything, that it's nice to listen to some nothings. Earphones help with hearing the depths of these harmonies, but at least have a relaxing few minutes. The sounds from the past to relax.

Philip, they say 'Music calms the soul' and I can listen to mine in most rooms of the house. Classical mainly but I don't close down to a little 'pop' now and again. A joy which both my husband and I used to share.

Hi all, I'm off out this evening for a couple of hours, that makes quite a change for our lockdown scenarios, hey! An online delight from North of the Boarder. I'm aware that many folk are still extremely nervous about entertainment venues, but I hope this online organ entertainer will be as much a delight for you as it is for me. Earphones or quality HiFi needed for the enjoyment of this sweetest of cinema organs. The toning quality is exceptional. His arrangements of the shows gives one of the most lovable displays of his phantom piano. You will see what I mean. Good evening.

Hi all, Coventry is synonymous with the motor industry, the names of manufacturers from the past trip off most of our lips, like Alvis, Maudslay.... The cinema organ builders were very numerous in times past. Wurlitzer, Compton, Christi, but then add Morton, Barton.... Wait until we hear the Mighty Mo. Tune in next week.

Hi all, I'm back! Oh, no! Anyway, for your light entertainment this evening, as promised, the beautiful Barton Theatre Organ. Mighty Mo, theatre organ. One of the difficulties of appreciating these fantastic pieces of art & engineering, is the need for precision listening. More than any other musical instrument, theatre organs exploit every inch of human hearing perception. In fact many pipes give sounds that we cannot hear, but the acoustics rub off onto other pipes, so affecting their sound which we can hear. So either top class Hi-Fi equipment is needed or earphones. In Coventry in 1958, there were seventeen cinemas all with their organs on site. The last one removed during the demolishing of a theatre/cinema in Spon End. The casual reader of my posts might be tempted to think that I miss not being able to wander along to the Gaumont & listen to a lunch time organ performance. You bet! At what cost? Each of these instruments had hundreds of electromechanical parts, all needing maintenance, as well as the basic pipe tuning. The Ringway, Orla, instruments that I'm looking to buy, is just as exciting, & far less expensive to maintain.