Tony Newnham

Hi I understand from one of my RC colleagues that the pipe organ will be replaced/rebuilt at some time - but since they've just spent a lot of money on the fabric of the building, there are no funds at present. The cathedral has been closed for several months - I think it's due to reopen sometime this month. Every Blessing Tony

Hi I would also look at Songs of Fellowship (they tend to keep traditional words to hymns, which I prefer). There's also "The Source" (Kevin Mayhew) - I've not used this, I had a look when it was first published and found it rather lacking in variety of styles. Another possibility - especially as you want something as a supplement - is Mayhew's "The Bridge" - a bit of a niche publication aimed at churches moving towards using contemporary songs - it's a rather idiosyncratic colection, but quite useable (we bought it at my previous church). These days we have a data projector and screen which means I can draw hymns and songs from any source that's covered by the CCL license. Can't help with Psalters - we don't sing Psalms - it must be 25 years since I last used one! Every Blessing Tony

Hi I have heard of high pitched mixtures being called Glockenspiel as well as the obvious percussions - just can't remember where in my organ library! I'm not sure why stop search was not implemented on the new NPOR software - but given the sheer number of surveys now n line it could be rather time consuming! You could e-mail the web master and ask if the facility can be reinstated. Every Blessing Tony

Hi Contact Copeman Hart & ask them where the nearest recent installation is! Every Blessing Tony

Hi Battersea Town Hall has a virtually untouched Hope Jones (badged by Norman & Beard, but built when H-J worked with them). There's been some comment on the UK Theatre Organs list. The organ is currently unplayable (because it's virtually untouched!) but I hear that there are proposals for restoration in the pipe line - there's details and pictures on NPOR. Also, All Souls, Clive Vale, Hastings has(had?) a H-J that has only had minimal alterations - but again, it's unplayable. Does anything survive in the USA? And you could argue that the early Wurlitzers are H-J. Every Blessing Tony

Hi At present I use an external Soundblaster sound card, but I'm looking to upgrade when I can afford it - the noise floor of the Soundblaster is a little higher than I would like - but it's still better than the best analogue, where the dynamic range is limited to around 60dB - often less - and the laptop is considerably easier to move, and cheaper to run, than my Revox open reel machine (have you seen the cost of open reel tape lately?) I record uncompressed WAV files at 16bit 48kHz (same data rate as DAT tape) - it comes out at around 10MB per minute of stereo audio (approx 60MB for a 1 hour recording) - the laptop has a partintioned drive with a 40GB "data" partition, so that gives many hours of space - but I have to clear it out sometimes! I can edit in the digital domain and then burn a CD. For serious recording I would consider using a higher rate (96kHz/24 bit) - but my current soundcard doesn't seem to support that - and it's not really necessary for most of what I do. Hope that helps. Every Blessing Tony

Hi And I never turn the double-tocuh cancels off when I come across them - the double-touch cancel feature on stop keys or drawstops is just too useful - except on a Rushworth & Dreaper organ that I used to play, where the 2nd touch spring was just too light - and double-touch cancel was evenapplied to the couplers - no fun trying to add sw-gt for a climax and cancelling the entire great (or ending up with just the Great mixture!). Every Blessing Tony

Hi Actually the auto level on my 4 year old Sony Minidisc does a pretty good job - certainly good enough for non-critical recordings or when I've not had opportunity to set the level properly. When you can set the level manually though that's far better - any increase needed to pp sections can be done later. For serious recording these days I use a laptop, recording to the hard drive and then sorting out and editing as needed, the MD is only used where I need a rough and ready recording, e.g. to pass on to someone who can't make a concert. As a medium that, like mp3, removes part of the audio signal, MD is never going to be as good as uncompressed digital recording (or even analogue on very good machines). Every Blessing Tony

Hi The info on NPOR is reasonably up to date - I did a big update a couple of years ago. IIRC the previous centre space console (2m) is stored somewhere in the Cathedral. Every Blessing Tony

Hi There's a recording on "Organs & Organists Online" of me playing a virtually untouched Hill, formerly in St. Mary Magdalene, White Abbey, Bradford - you may have to hunt for it (I did last time I looked) - the piece is the Carpentier "Te Deum Prelude" - solo is the Swell Reed. There's also a stop list on NPOR. The organ has been rescued and will be going into a church near London. Every Blessing Tony

Hi I've always made it a policy to meet the tuner, both when I was an organist, and now as a Minister - a little appreciation (and a realistic attitude of what's possible in a tuning visit) go a long way, and with one exception (again, no name as the firm is still in business) I've had very good service. The exception actually mended his ways, as on one occaision when he was off sick, a colleague came out and sorted the problems the regular chap said couldn't be done! (Mainly a reed needing cleaning & a touch of regulating). He also showed me how to clean and re-tune them when the problem re-occured (as tends to happen with vertical trumpet pipes open to the roof). Every Blessing Tony

Hi Apart from any frequency response anomolies in the microphone capsule, because of their design, all PZM's have a reduced bass response due to the size of the baffle - mount the things on a wll, or a large piece of rigid plywood (or prespex) and the bass increases. As someone says later, Soundfield microphones are still available - there's a new version been introduced recently - but they are pretty expensive (which is why I don't have one!). I've successfully used ordinary cardiod microphones as a crossed pair in live recording situations. Every Blessing Tony

Hi Last time I needed some I bought them from a piano dealer locally - a good piano tuner will know where to get them even if he doesn't have a stock. Every Blessing Tony

Hi Bishop's were certainly still in business a couple of years ago, and I've not heard that they've ceased trading. Looking on NPOR there's no record of any new builds in recent years, but a number of rebuilds, etc. Please note - the absence of info on NPOR could just be that no one has informed us of new builds, etc. by Bishop, or that the info is in the backlog that we're trying to work through. I found them very helpful when trying to trace the history of a redundant organ that they'd built. Every Blessing Tony

Hi A couple of muting relays can make the most horrendous start-up noises disappear - that's one reason they're fitted to many power amplifiers. A "thump" on switch on is fairly normal - although it shouldn't be too loud. It's absence could just be muting relays! Every Blessing Tony

Hi Thanks for this - a book for my Christmas list I think! Every Blessing Tony

Hi There are 2 books dealing with Hope-Jones - "From Wirral to Wurlitzer" by Roger C. Fisher (another Roger Fisher - not the one who was organist at Chester!) and the American Theatre Organ Society's book on Wurlitzers has a fair amount of info about H-J's early years, as well as his involvement with Wurlitzer - I don't know that there's much about a number of other firms though. As I recall, Lewis' "Modern Organ Building" (I assume that's the one you mean) isn't really a history. Laurence Elvin wrote a history of Harrison's (and I know of someone else researching the firm - there was an article in the BIOS Journal last year), and I also hear that there's a book about the Walker company under way. There's still a lot of history out there waiting to be written. Every Blessing Tony

Hi I don't know of one - but as you say, it would be good to have one. A good part of the Hill records are housed in the BOA archive, so finding material should be possible. I hope someone does write one - unless it's ridiculously expensive, I'd certainly buy a copy. Every Blessing Tony

Hi Glad to be of help. I mentioned St. Mary, Warwick simply because I'd played it breifly a few weeks ago. On the console there the stops for the 2 organs are in seperate blocks on the jambs - one at the top and the other at the bottom relating to the relevant manual, so once you get used to which set of stops relates to which geographical location I should think it's pretty easy. Every Blessing Tony

Hi Exactly what Vox Humana says. One of the problems with finding things on NPOR is that computers don't have the intelligence to look for anything other than exactly what you ask them, and as St. Michael's isn't actually in Tenbury but in a village that's identifiable in the OS gazeteer, it's listed there. We know that it can be a problem when looking for buildings that are often erooneously described (and sometimes leads to duplicate surveys being entered on the system, which subsequently have to be sorted out when someone finds them). One possibility in this situation would be to try "Michael" and the County name as search keywords (that's assuming you know which county the place is in!) Every Blessing Tony

Hi To my mind the issue is one of use. Much as I like to see (and play) historic organs, in a church especially, a restored organ is there to do a job, and if it doesn't fulfill the NEEDS of the church (not the wants of the organist!) then there's something wrong - especially if the church has to pay. It's important to restore and preserve our heritage - but funding is necessary - and so is practicality. With our 1820's chamber organ here we've just had to make these sort of decisions. The organ has been rather altered over the years (and has such "features" as a double-rise reservoir with both sets of ribs folding the same way, and GG compass manuals over C compass pedal pull downs arranged as a return coupler). On the grounds that it onviously originally worked, the reservoirconstruction has been retain, and it's just been re-leathered. The tuning slides will remain, as we regularly use the organ with other instruments - so returning to cone tuning and sharp pitch just isn't an option - we couldn't (and wouldn't want) to afford the luxury of an instrument that would only be used once a month (which would be the case with our current pattern of services). If the organ had been relatively untouched then yes - I would have looked seriously at an historic restoration - but I doubt that the church would have funded it! Every Blessing Tony

Hi I really don't see what the fuss is about with straight pedalboards - I've never found any great problem. Your pedalling technique may have to change, but that's all. I find that it doesn't take long to get used to different pedal key spacings either (at least, not whan I'm in practice). And as for the limitations of a restored Early English organ it's really no different to any other organ, no matter how large, you get used to it and either find ways round the limits or play different repertoire. As someone said in an earlier post, the limitations of the early English organ (and typical stop lists) informs how the composer intended them to be performed. Every Blessing Tony

Hi Interesting project. Personally I'd go for tracker action and a console for each eand, so to speak - but I assume that's not how things work. As to manual designation, to my mind that should reflect the character of the stops, so if it's French sounding, then French names, if it's English, then English names - put the manual number on the department nameplate if you're likely to have lots of visiting organists. Manual order needs some thought. I would want the 2 chancel divisions on adjacent keyboards for obvious reasons, so the West division (why not call it "Nave" and have done with it!) will be either 1 or 3. The next question is the part-enclosed stops at the West End - if you go for a transfer to put them on another manual, then I would put the Nave on 1 with enclosed transfer to 2, then 2 is East choir & 3 East Swell. If you don't bother with the transfer then the question is how much use the Nave section will get in relation to the Chancel section - if it's to be used a lot, then maybe Nave on 1 is possible, if it's only the occaisional hymn, then why not put it on 3 so that the most used departments are closer at hand? Another possibility - based on St. Mary, Warwick which in effect has 2 complete organs, one at each end, played from a common console. 2 manual console, with Nave unenclosed on lower & enclosed on upper; and East Choir on lower, Swell on upper? Whatever - you need to think through how the organ is most used and make decisions based on that. Every Blessing Tony As to manual order

Hi St. Anne, Fence? Contact details are on their web site at http://www.stannes.info/ This is the church where John Bertallot (Sp?) is organist - the organ is a large 2m COpeman-Hart, but at least it sounds tolerable. The Bradford Organists' Assoc visited there (and some other churches in the area- can't remember which now except Blackburn Cathedral) a couple of years ago. Alternatively, do what I did on a recent visit to N. Wales and contact the local organists' association (details on the IAO web site) and ask. Hope it goes well. Every Blessing Tony

Hi The NPOR survey at http://npor.emma.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch...ec_index=N00289 does include the Nave organ. The survey is dated earlier, but shows the 1997 work (someone obviously forgot to change the date!) The person who commented on this has probably pulled up one of the older surveys. Every Blessing Tony