ajt

Just sits there looking mournful and unloved.

Surprisingly, given the lack of major maintenance on my beast, the ISG's are working fine - noisy, but fine. The switch plate works fine - I used it only this morning to put both Sw and Ch on the same pedal.

Chester's a doddle. Lichfield I find a little unnerving if the curtains are open, but it is in a fantastic position for accompany in the choir stalls. I played once at a church in Staffordshire - can't even remember where - where the organ console was on a stone/concrete shelf somewhere above the choir stalls, with your back facing into the church. All that was behind you was a about 8" of stone, then a low chain. I was petrified.

Wasn't Truro's original console accessed by spiral stone steps?

The other week we had a very well read Gospel - lots of drama and gravitas. So I plump for a big fanfare (pcnd, look away now) - tubas and full organ, finishing on a massive chord with everything out (but released just before the wind died!). The vicar says - "Oooh, I'm not sure how to follow that". One of my more sarcastic choir gents mutters "Sit down and shut up then." I dunno - I've gone to the trouble of trying to build up a sense of occasion that fits with the mood of the service, and it gets totally trashed by a comment like that. I'm sure the frustration goes both ways, though...

Heat? In a church? Whatever next? Next you'll tell me that some churches have congregations, too... This sounds all too familiar - in my place we just don't have real heat. Except about twice a year, when the vicar discovers that the heating hasn't worked for a couple of days, so sticks it on continuous on a Saturday morning. Result - church goes from about -5 to +24 overnight. Bloody marvellous. Seriously - the church is unheated during the week - the vestry is maintained at 12 degrees, which is the temperature at which we're required to do choir practice, but that's it.

I don't know how much the choir has moved on since Nethsingha, but it doesn't surprise me that Robert has done good things there - he's very very good.

Depends on the size of the rest of the instrument, but yes, I would. A good firey 4' reed is a wonderful thing. I have 2 Clarions (sw + gt) on my own instrument - I often leave the gt 8' reed in, and just use 16+4 - the 8' is a bit too smooth, whereas the 16+4 is good growling blast.

Ah, you need to track down Mrs Beamish by Stilgoe and Skellern then...

Which particular drug were you using for this post? Can I have some?

Excellent - I wasn't aware of this. I agree - if I ever get the money to get my place rebuilt, the ISG's are definitely staying.

You mean latter, surely - i.e. Phoenix do wood keyboards, etc.

Completely agree. Simplicity is the key to Bach - he creates his own colours and textures. Get the phrasing right, and it speaks for itself. Too many performances butcher the lines - I remember one of my teachers (who I had for the longest as a teenager) always banging on about playing Bach completely legato. What a load of old bollocks.

In the Quire. As I recall, the speaker installation was in a totally different place from the pipes - I think they were in a stack in one of the transepts, but can't really remember. I'm not saying it was as good as the real thing, but it was considerably better than any other installation I'd ever heard.

I am not knowledgable about mixtures at all. But, on my own instrument, I have 3 mixtures, the GO one is a tierce - 17|19|22 - which I find to be a chocolate teapot, and 2 on the swell - 12|15|19|22 and 24|26|29. The IV rank on the swell is wonderful - just adds a bit of brightness and colour, and can be drawn with or without the reeds. The III rank, though, is brash and breaks all over the place, and can really only be drawn with the reeds. What's so bad about a tierce mixture - serious question ; I know a lot of people don't like them - why?

I don't know about the sampling rate itself - but the whole reason people go with digital is to do with a combination of signal to noise ratio and frequency response.

I think that in general, small, good quality instruments are an acquired taste - for a start you need to have gathered enough experience to be able to tell a good instrument from a bad one. I for one, throughout my teenage years and probably later, would have preferred 3 mediocre but large divisions to 2 excellent but tiny divisions.

Moving away from the idea of installation in this particular church, but rather to digital organs in general for a minute - Ironically, I think that digital organs sound better in a big building, where they're less likely to be encountered as permanent installations - I had a tinkle (not literally, that would be silly, given the electrics involved) on the Rodgers that was in Gloucester for a bit, and the Makin in Lichfield in 2000, and both of these sounded not too bad, but the console was about 50 feet away from the speaker installations. But, in a church with a smaller acoustic and dimension, where you can't get a sufficient distance away from the speaker installation to minimise the acoustic differences between pipe and speaker reproduction of pipe, I've usually found them unsatisfactory. Paul Isom - if you're still lurking - I know you spent a lot of time on the Arundel Wyvern installation, and recorded a CD on it, which I have (Wyvern demo disc?)... What's your opinion? I listened to that CD in the car this morning, and thought that some of it sounded convincing, but that the 4' and mixture tones were a bit off (I can't put my finger on why). Do you think the CD is a fair reflection of the tonal work of the Wyvern that was installed? I assume it was recorded in a "normal" way - i.e. not an audio output straight from the console, but a mic somewhere down the nave?

And doesn't encourage new organists...

What sarcastic innuendi?

And air to drive them.

I have no experience of hybrids, but they always sound like a recipe for disaster to me - anyone got any experience of them?

Precisely what I've been trying to get at - I wouldn't want to play a 1m organ all the time, and I'm sure that no other half decent organist would either - i.e. the kind of organist that a "thriving" church (in an Anglican kind of way - the average age of the congregation is lower than the total number of occupied pews) wants to attract. This makes an interesting moral dilemma - I thought my preference would always be for pipe. But, if the choice is 1m, 5 rank extension pipe versus 2m, 20 stop electronic, I think I'd be plumping for the organ substitute, just because I could do a lot more with it. So, given that my role in this is not that of organist, but as an advisor to a decision maker, what the hell do I say? I still can't quite reconcile recommending 15-20k on a digital organ when that same amount of money would probably get them a nice reliable tracker redundant organ cleaned up and installed - the tracker will probably still be going strong in 50 years, but they'd be on their 3rd or 4th digital by then. Oh, but then I'm back to the lack of space for a good size instrument argument. And then I'm back to the 1m tiny thing versus a flexible digital organ. Oh damn it. I've tied myself up in circles again.

That's exactly the problem - there is NO room anywhere. My preference, by far is to go far an instrument, rather than a substitute. No offence to those who like them, but I just don't enjoy playing digital instruments, whether pianos or organs. I never have - the physical sensation of playing is not the same, and the physical sensation of listening is definitely not the same. Unfortunately, yes - this thread wasn't supposed to be about me thinking about moving on, but... I have nothing against the vicar of St. Mary's, at all - he's a good guy, and prepared to listen. My reasons for thinking about moving on are around the fact that i) I don't enjoy the church, ii) I don't realistically think that there's any chance of raising the money to restore the organ, iii) my wife doesn't like the place, iv) my primary interest is in choirs, v) leaving isn't the same as not having keys to go in and make a loud noise vi) it's a half hour to go practice, and, with a 9 week old baby, I don't go and practice on it. My reasons for staying are i) great organ, ii) great organ, iii) great organ, iv) I feel like a failure for not having made a difference.

Yes, I am already thinking about leaving St. Mary's - I'll explain why via e-mail, but you've hit on many of the points in your 2nd paragraph. I think your response highlights many of the issues that concern me about speccing and organ for this place. My main concern is that, if I were going for the job, I would want to have an instrument that I wanted to play and could play a reasonable quantity of repertoire on. The space available in the church leaves you, I think, with a realistic pipe organ size of 1m, 8 4 2 + Bourdon. Even with extension, I think you'd struggle to get much more in, and if that was the organ in the church, then I probably wouldn't want the job. Your instrument for example - which, despite my disparaging comments about it not being as powerful as I would want for your church, would be well suited to this particular church - would not fit. I'm pretty certain that the church wouldn't make any decision until they've appointed a new organist. What I was hoping to discuss on this thread was whether it would be wrong of me, if I applied for and was given the job to: 1) Recommend a digital organ 2) Spec up the digital organ such that it was larger than a "suitable" pipe organ for the same building. I don't mean stupidly big, which I think the current spec is. I just find it hard to reconcile recommending that a digital organ is the way to go, plus I'm always critical of others when I go to a small church to find a 3 manual beast with a 32ft reed and a tuba... Clearly, it's not going to be my advice that really counts - there are others in more official positions and with more knowledge (e.g. the DOA) - but the vicar does put value on my opinion.