ajt

I agree - it does feel odd having a Tuba on that particular organ, but it's an occasionally useful addition. If you don't like it, don't use it! AFAIK nothing was sacrificed to add it, so why not?

Fair enough - it's certainly a lovely little organ!

St. Cross is just lovely, both the building and the organ! BTW if you want a totally different practice experience, you're welcome to use ours anytime...

Why this one, out of interest? (I know it...)

I have to agree, Romsey would come very high in my list too. Unfortunately I've never played a *decent* organ outside of the UK... My favourites in this country, though - the order will change depending on the weather: 1. Truro (both organs!) 2. Ripon 3. Coventry 4. Romsey 5. Hmm. Feels a bit vain putting your own organ (so to speak) in one's list of favourites. In its present state, then it's not justified, but in fully working order, I think it's a pretty fine instrument... The 1st 3 are quite similar (certainly 2 & 3) in many ways, 4 is just a wonderful Victorian English machine - cumbersome to play, but such a beautiful sound, and so versatile, considering the relatively small number of stops. 5 is a different beast again - very orchestral...

Totally agree. The Willis III style tabs along the top are, as you say, daft. I still lose the less frequently used couplers, like Sw-Ch 4' or sw-gt 4' (note they don't call them Sw Octave -> Great!). In fact, the only ones I remember are Sw & Gt to Pedal and Swell to Great. God knows why there are also two thumb rocker switches, one for "Doubles Off" and "Pedal Off". Weird idea.

Yes, certainly mine is set out this way. Curiously, though, the layout of stops is "wrong". Most high rise organs have swell on the outside of the left hand stop jamb, with pedal on the inside (i.e. nearest the music desk), then choir and great on the right hand side, yes? On this one, though, probably because the number of pedal stops (even though most of them are extensions from manual reeds) is so huge, the pedal stops are on the outside of the right hand jamb, choir is on the outside of the left hand jamb. A bit confusing at first! http://www.laudachoir.org/organ/gallery/pi...s/picture-1.jpg

Christmas before last, we got to 11.25 for an 11.30 start for "midnight" mass. No vicar. Church wardens flapping in the vestry, 400 people in the church.... Guess who took the service?

My "favourite", if you can call it that, wedding cock up was the first service I played for at my last church, which had a toaster with a transpose switch. There I am, playing the Charpentier tedeum (sigh), when the pedal department decides that it doesn't like D major. It's now going to play in E major. Up a tone. I kind of struggled through a little bit (I've never tried partial transposition before), but gave up with the feet entirely when it popped back down to Bflat... At my own wedding, the vicar asked if Rosie would take me to be her wife, which was mildly amusing... The first wedding I ever played at was in Wolverhampton, with the bride in a pink panther outfit, and all the male members of the wedding party dressed as StarWars stormtroopers....

And there we go - computeritis strikes. Where's the "me" in that sentence? Fool!

Oh, so true. I did a presentation a couple of months ago of a "Daft" Document. Somehow the R had gone astray... Reminds of the letter I received from Staffordshire County Council - because my postal address at the time was Keele University Chapel, I frequently got "promoted" to the status of vicar by correspondents. This particular letter, though, was addressed: Dear Revered Taylor, I had no idea I was held in such high regard!

Nah, that's an engineer. IT technician is "Hey, who's been drinking my beer?".

Oh yes, I completely agree. I've just come back from teaching a bunch of Swedes about troubleshooting and problem solving, and, obviously, one of the key points to get across is that if you don't get the "problem statement" (i.e. What is wrong with what?) clear, then you're wasting your time. But, for the Swedes, "Network problem" seems to fit with the "What is wrong with what?" question - in their mind, the Wrong with bit = Network, and the thing that's wrong with it is that it has a problem. What kind of problem? Oh, just a problem. Circular argument starts. And rages for several minutes, ending with the Swedish guy saying "Yeah, but I know what I mean". Grr. The whole point of writing something down is to communicate something to someone else, surely? If only the person "what wrote it" knows what it means, then it's rather pointless!

There's something about apostrophes that brings out the pedant in me! I'm never more horrified than when I read something that I have written which has an apostrophe in the wrong place. Bizarrely this never seems to happen when actually writing, only when e-mailing or posting to bulletin boards like this. I think there's something about typing at a computer which de-focuses you, which would probably explain why I feel stupid most of the day! At Uni, the "GreenSoc" posted, on all the available noticeboards across campus, a number of signs which read: "Recycle! You're grandchilden We'll thank you for it." I got a bollocking from a porter for defacing the noticeboard when I went round with a big marker pen ...

Apparently there's a set in Southampton Uni library, so I'm planning to go in and have a look. Fortunately one of the choir members also has an archive of pretty much everything concerning the building of the current organ, as she was one of the organists at the time, plus the various "The Organ" articles by Sumner, etc, that relate to it, so she might have the relevant Rotunda article too. Thanks for that, though - I'm always keen to find new sources of info!

Yup, they are very smooth, no jump at all. I've not tried the sforzando - something to try tomorrow night, I think! I'd still rather have a "normal" balanced pedal, though. If anyone's interested in seeing the mechanism, I can probably take some pictures this week?

Well, it does help that the gauge for the swell shutters is now mostly working again - it now goes from 1/2 to fully open in a big jump, but it's better than not moving at all. I'm planning to swap the two guages over, so that the swell is the better working one. I'm not having much luck sourcing a new guage from Smiths though

I have these "delightful" pedals on my organ. They take a lot of getting used to, I assure you! Basically, as others have said, they are centre pivoted and sprung, such that they have no actual position information to give you (i.e. you can't tell where the shutters are based on the pedal position, because it always returns to centre). We have 2 Smith's gauges (old Morris Minor fuel guages), which indicate the position of the choir and swell boxes. They can just be seen under the left hand stop jamb in this picture - http://www.laudachoir.org/organ/gallery/large-2.html How far you push the pedal determines how quickly the shutters move. It is very easy, once accustomed to them to do a very slow crescendo, without actually moving your foot - just a gentle constant pressure, and off you go. The toe under the pedal technique is just about possible, but actually very painful, because you're fighting against the springs without the advantage of a lever (i.e. the pedal itself with the central pivot point), so it requires significant toe strength. The other thing that I find nigh on impossible is instantaneous sympathetic swells - i.e. when accompanying a choir, you can't instantly react to a slight + or - in volume from the choir, everything has to be pre-meditated, at least by a half second or so. Another odd feature of this organ is that you can re-assign the swell pedals - i.e make the left hand pedal operate the swell and the right the choir, and vice versa. That's ok, but what's occasionally handy is being able to make one of them operate both boxes. When I auditioned for this church, I needed to go from choir box shut to fully open during a registration change (down to choir strings - Vox Angelica, much more "Howells" than the swell strings), so I just kicked out my right foot as hard as I could. Unfortunately I hit the general crescendo pedal instead, so instead of choir strings and gentle 32' rumble, they got 32' contra tuba, full reeds, etc... Subtle!

My last place had the organ in full view, right smack in the middle of the choir stalls, but I still crept out. I also had a well trained chorister who I could despatch to the local tea rooms to order me a bacon sandwich (before the service), so I could get out at the start of the sermon, get a cup of tea and a bacon sarnie, then be back in time for the end of the intercessions. Particularly handy the morning after a few pints!

To bring the tone down to the gutter, I remember an evensong lesson at Ripon, where part way through the Canon leant forward over the lectern, (big brass Eagle thing in the middle of the choir), looked sternly at a certain boy (who shall remain nameless!) and said, rather loudly - "Will you PLEASE stop masturbating during the lesson, young man!". My usual sermon habits are to read, but with the new church and organ loft, I haven't yet managed to work out where to position the mirrors such that I can still see down the church, but so that the congregation can't see me reading. There's an old cabinet in the corner of the organ loft, that's had its doors smashed off. I think I might replace this with an armchair, and possibly a percolator - the smell of fresh coffee might wake some of the old dears up!

It did, and I assume it still does. We loved it in the choirstalls, in a typically choirboy "anything loud is good" kind of way. That and the squeaky hand...

mmmm, Ripon... The first organ I had lessons on! A lovely machine.

I've always played it from the Peters vocal score. Not the easiest thing in the world, particularly if you start getting into orchestral registrations...

Ah, you've found the flaw in my argument. I do use NPOR to "research" organs on the very rare occasion that I get asked to play somewhere. (I'm not much of an organist - conducting's more my thing).

Nothing obvious that I can see... I guess it's something to do with either no assigned storage space on the webserver for avatars, or permissions related. Either way, it would need fixing at the server end.