ajt

Sounds similar to an experience I had... I got a phone call early one Saturday morning (6.30am) from a friend. Please bear in mind that I was a student at the time, and was probably still drunk from the night/morning prior. Could I please please please come to London (from Stoke on Trent) and play for a wedding? If I got the 720 train, I'd make it in time to practice. So, off I trot. Still inebriated. Turn up to some random RC church in Chiswick, organ console in gallery at west end, pipework detached but in same place. Had a bit of a play, found my way around, went for a pizza and a beer, came back for the wedding. First hymn - praise my soul. Somehow, halfway through the 3rd verse, on comes the pedal trombone bottom B flat. No amount of stop jiggling (stop was in) nor note slapping would clear it. Friend dives into the organ proper, can't find the correct pipe before the end of hymn, so I just turn the thing off. Cue long long long death stare from clergyman and couple until the wind finally plays out. Some minutes later, I turn on the blower again ready for the Schubert Ave maria for the singing of the register.... Bbbbbarrrrrp... Click. Blower off. We did the whole remainder of the service unacc, with my friend singing the most haunting Ave Maria I've ever heard, absolutely bang in tune. Post service, we found the offending pipe plus size 12 boot imprints across a number of smaller pipes... Apparently the church had been too tight to pay for the organ to be covered during the re-leading of the windows and rebuilding of the window frames, plus the builders only route to the windows was through the pedal division. I got paid £230 for playing 4 verses of Praise my soul, and the organ got a refurbishment fund started.

No specific tip for churches - they're all stunning. But, when in Florence, you should find the department store - "La Rinascente" - which is on the edge of one of the main squares (not the one with the Barghello, the one slightly further west, I think it's Piazza Republica, but I forget). It has a roof top café, which gives one of the best views of the Duomo from central Florence.

This thread might be a good time to mention that it is, I believe, possible to setup the invision forum such that you have to register to read it, thus taking any comments made here out of the open. Might not be a bad idea?

I think I have that one on tape somewhere. I'll have a hunt. Ron was one of my first teachers - him and Bob Marsh on the Ripon organ.

Yes, I have. And I'm not telling and I'm not saying where. Not yet. My advice, though, is always to discuss with whomever is actually responsible for the running of the parish before reacting.

Did it say that on the drawstop?

I had an interesting experience for my first wedding at a previous church with a Wyvern toaster. I was playing the Charpentier tedium for the bride to come in, when I suddenly started making hideous pedalling mistakes (which isn't that rare for me). So I started watching my feet, only to discover that my feet were operating within "spec" - the pedal board, however, was transposing a tone up. Fortunately a power cycle cured it, never to happen again. Last week before choir, I was experimenting with termperaments on the church clavinova, and forgot to reset it afterwards. Howells Coll Reg Jubilate sounds "lovely" in Mean Tone..

!!! 3kw? That's insane!

Well, if your hire quote was £10,000, and you bought an organ for x, and sold it at the end of the period for the same amount, then you've not spent anything, effectively. Hence saved £10k. Your quote might be for a smaller organ, or an older spec, or fewer speakers, etc, etc.

Maybe this is an opportunity for DHM to give one of his machines an outing?

modular in that it has modules, yes. Modular in the sense of mass produced plug'n'play modules, which is what I think folks are talking about, no.

"It is now accepted" ... That doesn't make it correct, either. Accepted by whom? It is accepted by many teenagers to use txt spk and 2 say thanx. Doesn't make it correct. Some might say that the ' is accepted as being unnecessary, certainly 80% of the people I deal with on a daily basis haven't got a bloody clue how to use them, so often just don't bother. Sounds fair - can I taunt you about tubas versus chamades then, just to get another discussion going on which we'll never agree? Grrr!!! Just another example of this stupid amalgamation - I read your post about stalemate *after* having made the above post. By amalgamating it, this board now makes it look like I purposefully extended the argument then agreed with the stalemate, which would be a contradiction!

My point exactly.

's to denote plurals of numbers is perfectly acceptable usage. I am a total pedant about apostrophes, and get really ****ed off when I see them being as plurals, but in this case CD's and 1970's there is nothing wrong. Has anyone got a copy of a) that Truss book (I hate the title!), Fowler? You may have been taught one way by some very good teachers, pcnd, but I would argue that I have been taught by equally good people. Some of these points of punctuation/grammar/spelling are institution specific - just look at spellings of organisation and organization - the OED, I believe goes for the z, whereas you can find other "British" English dictionaries that give you it with an s (Collins, I think, for one?) I believe the same is true of this usage of the 's for a very specific number of plurals - the *Oxford* Manual of Style implies that it is associated with an institution and mandates the writing style as laid down by that institution.

The language allows for the use of the apostrophe for plurals to remove abiguity - i.e. we could talk about dotting the is, but I think you would find it easier if I wrote i's instead. It is also valid to use 's to denote plurals of capital letters, numbers and symbols, e.g. 's or 1970's or CD's. I have no reference for this - I don't even own an English language dictionary. I am pretty certain that the same text to which you refer above (the Lynne Truss, not Hart!) will agree with me. The best I can do is cite a few websites.

Sure. Perfectly valid and correct use of the apostrophe - use when indicating a plural of a capitalised abbreviation. Current "thinking" says no on this, but, until recently, it was deemed the correct way. I believe, although I could be wrong, that this form was the "British" form, and the CDs was "American", which, of course, has now taken over. Does anyone else hate this amalgamation of replies that the board now does automagically?

You can e-mail it to me (ajt at laudachoir dot org) or I'm sure DC will upload it somewhere for you.

I liked my Dulzian!

That works...

My new church has a picture frame in the vestry. Said picture frame comprises 6 photo slots, which contain photos of former choir members who have "passed away". All except 1 slot. Which is empty. I'm toying with getting photos of the current choir members done, then trying each one in there, maybe a week at a time, to see how they look. Might make them worried Or, maybe as a prize for the worst noise at choir practice? "That noise was worthy of the dead board" etc.

I can think of an organ not too far away that would fit the bill nicely - not sure where it would go, mind... I took Andy into see it, but I can't imagine the cathedral stumping up the kind of cash that would be needed to get it reliably playable instead of designing a brand new, purpose built nave division. There's a big distance to cover. We were lucky enough to do the Allegri in there for Ash Wednesday, and even though my semi-chorus's mouths were moving in time with my beat for the final section (they insisted on singing it for some reason - best not to argue with the 1st soprano, also called "wife"), the sound arrived a good 2 beats behind - listening to the recording, you can clearly hear the main choir singing tu os, finish, then you get a second tu os after the main choir has cleared. I've always found singing/conducting in the choir stalls unrewarding, but conducting that Allegri was a different world - the nave choir were a long way back, and there were no seats out in the nave either, and this fantastically distant manna seemed to be just floating down on our heads. Quite incredible. Quite sharp too (semitone up pretty much from the 1st verse). Andy Lumsden describes the effect as "a distant moistening of the undergarments. How true.

Most of them will have a velocity sensor too, I believe, as some builders do try to model in attack/release.

You should try Royston Orme in Tettenhall, Wolverhampton - a very handy chap. If you want his contact details, PM me, and I'll put you in touch.

I met John Barnard a couple of years ago - he was speaking on hymn writing in general to an RSCM training day - and we were chatting about Guiting Power over lunch. He said that it's his hymn tune, therefore he abhors the idea of other people writing descants for it. Or such like. He was clearly, at the time, very proprietorial about it! Musically his points were quite interesting - he, apparently, struggled to think of a tune that was triumphant yet gentle enough for the Suffering Servant verse. The key to the whole thing, of course, being the rising 6ths...

From what I've seen and heard, the technology is the same. If you can tell either company what you want and they have or can get samples to match, then you can have whatever you want - bombarde32 will be able to tell you more. I recently looked at a Phoenix that was entirely based on Hill samples.