Janner

Am I just ordinarily dim, or really thick? Did I not understand the relevant part of your post above drd? The facility is there already of course. Before you click "Reply," or any other buttons, just scroll up and down through the topic, and at every post from which you wish to quote, click the "Quote" button. As it's clicked, each button turns red and stays that way, so you can see which posts you have clicked. Then scroll on down to the end and click "Add Reply." Lo and behold, the reply screen opens with all the required quotes in place. All that remains now is to edit out any unwanted text, leaving the code in square brackets of course, type in any required comments above, below , or in between the quoted sections, and away. I think I need a lie down now. Maybe I shall feel better in the morning.

Thanks for pointing that out. Probably Notepad is the safer option? I have tried both and the results, as far as appearances in the forum are concerned, are the same, at least superficially, but point taken. Another benefit could be that Notepad uses less PC resources. I am using an old (PII) machine with limited system memory, and it struggles if I try to open too many advanced applications at once. For me, Notepad certainly opens much quicker than MSWord, especially if I have the browser running as well.

Another suggestion, on a Microsoft Windows PC: 1) Click “Reply” for the item you wish to quote, and bring up the reply page. 2) Highlight and delete the parts of the text you wish to remove, but leaving the code with the square brackets at the beginning and end. 3) Highlight and copy, (CTRL + C), the whole, including the square brackets. 4) Open Microsoft Word and paste, (CTRL + V), the copied quote into the Word document. 5) Insert any text you wish. 6) Minimise Word and return to the forum. Click the Back-page arrow to return to the discussion, find the next quote you want and repeat 1 to 3, then return to your word document and paste. 7) Repeat above add infinitum, (well, perhaps not quite literally), compose and finalise your text as you would for any Word document, making sure that all the quotes start with the relevant code, the bit which looks something like “{quote name='Holz Gedeckt' date='Jan 5 2008, 10:38 PM' post='31782'}” and end with “{/quote}”. (NOTE: For {...}, read [...]. Had to do that or it comes out as a "Quote"). 8) Highlight, (EDIT – SELECT ALL), and copy the whole Word document, return to the discussion, scroll to the end, click “Add Reply,” and paste your complete reply into the clean page. Obviously, once everything is copied across, the Word document can be closed without saving. 9) Preview and submit. It may seem involved at first, but I find it works for me. If you don't have Word installed, it works just as well using Notepad, which is included in the Accessories of Windows; it's just not such a good text editor. Happy posting!

The organ may have been OK after this, but one can't help pondering on the other possible consequences!

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Thank you for that reply. Possibly others have meant to say that, but that is the first time I have heard it put that way. I have heard complaints about lack of 'feel', and unevenness, but I can see now that attempting to impart an artificial sense of touch on its own, without properly associating it with the start of the sound, would not make sense. Of course that would happen naturally with a well adjusted mechanical action. Obvious really. Most helpful, thank you. Presumably that must, of necessity, be more or less the standard situation in most such places? Thank you both for taking the trouble to reply.

I have also been looking into this for some time, (raised a similar query in an earlier topic). It seems to me that the first problem lies in deciding exactly what you are trying to imitate. With a practice organ, you could, for example, try to imitate a particular 'real' instrument because that is what you normally play on. However, if you are looking to construct / renovate a 'real' instrument, is that type of action that best one to copy, if indeed it's possible to do so? What sort of touch will enable the best playing by yourself and visiting organists? On a slightly different slant, given a house organ, (usually a 'Toaster'), intended for general practice, is there a 'type' of action which would be most likely to lead to, or encourage, the best technique for general use? If so what would it be? I am not an organist so I don't know. What I have found is that it's quite difficult to get those who are to describe exactly what they mean. They know what they like when they find it, but they seem to have difficulty defining it. To paraphrase an old question, it seems to be a case of "I can't quite say where I'm going, and I'm not sure if it's best to start from here anyway, but I'll know when I get there." Perhaps the experts on here could help? There are some interesting, very well written papers on this site, which attempt to analyze a number of aspects of organs http://www.pykett.org.uk/ You might go to "Complete articles" and start with "Touch Relief in Mechanical Actions," "Response Speed of Electric Actions" and "The Physics of Organ Actions." The author doesn't discuss 'imitation trackers' specifically, and I wouldn't dare make subjective comments on the merits of his research, but he does know how to write a good paper, and I find is invariably interesting to read. Hope this is of interest.

Some wonderful stuff in here, and isn’t heartening to read it! I agree with most of what you say, except for the second sentence. Personally I wouldn't criticize the Anglicans in particular. Certainly there are some Anglicans who can be dull, but I have heard some of the others where I would substitute the words over emotional (to the point of being affected), repetitive, and certainly overlong! Perhaps we should just agree that the ability to preach well is a great and rare gift, and one greatly to be appreciated, wherever it is encountered. Totally agree. Straight to the point! Right again! I would suggest the same goes for most of our ancient parish churches also, and indeed said so to one of our PCC who was questioning the worth of maintaining our village church. Very well told Gareth; really made me chuckle. Then I remembered it struck a chord with some of the antics in our own services.

Now there's someone with vision!

Really enjoying following this topic; very entertaining. Any of you contributors ever consider after dinner speaking? (MM?)

The comment about the width of Orgenmasters is quite right. Either Americans have unusually narrow feet, or feet on this side of the Atlantic are unusually wide; either way, even the wide fitting in Organmasters just doesn't seem to be wide enough.

Political correctness? Wonderfully put; and how refreshing to find someone who is not afraid to say so!

Thank you squinius for your PM. I hope my reply has reached you OK. Thanks Tony for your suggestion. I shall investigate. Best regards, Janner.

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Thank you for the last two replies. I shall obviously have to give the whole thing some serious thought, but at least I have several suggestions to consider. It's also good to know that, if I do decide to buy new keyboards, then UHT sound like a good option. Thanks again to all who replied.

Many thanks for your replys. I have contacted KimberAllen, UHT, Renatus and P&S. For interest, the results were as follows. A keyboard from KimberAllen, if I remember correctly, was around £550, without electrical contacts. UHT keyboards come in at around £1400 complete except for end cheeks, and cost varies slightly depending on the type of contacts fitted. Renatus say they use UHT in many of their projects. As yet I have had no reply from P&S. On (electronic) paper, at least, UHT appear to be technically advanced, using contactless switches, magnets to simulate pressure points etc., and virtually everything adjustable, but of course that doesn't say what they actually feel like to play on. Is there someone out there who has experience of playing on a KA or UHT keyboard? Thanks again.

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