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OwenTurner

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  1. There's a suggestion in one of the YouTube comments that this set might soon disappear. That would be a great shame. If anyone has any influence then please apply it.
  2. Have you all spotted this channel? It looks very interesting. It looks like an organ equivalent of the excellent "archive of recorded Church music" one. Does anyone know who is behind it? https://youtube.com/@ArchiveofRecordedOrganMu-by7li?si=oYoSPWiFYwW2a0Ej
  3. Around 1986? All fairly straight until stopping on one chord for far too long then slowly adding notes and changing stops to take it from a fairly ordinary principal chorus chord to a Messiaen chord and texture then flying off for a few minutes then landing on another long held chord and reducing it slowly from a Messiaen chord to a conventional chord and picking up the normal Bach ending? If it had been record review there would have been a recording commercially available and I wish there was, but don't believe there is. My memory is that it was one of the grand big p&fs but I was only in my teens at the time and didn't know my way through the full works.
  4. I can see that there's a real danger of "shooting the messenger" here, where the builder is quoting to a client's instruction. There was a similarly heated discussion of Charterhouse in this forum not long ago. I haven't seen mention of a consultant for the Gloucester work. I wonder who has created the new scheme. It's unlikely to be just Nicholsons acting alone. There must have been a lot of good quality pipework in the HNB instrument which could have been re-used elsewhere. I wonder whether the overly enthusiastic "melting down" comment is really true or headline grabbing, a bit like edgy comedian Joe Lycett's recent "shredding" of £10k.
  5. Looks like the case pipes will be looked after. See if this link will resolve for you. https://www.facebook.com/groups/355269498442029/permalink/1238034526832184/
  6. From James Atherton head voicer Nicholsons on facebook: "It doesn't exist any more you'll be pleased to hear. The pipework has been removed and melted down and the cases are to receive a brand new instrument by us (Nicholson & Co.) in 2026. It will most certainly not sound anything like its predecessor you'll be glad to hear."
  7. I don't think this group has given a lot of attention to the rebuild at Gloucester and the apparent scrapping of the HNB / Downes scheme. The last Nicholson rebuild respected the Downes scheme and added to it under the influence of David Briggs and Denis Thurlow. This time it looks to be replaced. I've heard some very moving performances there by Sanders, Briggs and Mark Lee. More so than in other places I've frequented but perhaps that's the challenge, better for recital than accompaniment? I feel it is a shame to throw the existing away and I'm struggling to understand why they would. Thoughts please?
  8. Watched it. Very good. Thanks for sharing. Could be useful to share with other communities trying to understand what a rebuild is all about.
  9. There's a big batch of sheet music here that someone might be interested in. The snag is that it is only for collection in person. Too far away for me. St Albans way. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/334673215579?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=EYInCzGMT--&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=zW6Y5gPTQP6&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
  10. My first ever cd player was very fussy to the size of the central hole in discs. I used to keep a piece of emery cloth to fix about 1 cd in 20 so it'd play without horizontal wobble. The mechanics of the disc are definitely important. As ever the tolerance of the machines reading them allows a tolerance of production quality which eventually surfaces at the extreme case. My best cd player has a magnet "puck" which firmly anchors to the horizontal and I can see why. I bought one of those cd ripper things (brennan) a few years ago and many of my collection fail to read in that. More read with an external computer cd drive attached. I'm sure it is no coincidence that those of old quality labels such as DG or EMI are significantly better at loading.
  11. I've heard that Gloucester might be a new instrument rather than a recognisable rebuild of the HNB / Downes. Anybody in the know?
  12. If you start that line of thinking you challenge quite a lot of science?!
  13. Yes I've half pulled bourdons before with effect. I first came across the situation on a gt to ped coupler which frequently slipped and when passing through gt 16 as a bass. I also knew another place where general cancel couldn't always raise enough energy to do a full job and experimented with part pressures for fun from time to time. 16 stopped was the only useful one to take public though. It is something I look to see if i can find in a mechanical stop draw where I can. More quint and longer to settle on the slightly weaker note would describe the sound. Not anything like as useful as the proper pressure but sometimes can give a variety.
  14. He worked east side of Scotland north of Edinburgh most of the time. He majored on high quality rebuilds, relocations and tuning / maintenance. He looked after and rebuilt some significant instruments. I suspect he saved a number of historic organs from going to the skip too.
  15. I have just come across this obituary of organ builder Alexander Edmonstone. https://www.taysideorganists.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Sandy-Edmonstone-obituary.pdf
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