notebasher
-
Posts
149 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by notebasher
-
-
I've only just noticed this earlier contribution from Ron Poole, with which I really do need to take issue, on several points.
It can be (and regularly has been) fatal to do work on the limited basis that you suggest and, in this case, I'm afraid that the naivité may be on your own side: Imagine - a few motors releathered, a hole in a bellows gusset patched, a few broken trackers replaced or a couple of Pedal Bourdons put back into service... etc., etc..
The organ is then fine, for about a year, until there is a change of Vicar/Minister and a change of PCC/Elders, at the same time, some OTHER motors which weren't done with the few which were done last time, give up the ghost. Urgent meeting takes place at the church and the following day an harrumphing letter is fired off to the organ builders stating that, as their organ has only just been RESTORED by said organbuilder, they (the Church) are extremely displeased and have therefore decided to take the organ from his care and to give it to the nice man 'down the road' who is much cheaper and who has promised that he can fix the organ immediately.
Naive? I don't think so. You have no idea of the sort of things we have to deal with like this, on a fairly regular basis!
David Wyld.
Well at least the church would still have a pipe organ. Do you rebuild toasters? And are you seriously saying you wouldn't do fairly minor repairs such as a broken tracker on a routine basis? Would you expect to buy a new engine for your car because the garage wouldn't change the oil? We all have difficult customers; my point is that so many businesses are not client focused. And there's a whole industry dedicated to just this issue...
R.
-
Hi
The Bradford chamade is bright rather than very loa-ud - the solo Trumpet Major is louder and more rounded - but it's still a nice stop. The position at the top of the organ case (chancel chamber) facing South does, I suspect, limit how effective it is in the Nave compared to its previous position at the West End (which I never heard).
Another organ with chamades is St. Mary, Saffron Walden. They are deafenin in the South Aisle - and difficult to balance as the organist (on the screen) only hears the bounce from the West End (and that's a very long way away!) I've heard top-name recitalists come adrift here using the chamade in chords.
Every Blessing
Tony
I'd concur with what Tony says about the Bradford organ. The Purcell Trumpet isn't especially loud in the nave, although it's fairly assertive at the console due to its bright sound. It was much more effective when it was at the west end. The sound of the whole organ at Bradford falls off rapidly as you move from the chancel down the nave to the west end, which of course was why the nave organ was built in the first place, in the 1960's as I recall. It was quite effective when the church was full. Such is progress...
R.
-
I'm afraid that many PCCs see replacing an old organ (of any kind) with a new one (of any kind) as a sort of good house-keeping. When the salesman reminds them that they will have a lot of new floorspace for a Creche, a Parish Office, a larger Wardens' Vestry, A Coffee Area, this 'bonus' is bound to be tempting.
My own personal theory is that professional organbuilders no longer want to do the sort of work that most churches actually require. When I was in Gloucestershire, it became clear that the professionals around me (all without exception very good men with a high standard of work) wouldn't touch an organ under £15,000. A lot of this £15,000 covers the cost of major dismantling, taking vital parts back to the works, re-palletting, flooding soundboards etc. Some even sent reed stops back to full-time pipemakers - something I am very strongly against myself, since they never sound the same when they come back. [There's a possible future topic for you, except that one would have to start naming names!]
What churches so often need is a simple clean, patching of odd leaks and, perhaps, a small stop change. Pace Pierre and others, an organ that was built to accompany trained voices is not always terribly good at accompanying a distant (maybe elderly) congregation. IMHO the addition of a 2' rank (when there wasn't one before) can be a real help - the organ can be clearly heard over massed unison, and the whole sound world is that bit brighter.
Anyway, what I call TLC jobs just don't seem to get done. Churches who are affluent may eventually be persuaded to spend their £15,000 of course, and I'm sure they get a thundering good job, trouble is, most either leave the organs to quietly rot in a corner or 'invest' in an electronic. I am convinced that they think this is good husbandry. To them it is no more difficult a question than that of ditching a worm-eaten [oak] cupboard and replacing it with a smart but inappropriate flat pack [faced chipboard] item from a famous chain store.
This doesn't surprise me at all. It's a question of good craftsmen often being commercially naive as well as not customer focused. If a smaller job is priced to give the builder a reasonable contribution and to be affordable to the client, the builder will stand a good chance of keeping the business. If of course the aim is to try and get a church to do a major job each time, then once they opt for a toaster, they and every other organ-builder have lost the job for ever.
This isn't just having a go at organ-builders, I've been in engineering all my life, both production and marketing, and it's just the same - it's people. Often the production people just are not client focused. You can experience something similar every day in shops - not all, but plenty - when you feel you're invisible to the staff. And banks, and garages, and pubs, and town halls, and restaurants and so on...
There should be lessons to be learned here. I'm sure there have been some glaring examples of this in the past that people can think of... OK so the overall market for organs has shrunk, but I wonder how many builders have bitten the dust simply due to 'attitude'? Perhaps it's just survival of the fittest, after all.
R.
-
You're not the only one mad enough to do your own emergency maintenance!
I spent several hours on Saturday fixing the Great tenor F, which the tuner (Hi, if you lurk here) thought was working perfectly but intermittently stuck with Gt-Ped on (but no other couplers) when I played it... a slightly weaker pallet spring plus extra friction in the pull-down wire area, I think...
The gentlest possible assistance with knicker elastic
did the trick. No sticking 'F' at the 9L's and C's, or on Xmas morning.Just to keep the thread on track, it must be said that there was much appreciation from all. They are very kind - I thought I needed more practice!
Ian
PS Does anyone (among the tuners and builders, say?) have strong feelings about organists doing temporary fixes to their church's instrument? Has anyone seen any howlers?
Cork stoppers glued into the top of flute pipes where the corks had shrunk...
Tops of pipes scrunched up with pliers where tuner hadn't got a proper tuning cone...
And that was organ builders...
I normally try to avoid DIY repairs, unless needs must, on the grounds that I could make it worse! A bit of paper under a pipe foot will silence a cypher without all the hissing; I've used that one a few times. Recently had a situation where swell 5 piston would shoot out and disappear when I pushed it, and after too much grovelling under the pedalboard to retrieve it I did a temporary fix with a bit of bluetak on the end that went into the hole.
R.
-
I have just played for an `important' funeral. The b****y undertaker has gone off again forgetting to pay me.
FF
Odd how the important ones can be the worst. Not so long ago, I played for a 'society' wedding - church full, 'special' choir, video, you know, all the usual stuff - surprise, surprise, groom had no cash, couldn't get any from cashpoint (why??), church didn't get paid nor did I. It took about two months and a strong insistance that the church advise me exactly who to take to the small claims court before I eventually got my fee! To make matters worse I knew the bride's uncle personally!
R.
-
Do I sleep, do I dream, do I wonder and doubt? Are things what they seem, or is visions about?
This evening I've just played for my umpteenth carol service thus far, this time for the Sea Scouts. Before the last carol, the Scoutmaster awarded the usual prizes and then turned in the direction of the organ console and said "And I'd like to say a special Thank You to the organist, Mr. Gareth Perkins, who has played the organ so beautifully for our service this evening"! Well, I could almost have fallen off the organ stool! I almost wondered whether he was a lurker on this forum!!!
No cheque was forthcoming, though, but, as the Vicar booked me to play for the service, I'll chase him up about that...
Out in the country on Sunday night, carol service with local choir, usual fee arrived without asking, what more could I want?? Guess I just got lucky!
R.
-
I'll settle for a dozen decent bottles of red wine at any time to help me recover from a surfeit of carols.
FF
I'll just settle for the dozen decent bottles of red wine any time - not necessarily all at once.
R.
-
Hi
The one (very cheap) version that I saw in a shop had sharps level with the naturals.
Tony
So what are they used for???
R.
-
Similar from another non organist.
Interesting observation. My better half helps out at one parish where there is a DoM who, although he doesn’t play himself, has been immersed in church music from choirboy on, and is immensely appreciative of his musicians. It also has a strong incumbent of the 'traditional' variety. Here, the organist is encouraged to produce a high quality piece at the end of the service, which is actually listened to and appreciated. Even some of the congregation will occasionally say afterwards "Enjoyed the Bach today....."
Another parish, a different style of management, and the difference really shows. A lovely two manual, ever so slightly sparse in the power perhaps, but more than making up for it in the quality, and sometimes you can’t hear it for the babble, and the rattle of teacups!
Yes, we recognise that scenario too. While our children were at primary, my wife helped every week as volunteer piano player, watching non musical teachers ‘train’ a school group. Come the recording session for the radio competition, and another parent, who was a music teacher but did nothing at the school at all, was drafted in. Similarly for the annual musical production; after weeks of practice, she was told that the music teacher from the ‘big’ school would play on the night!
The difference? Well, as was more or less pointed out to her, more than once, by a particular teacher, my wife is not a qualified teacher you see. She is, after all, only a church organist, and that only since she was old enough to reach the pedals!
When our youngest child left, that same teacher expressed the hope that “Our association may continue, and you will still be able to play for us.” Needless to say, it didn’t, and she doesn’t. She now plays at another school, where at least she gets paid.
Yes, I had a similar experience at a church, where I played for all the rehearsals for a carol service, only to be told that Mr Muppett would play on the night; 'he always does it' - and he got paid for it too. That really p****d me right off! But it only happened once. As squinius says, you can learn to sense the potential for these situations.
R.
-
Madeley is still in situ, although it has been replaced by a Makin Toaster, the speakers of which are in the pipeorgan case. The displaced pipes are stored in the roof of the church for such time as the organ is restored. I knew tis organ after it had been restored by an obscure firm, Fisk comes to mind but I stand to be corrected. Being located in a gallery it produced a nice sound but was inadequate for the building. It was replaced when the church became "Happy clappy".
Nicholson and Lord produced good solid instruments which served the churches well. Their opus magnum was Walsall Town Hall.
Thanks for that basdav. I'm pleased to learn that this organ at least has the potential to be used again. I was organist there briefly in 1968 before moving away, and one Saturday when I went to practise someone had pulled a load of the pipes out of the Great soundboard. Guess how the next couple of hours were spent? As I remember it was an OK organ, made some good sounds and I enjoyed playing it. In those days the church had a conventional choir and was old-fashioned 'low church'. 'Happy clappy' isn't really my scene!
It would be interesting to try a N & L organ after all this time. I've found that going back to play an organ many years later that I hear all sorts of things I wasn't aware of earlier and my perception of it changes. I wonder if it's the fallibility of memory or do we alter what we listen for over the long term?
R.
-
Daniel said last Sunday, complaining to Shula over lunch.
Dear me, another one that doesn't listen!
Oops! Must have missed that - don't listen every day! Daniel was right, it's appalling!
R.
-
Do pay attention, Paul - Phil has already gone on his holiday and the hymns are all being played too slowly by a substitute.
Perhaps she has dropped mince pie crumbs into the console and jammed one of the trackers?
Who said the deputy is female? And I'd have thought mince pie crumbs could be worse in pneumatic action than tracker. I think Phil should be pensioned off when he gets back for abandoning ship at Christmas. Disgraceful! Anyway if it is a woman deputy, will she be safe if Brian finds out?
R.
-
Why ever not? Surely that type of sermon has its place, not least in Oxbridge colleges. It's preferable to the pink and fluffy but completely meaningless sermons we are too often subjected to in our parish churches.
Agreed, but if they can't say what they need to in 10 minutes or so is it not likely to fall on deaf ears?
R
-
One thing that always slightly confuses me is why, in very many shorter, or at least non eucharistic services there always seems to be 'a short talk', or sermonette, or even sermon.
I have in mind, for example, carol services or choral evensong.
W.r.t. the latter, it seems to me (and it's my opinion, I haven't discussed it with anyone else until now by means of this board) that the service is completely thrown off balance by the inclusion of three or four hymns, mostly after the collects, interminable intercessions, and a possibly interminable-seeming 'short talk'. I suspect that those whose allegiance to a particular church observance may be somewhat loose (though this says nothing about their personal faith, I might add), are rather put off by such.
{I would not normally want to initiate a discussion about religious observance on what is a forum about the instrument, but something I read on here recently triggered the thought I've mentioned above.}
It's not uncommon in my experience to have hymns and a sermon at Evensong, at least in parish churches; that's when you can find Evensong nowadays - it seems to have largely disappeared except in cathedrals (where of course they don't generally do lots of hymns and a sermon). Could there be a cause and effect situation here? I have also heard it said on the subject of sermons that brevity concentrates the mind. Any dissenters?
-
Re Holy Trinity Dawley:
My uncle, Percy Corbett was organist for over 60 years at the church. It would undoubtedly be him that you saw during the organists association meeting. The organ was a fine instrument and sounded excellent and very balanced from the nave, more so than from the organ loft. The sound was no doubt helped by the fact that the organ was situated on a balcony at the rear of the church and spoke unabated down the nave. Dawley was a fine example of how a committed organist and choirmaster could produce good results. The choir in their day were good for a church of this size. Some of the choir would be ringing the bells behind the organ before the service, throw on their cassocks and join the choir. It was a precision operation!
Percy always wanted a Trumpet on the great - he never got it. Maybe the fact that he wanted more controls for the organ reflected the amount of accompanying work he did with the choir. He typified what a good all round church organist should be, competent in all disciplines required and was a natural improviser. I haven’t heard the organ since the large fire at the church and do not know whether since the rebuild its tonal qualities have been affected or how much damage was caused. Percy Corbett died in 2000. I remember being told about when he took the choir to Hereford Cathedral how he enjoyed checking out the full organ capabilities (several times) during practise and was asked to 'quieten down' by cathedral officials. For all the intellectual debate on this website, it is nice sometimes to let rip on the organ or am I missing the point?
My grandad and several other family members throughout the years were members of the choir. I suppose when we all look back and see what got us interested in the organ, you can pinpoint certain events. I think that sitting by Percy at the console of the organ as a 6 or 7 year old during the service and then being allowed to play the instrument after the service was hugely influential in increasing my appetite for the instrument. Indeed it was probably more exciting to me then than going to the console of a cathedral organ would be now.
I'll remove my rose tinted spectacles now..................!
I was in the Shrewsbury Organists' association in the 1960's and I too remember Percy Corbett. I can't say I knew him well, although I've certainly heard him in action. I was sorry to learn of his death. It's interesting to read what you say about how your sitting with him at the console influenced you as a boy. In my case I can clearly remember seeing a friend of my father's playing the organ after my sister's baptism (I was four) and from then on I was hooked!
R.
-
I tune at least three N&L organs around Shropshire (two not in original state) and I know they were a Walsall based firm, is there anyone out there that might have more information? They were at the time as good as Harrison, Willis and Walker - it's a shame they died out when they did.
Any input would be great.
Thanks
JT
The ones I've played by them were Madeley (gone?), Ironbridge, Ketley, St John Wolverhampton. I wouldn't have rated them as premier league builders, but its 100 years since I played one, might think different now?
R.
-
I used to practice in a hospital chapel - pyjama temperature 24/7
Hey, you weren't in hospital recovering from hypothermia then???
R.
-
All this talk about playing in a cold church with frozen fingers makes me so cross. Are these churches so hard up they cannot afford to heat the Church properly. I think theres a case here for health & safety. What happens to the body when u are cold. U shiver and may need the loo more often as well as the fact your skin just turns all blue. I would not put my health at risk I would certainly refuse to play .
OK so when would you get to do any practice? I suspect the reality is just that - churches can't afford to heat the places up; old buildings, high fixed costs, poor attendances (no money), inefficient heating...
R.
-
==================
Quite rightly!
After all, holding a pair of ferrets costs nothing.
MM
It could do if they run off and you can't catch them...
R.
-
This sort of remark also gives rise to the comment that organists do not need to be paid because they are merely using 'God given talent'. Who pays for the organ lessons necessary to convert the 'God given talent' into useable skills?
Barry Williams
Unlikely to be the person making that sort of observation who pays - for services or lessons!
But not everyone's like that, some value these skills, wouldn't you say? See earlier dialogue.
R.
-
==============================
Well of course, with young 'Bwyan' (now Brian since he got his false tooth in), lurking around after mass to listen to the organ, I have to be on my best behaviour and not play wrong notes. If I make mistakes, he knows that something isn't right, and whinces audibly.
The only exception was when I tried to draw the upperwork for the grand finale of something or other, and whilst the Mixture drew correctly, the Sesquialtera didn't; the resulting sound not unlike a calliope.
"Bwyan" first whinced, then snorted and finally collapsed in a fit of the giggles, as if it were the funniest thing he'd ever heard.
It's odd to think that my junior critic really does listen, and keeps me on my toes. I think it makes a difference when even one person genuinely appreciates the music, and young Brian certainly does.
MM
Yes as you say MM, it does make a big difference when even one person listens; mind when one punter came up recently and said 'What was that you just played?' I did just wonder...
Ron.
-
I was organist for 22 years at a church where frankly nobody noticed (or cared?) if I played well or badly. After I left last Easter and went freelance I suddenly found I had to do a lot more practice before I felt comfortable playing anywhere! Probably it's too easy, especially in winter, not to practise too long in a cold church.
Interesting though about voluntaries - at one village church where I do one Sunday morning a month they more or less treat the voluntary as musical wallpaper - no change there then. But in the other town church where I now play 2/3 Sunday mornings a month they all stay and listen to the voluntary afterwards, and generally applaud too (unless it lasts more than about 4/5 minutes when the coffee wins out). But this is such a new experience. I wonder how many others have experienced this? It's been the exception for me and it doesn't half make me practise, especially as I make no great claims to be anything other than a reasonably competent player for services!
Ron
-
Having people sitting with you at the console can be hazardous...
About 20 years or so ago when a teenager my daughter was sitting with me at the console for a wedding. Before the last chord of 'Jerusalem' I made a quick grab for the tromba, and in the process unwittingly smacked her on the head. Never been allowed to forget that!
Then another time I was playing for Stainer's Crucifixion (yes, it probably served me right!) and had a friend along as page-turner, who had the distinctly offputting habit of humming along with the music. Not disastrous with the chorus part but when he decided to do this in my right ear as a soloist was singing - I couldn't hear the soloist. What with trying to concentrate on playing, listening out for the singer and muttering 'Shut up!' - 'What?' 'Stop humming, I can't hear' 'What?' - '******* SHUT UP!' How do you audition page-turners?
Ron.
did the trick. No sticking 'F' at the 9L's and C's, or on Xmas morning.
'smart Water' To Combat Church Lead Theft
in Nuts and bolts
Posted
I do sympathise with you in this situation - you're absolutely right, it's not all one-sided and I've had plenty of similar experiences - not in organ building I might add. Sometimes of course the organist/vicar/whoever has never met the tuner for all sorts of perfectly valid reasons and so then this sort of misunderstanding can so easily arise. How to improve this? OK sometimes you can't and you have to walk away from it, but wouldn't you agree that dialogue is better wherever possible? And yes it costs! But its good to see that some firms do take it seriously.
R.