Undignified end of an organ?

[Paul_H]

Found this on Youtube.  I'd like to think these people know what they're doing, but somehow the bit at 5'39" suggests otherwise.

Paul H
 

 

[pwhodges]

It's previous situation wasn't that dignified either...

Paul

[Andrew Butler]

My first church organist's post at age 14 was on this organ in its original location - Oakfield Road Unitarian, Clifton, Bristol.  It's on NPOR.

https://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=N03855

Edited May 29, 2022 by Andrew Butler
NPOR link added

[Contrabombarde]

I think we're going to have to reappraise the work of these guys. You'll recall the story - a small and undistinguished church organ found itself unhappily moved and installed along the staircase and any other rooms it would fit in a terraced house in Bristol. Someone who appeared to not have a clue what they were embarking upon then bought it (the organ, at least) and decided to video themselves trying to dismantle it and re-erect it in a museum of mechanical oddities.

The result of their labour is truly breathtaking and this video is one of the most gloriously bonkers, and ultimately glorious triumphs of the pipe organ I've ever seen. Huge kudos to them for their imagination, this project is beyond awesome.

(For musical purists, I should mention that earlier in the clip he is playing some Bach on it too.)

[Colin Pykett]

I agree!  He's using it as a vocoder, an amazingly original idea.  Quite straightforward, conceptually, using today's digital music software but nobody else seems to have thought of it.  But 'conceptually' is the deceptively simple word here - to have got it working he will have had to do an awful lot of hardware work, no doubt burning the midnight oil while wielding a soldering iron after having designed all the interface electronics, which itself is not exactly the sort of thing you could buy off the shelf.  ("Hey Mr Amazon Market Place, excuse me but do you by any chance have a hardware interface between iZotope and a pipe organ?")  Not many today would have the imagination to think of it in the first place, let alone have the determination to see it through.

(In writing this I'm just making plausible guesses at the details of his system - I can't seem to find out much by following the links from the actual video on youtube.  Maybe they weren't working properly when I tried them. Pity.)

I hope some employer somewhere has had the insight to have given this guy a job with the salary he deserves.  I wish I'd had the opportunity to have interviewed someone like him for a job back in the day.  I wager he'd have shaken us all up!