Entering The Organ World

Since about 1972, I have been interested in organs. My Dad (bless his soul) decided in his wisdom to buy a brand new Electronic Organ from a dealers called Hesseys in Liverpool for my two brothers and myself, to learn music on. You see in his childhood, he lived in a two-up, two-down teracced house (with an outside loo) in the Anfield Area of Liverpool. As it was a large family of TEN, he slept in the attic/loft. I believe that that was where he tried to learn the violin. Needless to say, he did not and so although he loved to listen to music, he was unable to play the organ, except by ear, and in that he struggled.
The organ he purchased was a small Thomas Spinet organ, with two keyboards, bass pedals and Colour-Glo (Color-Glo in its American spelling). Yes, the keyboards lit up with the notes, and the Chords C, F, and G where coloured to match the accompanying self-teach organ course.

Now music lessons at school for me had been basically singing from words only song books, I had no idea of basic music theory, but my two younger brothers were learning the recorder at Primary school and thus learning to read music.

Now we all had a vague idea about organs as my Godfather Bert Jones, was a semi professional musician who played the organ in clubs around the greater Liverpool area. On the occasions that we visited his home we had listened and watched as he played his Lowrey Holiday, a late sixties model before the introduction of built in Automatic Rhythm. We were amazed at the sounds that it could produce and the variety of instruments available. The best we had had as kids, was a very old second hand Chordette chord organ, and Dad had a mini piano Accordion on which he fudged around.

Needless to say I was hooked on organs.

Dad upgraded after a year to the then brilliant Lowrey Citation Spinet,(model GAK) with Golden Harp, Automatic Rhythm, and built in Cassette Recorder, and that became my life on the organ for around 7 years.

Other organs that have been owned by me include:

Lowrey Coronation
Lowrey MX1
Yamaha HC4
Technics GX5

I still have the Technics and Yamaha organs and yes, I have played many more makes,types and models over the years. I would stick my head into organ shops in England, and try out organs the same way that others may go into car dealers to try out cars. In my much younger days, I was able to distinguish by its overall sound the different organ types, such as Baldwin, Gulbransen, Conn, Hammond, Yamaha, Thomas, Wurlitzer and Lowrey. Wersi, Roland and Kawai, came later in my travels and by then the basics of organ sounds had taken on near perfect instrument reproductions, but as in the case of one wersi I tried, a greater difficulty in getting the basic flute/ tibia sound to play.

Unfortunately, I play by ear, I have great difficulty in reading music. If I tried to read a piece of music, I would memorise the melody and then only follow the chords. Pretty soon I would have those memorised to. It does allow me to use flexibility in my playing style, but many is the time that I needed to read sometning and have been stuck. I do enjoy the organ, and many people say that i sound great and would love to be able to play like me, but I do know my own instrument and how to get the best from it. My worst critic is me.

I will however eventually attach an MP3 of my playing soon to this blog in the near future along with photos of my past organs.

We have all had times when we have needed to ask for help or advice about, organ models and features, playing styles, music types, repairs, spare parts and similar. Now as the organ disappears through the use of single keyboards, it is getting harder and harder to cater for our needs as organists, especially for me now resident in new Zealand.

Now maybe, just maybe through this blog, links and contacts can be formed by us across the world that fulfill our requirements.

Thank you for coming to my blog. Please feel free to contribute to it, or visit us again.

Best Wishes to you organists out there,



Robin