Yes I Like Church Music

As an organ lover and someone who enjoys singing, I do love Church Music, You know hymns and carols. It is veryeasy to shut your eyes and imagine singing the hymn as you play(And yes, I often play with my eyes shut. I will cover that in the near future).

The organ wuth its wealth of Flutes or Tibias, is the one instrument that can add much variance to the melodies. Use of Reverb, Chorus/ Chorale/ Lesle Speaker/Tremelo, with fast or slow speeds can bring life to the music as you play. Sustain, and a really deep Bass Pedal sound fills it out nicely.

I am attaching yours truly playing my favourite Hymn. I hope you like it.

I would also like to thank, those people who have given me a 5 Star rating for one of my Utube pieces..

Bye for now

Robin

PS. If you want to request a piece played, I may be able to help you.

The Funny Noise

Dear All,

You will have probably seen or heard my attached videos here in previous articles, or on youtube at 2009RobinC. Now how many of you have heard a strange creaking noise in the background.
Well funnily enough I had mentally ignored it as I recorded the music, but on listening to them I was astounded at how loud they were.
Well you will all be pleased to note, that it was actually my good old trusty Technics organ stool. A couple of the legs had very slightly come loose. Never mind, a 17mm socket and ratchet soon fixed the problem. It does however lead nicely into the next part though. Recording yourself (or trying to record yourself).
I like may people out in the wide blue yonder, can have an absolutely great playing session, and actually sound fantastic, sometimes even to others, BUT.

As soon as we hit the record button on the organ, cassette recorder , video camera, or even the computer.
Woomph. It all goes wrong.

Well, you will be pleased to know that this problem hits even the best of them.

I was lucky enough to be at a presentation by John Walker, a professional English Yamaha Organ Demonstrator. He was talking about his recordings (Cassettes and CDs). He said that what happens is that he gets everything set up in the recording studio. Lights, Sound Levels, organ Settings etc, then,

AS SOON AS THE RECORD BUTTON IS PRESSED.

IT ALL GOES WRONG.

So friends, when you are down in the mouth, and thinking that you are a failure, remember the great John Walker's comments, and chin up. It is just perseverance. You will get there. Remember if you do not try again, then you have failed.

I will perhaps place a John Walker Track on this site soon. He is brilliant.

Well that is it for now, Be back soon.

Please add your comments or ideas, and feel free to email me.

Robin

Matching Your Instruments

Hello again,

It is now the eleventh of January in my part of the world and I am gradually getting the hang of the reduced visibility in thr right eye. It will be nice when the headaches end.

Now, as an avid organist, I have always been aware of the styles and registration ideas that other organists use. In the early days of the 1970's, organ voices were a little bit "suck it and see." Being a Lowrey fan at this time, my favourites were the fantastic String Bass and Bass Guitar pedal sounds, the Marimaba which at that time was a twin mallet repeat style and the Clarinet, which had this deep woody sound when played with reverb. (I was at a Hammond Demonstration in Bolton where the organist was no other than Bryan Rodwell. He made the Hammond sound fantastic but when a asked him for a Clarinet demo he admitted that the Lowrey one was far better at that time).

You have to match your particular instruments actual sounds to the right melodies, and I suppose that this also goes for the keyboard players, BUT if you play the right piece with the right instrument then you can let peoples imaginations takeover to fill in the gaps. It is all a question of feel and atmosphere.
As an example, an old trick on the Lowrey Citation Spinet, was to play Amazing Grace using the Upper Cello with Lower String Accompaniment and have on reverb but as you play, hold down the Glide Pedal, which bent the whole organ tone back half a tone. This gave an impressive BAGPIPE effect and if AOC was utilised it was great, especially if a Slow Waltz Rhythm was used with that melody.

Well that is all for now.

I have attached this video of Yours Truly playing Stranger On The Shore on the Clarinet, made famous of course by the legendary Acker Bilk.

Bye for now

Robin

Oops and a A Happy New Year for 2009

Well first of all I have to say Oops. I attached the wrong file to my last post and so there was no sound.
I am sure that you will all forgive me as I am working with my left eye only since the detached Retina operation.

Please acccept my apologies for this and try the revised attachment below.

May you all have a Happy and Prosperous New Year

Robin

Twas Christmas Day In the hospital

Well fellow organists, guess who had an emergency operation on a detached retina at 3-30 on Christmas Morning?
Yep. Me.

Well I have to say that as I was carol singing with my wife at our local community carol Sevice on Christmas eve afternoon, the vision in the right eye was suddenly getting worse as a rather large black area moved up from the lower left vision area. By 8-15 inb the evening I was persuaded by the family to go to thehospital. They took one look, and rang the on-Call specialist who came over from the Carols By Candlelight service in the City. I was earmaked for an operation at 1 in the morning but other operating room cases moved me to 3-30 am. I awokw after a general anesthetic was used to put me out for the Op, and they had stitched up two teras in the retina I believe. At 4 pm on Christmas day, I given a local anesthetic and they injected Gas into the eye.
Now on 29th December I am typing this with a rather amusing gas bubble floating arounf in the little vision I currently have in the right eye, BUT it is a lot better as I have just got back from a checkup.

Unfortunately it hindered my organ playing a fraction, so here attched is an older one of my playing called Blame It On The Bossanova, a melody that my wife and I used to dance too.

The tree is ours

Enjoy

Best wishes to you all for 2009

Robin

A Merry Christmas To You All

Well it is the 22nd December.
The Turkey is defrosting, the dried chestnuts are soaking and I have time for a quick play.

I hope you all enjoy it.

Robin

Playing For Christmas

Well, it is that time of the year again, and I have dug out the list of Christmas music that I play. It is a combination of Carols and songs that I like and generally if my memory hold up, can play. Unfortunately being and "Mr. I Play By Ear", I am once again, left looking at the list on occasion thinking,"How does this melody go", or I am half way through a piece when I suddenly run into a completely different tune, or forget completely and stop. (See and you all thought that reading music was a bind).

I have to confess that I am a Christmas Baby. My birthday is on the 2oth December, and my Granddaughters is on the 24th December. She will be three next week, I will be Mmmmm, old enough. As an Englishman and living in New Zealand, I have kept up our traditions here and after much searching, s till manage to have Roast Turkey dinner, Chestnut Stuffing, and Cranberry Sauce followed by home made Christmas pudding with Brandy Sauce. I also make the mincemeat for the 12 dozen (yes 144) Mince Pies that my wife Susan bakes.

The first photo here is of the old faithful organ, with the Christmas tree in the background. I find it helps to have achristmas feel around you when you are playing the organ at Christmas. It helps put that elusive feeling in that identifies your style from others.

Well I will leave you with a quick picture of our lounge. Many of the Christmas decorations on the fireplace were made by our children over the years. It is imp[ortant that Christmas is a family time.

Bye for now.

Have a great Christmas.

Robin

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