The early joys

Hello, dear reader.

I suppose I'd best start at the beginning.

Many years ago I was a very rubbish church organist. However, I did have style so managed to make a modest living at it. It was lots of fun. I loved a good funeral but strangely, I hated weddings. My theory is that it's very unusual for the corpse to arrive late whereas a bride...

After moving across to Cumbria in 1999 I sort of stopped playing apart from very occasionally helping out in a church or two in Carlisle. Of course, as in most places, organists (or even pianists who can busk a bass accompaniment with the pedals) are pretty few and far between. After lots of thought I decided that it wasn't worth me playing classical organ any more as what folks expected in return outweighed both the pleasure and the remuneration... £10 offered for two hours on a Sunday morning with a twenty mile round trip? Not for me, ta! Especially as I'm a great big atheistic heathen to boot!

A few years go by and of course the enjoyment of organ music hasn't gone away - nor has the want to play. I accepted a post as an organist in a tiny little parish church. I only did it for a few weeks until sadly there was a huge personal family crisis that took me out of normal life for well over a year.

It was during and after the 'recovery' process that I started really getting into YouTube. Now this, to me, was fantastic. It was here that I looked at organ videos and eventually stumbled across Hauptwerk and MidiTzer. WOW!

As soon as I heard what the technology could do (in 2008 when I discovered it - yes, I'd been living under a stone 'til then) I wanted to start to use it. I mean, what could be better? Get the stuff together to build a basic virtual pipe organ at home? "Wuhoo!" as they say in the Houses of Parliament. I had a Yamaha keyboard that I use for concerts. That was a good start. Don't want to spend money until I'm sure, do I? So, I downloaded the free version of Hauptwerk and plugged my usb doo-dah in and off I went... or not. It's at this point I have to tell you that I'm TERRIBLE with technology.

Did I check the cable?
Yup.
Did I check the other end of the cable?
Yup.
Did I check that I had the right configuration on the Hauptwerk settings?
Yup.
Did I know what I was looking for when I did it?
Nope.

After lots of argy-bargy I flicked the MIDI button on the digital display of the keyboard, pressed a key and STILL nothing happened. "Aah", I thought. I drew a stop with my mouse and it worked! HURRAH!

Now, this setup was acceptable for about 24 seconds. I didn't want to be clicking the mouse pad on my laptop every time I wanted to change registration. However... Christmas was just around the corner and what with my birthday being only a fortnight before then I felt brave enough to ask 'Mother Dearest' if she knew what she wanted to get me as gifts 'cos if she didn't I wanted an Oxygen 61 thingy keyboard. So, I now had two keyboards and one of them now had the capability of changing pistons with one push of a button right above the keys. RESULT!

I was really enjoying this little setup. For a good few weeks but I was very aware of a couple of problems.

1. I was only using the crappy monitor speakers from our old PC.

2. The alligator double keyboard stand, although solid enough, wasn't the most appropriate thing as jumping from the great manual to the swell seemed like miles apart.

3. No pedalboard.

4. Because the setup wasn't quite right for me I was starting to get my old, old problems - bad back.

Back onto eBay I went...

First thing to address was the speakers. At the time I wasn't so flush so I didn't want to spend more than £100 or so. I found (brand new) some Roland Edirol MA-150 studio speakers. FANTASTIC pieces of kit for the money. Wired them up and instantly the whole thing sounded much better.

The keyboard stand I simply had to live with as for the short-term there wasn't a sensible solution as we'd just decided to put the house on the market. With that in mind, in our naivity we thought the house would sell by the end of 'Murder She Wrote' so we tidied up by moving the grand piano out of the living room (very small house/very big piano doesn't really work when you're getting house viewings) and the basic organ set-up had to be pretty easy to take apart and hide away to reclaim the spare bedroom it was living in.

After a few weeks I discovered http://www.classicorgans.co.uk/ . Wow, they have two manual setups from reclaimed organs. That means that at least part of the keyboard stand problem would be resolved. I gave them a nudge and started my longterm dealings with Ron Coates who runs the show. Fantastic and really helpful bloke whom I'd highly recommend. He sold me two keyboard stacks. No, not two keyboards - two keyboard stacks which means four manuals in total. I never do things by halves tha' knaa! I wanted to have as much practical input in building the organ so I bought the computer hardware from him and rapidly learnt how to solder.

So here I was with four keyboards that were being recycled from older instruments, which I wholly approve of. Why get new when you don't really have to - especially if you're going to be bastardising it regardless? After hours of wiring up the solder connections and working on the PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards, no less... notice I was becoming technical) I had four manuals that eventually were up and working.

Now, what do I do about a pedalboard? Oooh, look, there's one. Already midifyed too. No-one's bidding on it. How strange. I'll stick a bid in. Ooh, I've won it. BUGGER, where do I store it ? The house was still on the market and we were getting a trickle (and I mean a trickle) of viewings so a great big radiating concave 32 note pedalboard strewn about isn't a good look. The garage wasn't an option as by that time I had my boudoir grand piano in there (6ft 2") and a recent purchase of a 9 foot concert grand piano as well as several hundred books. Hmm, won't go in there then. "MOTHER!!! Are you home on Tuesday?" "Yes, why?" "Oh, that's good, you're getting a delivery for me. Will you keep hold of it until it's convenient for me to pick up please?" "Yeah, of course." So, the pedalboard stayed in her hallway (she couldn't move it anywhere else!) for two years!

Two years since putting the house on the market we still hadn't sold so I thought, "Sod it. I'm going to build that organ." I gathered together all of the bits that had gradually become stored out of the way and laid them out in front of me. I went to my mother's house 90 miles away to collect the pedalboard that would fit in neither of our cars... One of them was my Rolls Royce and it wouldn't even go in the boot in that!!! So out came the precision instrument... A hammer. I unscrewed all of the screws that could be unscrewed, removed the pedals and gave each corner a good knock. It all came apart with no damage at all. I brought it the 90 miles back home (yes, it's the same distance back) and brought it into the house to reassemble. It looked great. And still big.

We plugged the pedalboard into the laptop, put on Hauptwerk and played bottom 'C'. Nowt happened. I worked my way up the pedalboard until I got to the 'F' and then it started to go up the rest of te scale no problem... Apart from it being a major 4th out of sync. ie the 'F' on the pedalboard was showing and playing 'C' below. After lots and lots and lots of faffing about over the course of weeks I came to the conclusion that I'd found the reason why the bloke was selling it! It wasn't a problem with MidiTzer as I just independently transposed the pedalboard but I was unable to find a way to do that with the Hauptwerk. I gave Ron Coates a nudge and he sorted me out with a new PCB for it, out came the soldering iron again and 'et voila' I was off... Apart from I didn't have an organ bench...

I think at this point you realise that there's always something else I want.

EBay yet again. I discovered someone was selling a hideous old Livingston organ but without the bench. I let the auction run and saw that the organ sold for £1 (a quid!). Whoever bought it even for that was ripped off in my opinion. I used to play the exact same model every Sunday over in Hartlepool and by the time it was got rid off there was only one manual working and none of the 'F's on that manual, or the lowest octave were working. None of it repairable. ANYWAY.... I gave the guy who was selling the organ a nudge and asked if he had the bench. He had. I asked what he wanted for it. I offered him £20 and he not only sold it to me but gave me back a fiver 'cos he thought I was paying too much. Needless to say, I KNEW I was getting a bargain so shut my gob and drove back across the low-lying Cumbrian Fells the short distance home.

So now I had the manuals, the pedalboard, the bench, the programme and what else? Hmm, now what happened to those two touchscreens I bought off eBay when I first got into this? Oh, they're in the loft. Up I went. They had originally been part of some sort of fruit machine game that you needed a touch screen for. I wired them up. Both faulty. Oh well, £100 wasted. Never mind. Into the bin they went. Online, two brand new fantastic 19" widescreen touchscreens with plenty of change out of £350. ALWAYS do a bit of bartering. I did pretty well out of that deal as the asking price was £250 each.

Hmm, how do I get a console started? I really don't want to build one as we'd STILL not sold the house and I was very aware indeed that we'd still be dismantling the setup if we had a viewing (we'd reduced the asking price by 15% of the original price by this point). I did a bit of research online and read in a really obscure article that if you're lucky you can get the right size thing at Ikea. I'm an Ikea virgin and after my first time there with this purchase I'm thrilled to report my planned celibacy! I hated the joint. However, I DID get what I wanted. We got a large table top for about £35 after taking a smaller one, wandering around the warren to the checkouts and thinking that it was too small. And, what was great 5 individual adjustable table legs. I think in total it cost me something like £70 for the lot + fuel to get there of course. our nearest Ikea is 50 miles away. Got home, a leg at each corner and one in the middle of the back longside just to add a little extra support. I did that as the manuals are heavy. It fitted like a glove. The pedalboard fits very neatly under there and the manuals sit on top with enough room either side for the touchscreens to sit perfectly. It really did look designed for it.

The whole thing can be dismantled in its entirity and shoved in the garage (on top of the heavily, heavily padded and covered concert grand) in 30 minutes. Open the double bed-settee and do a bit of jiggling of the furniture and in 1 hour it's back to a very attractive spare bedroom rather than an organ room!

At present, though, the organ is very much an ugly duckling. It very much reminds me of a Victorian Skeleton Clock. It has all the same bits as the really higly decorative and attractive ones but is only showing the rough basic structure that's needed. For the time being that really is how it'll have to stay.

When (IF!!!) we sell and get a larger house, the ideal plan is for us to have the space for several reception rooms. Ideally we'd like a living room, dining room, music room and a library. I'm sure that with some juggling a library could easily be the music room as well as to be honest practically all of the books in the house are mine (have a bit of a thing for books - can't resist buying those either!) and around 25,000 individual pieces of music all of which need to be kept handy. If the music room and library were combined that, although ideal in theory would be a pretty tight fit... especially as I'm really, really, really hoping that I just might be able to bring my 7ft harpsichord home from work although I doubt that'll happen if I'm being realistic. So, with the tight-fit situation in mind I thought about integrating the organ into a library so having the console and shelves around it all as one huge piece of furniture. By doing that I can also have as much access space for the guts of the organ by just having a couple of cupboards underneath and beside the organ that will indeed look like they belong there especially if I build them into a continuous feature. You know, 7ft library shelves with low cupboards all the way around. Perfect. How the hell we'll get the two pianos, the organ, a library of about 28,000 pieces of music and books combined and potentially (but still very unlikely) harpsichord into one room I'll never know but hopefully that's where a dining room will come in... Maybe that can double up as a library instead! Ooh, didn't think of that!

The organ saga still isn't finished though...

All of the setup is now really marvellous but there is STILL something missing. Expression or swell pedals. I'm really missing them. Google search came up with a guy over the big blue pond. After buying something from him (I can't remember what but I'm sure it was hardware of some kind) I happened to mention swell shoes. He asked what type I wanted and I said ideally Allen. I was in luck. He had 6! None of them had the potentiometers on them so they were literally just the swell shoes but I got the lot for... wait for it... including postage from Canada... $75 at the time that was about £48. BARGAIN!. I got in touch with Ron Coates again who is right at this minute doing the PCBs for me so that I can get it all rigged up. Hopefully by early to mid December I'll have probably four shoes set up. I'll keep the other two for the organ at work!

I really want wooden keys rather than plastic ones. A quick shufty on eBay (again but I do have 100% rating) got me a two manual keyblock for £90. They're for future reference as I'm planning on building a second organ for my office at work. Probably just a pretty basic one that I can move about as it'll be very useful for concerts that we do there. I'll need another computer, pedalboard, speakers.....

I've kept a moderate eye on what I've spent. It really does mount up over time but you must bear in mind that it has been over the course of two years with £50 here, £90 there so you really don't notice you've spent it. I'd say that a realistic estimate is £2,000 I'm anticipating spending £500 on getting a really nice console sorted out, another £300 for the toe studs and the thumb pistons (although I've already got the PCBs, again, courtesy of Ron). £800 on a computer specifically for the organ, and another £300-£400 on further speakers.Yes, it's a LOT of money, especially as I've not even bought the software which is around £400. Each further instrument you purchase is a few hundred quid (or more).

I'm not turned on by plasma tellies, or brand new top-of-the range cars. I don't have any children, I earn a good wage with a decent disposable income so I feel that it's worth every single penny. When you look at the 'off-the-shelf' digital organs that will have the same features that mine'll have you'll be looking ar somewhere in excess of £20,000. OUCH!

What's the best bit of it all? That's easy. I get to learn to play the organ again without the joy of freezing cold fingers, feeling heavily leant on to play for services, I have the joy of being able to access the best organs in the world with the press of a button, I can play harpsichord, harmonium, romantic, baroque, Scandinavian or theatre organs at will and all from the comfort of home.