April 10th 2024


I finally managed to get around to playing and recording the final movement of the Lemare Sonata over Easter which has a button link below.

It's taken a long time to learn the piece which has proved to be very tricky. Typical of Lemare, there is a lot going on all of the time and this particular movement is no exception. The Finale ranges from the softest registers up to almost full organ complete with Tubas and 32' so I decided to use the Concert 85 complete with a moderate convolved reverberation.

Lemare: Sonata in F Major; Finale

End of March 2024


The News page has more details as to what I have been up to regarding HW etc.

Otherwise, it never seems to stop raining. I finally got the car back along with a hefty bill but hopefully, I won't have any further problems for a while. Yet again, it makes one realise just how isolated we are out here and it was very inconvenient to say the least. There is no public transport and there are no taxis, so it is very difficult when one has no transport.


I did manage to get into a local village church to have a look at their organ. Nothing spectacular, merely a simple single manual with a scant octave Bourdon bass. Had to correct the speech on a Dulciana pipe which was not speaking properly - just dust but otherwise the little instrument plays well. The stops are very pleasant but the Open Diapason is rather too large. There is a somewhat uncommon Bell Diapason which is quite interesting and the Harmonic Flute is quite a good example. The organ was built by Halmshaw in 1887 and is well looked after. Whilst the church is attended by a few loyal stalwart souls, like many, it is touch and go. As expected, the church does not have an organist, not even a 'pianorganist'.


Sadly, another local village church has had to be decommissioned and one wonders what is going to happen to the small Father Willis that it has. The villagers have moved to the nearby Methodist church which has an old and relatively unpleasant Viscount but I doubt that there is room to accommodate the Willis. Unfortunately, the parish church needed a lot of money spending on it and the electrics were condemned by the electricity board as being highly dangerous so the church could not be used any more. It's sad and whilst the Willis is no great shakes in terms of size, it's still a pleasant organ and there is a decent set of bells in the tower. I suppose it's no different to what is happening everywhere. Just a pity that the CoE under its present leader seems intent on destroying itself with its woke, out of touch agenda rather than looking after the churches that it owns.


I managed to plant about 300 tulips which were well overdue but found that the emerging shoots were being eaten or dug up. I suspected a grey squirrel and put a trap out only to find that it was a large rat that was the culprit. It was despatched accordingly. They say that one is never more than 8' away from a rat and of course, we do have rats here and there. Having a farm up the road doesn't help and there are plenty of rat holes in the adjacent woods. It's just something one has to accept and put up with. Of course, our rats are 'country' rats, but it still doesn't make them any more pleasant or acceptable. Fortunately, the deer and badgers, foxes and a polecat don't tend to cause us a lot of problems (it would be illegal to harm them anyway), but rats do need to be controlled.


Spring is already in the air and everything is beginning to bud up. Definitely one of my favourite times of the year with warmer and hopefully, better weather to come soon. Our garden is particularly beautiful, especially when the rhododendrons flower and the woods are full of bluebells.


February 9th. 2024


Although it has been somewhat wet, we are lucky enough not to have had any snow. Parts of the UK have been "snowed under" especially in the Pennines so I'm very glad not to still be living in Derbyshire. Some of the cherries are already in full flower and the camellias are also starting to flower which definitely means that spring is on its way.

As stated on the news page, I have been working on providing a number of additional stops for an existing pipe organ in Canada so much of my time has been taken up with this. Now that that is finished, I can go back to other work both with  HW and domestically.


Currently I still don't have the car back and a further fault has been found with the clutch mechanism which needs to be sorted out as well. Unfortunately, the roads around here are in very bad condition with loads of potholes etc. which means that all of the garages are fully booked up with work making it very difficult to get repairs done. Hopefully I will get the car back sometime next week (together with a horrendous bill). Unfortunately replacing the car at the moment is not a viable option.


Late January 2024


As usual, one wonders where the time goes. It never seems to stop raining and one storm arrives after another. Fortunately, we didn't get any snow to speak of unlike other parts of the UK but it did get a bit icy for a couple of days.

Having had the old central heating boiler replaced late last year, the latest problem is with the car which suddenly lost its power steering. It's happened to me once before and it's not a great experience. Hopefully the costs won't be too great but I also had problems last year with the braking system.

Trouble is that the roads around here are absolutely appalling so any car tends to get a hammering.

I'm gradually working through the house redecorating and repairing since I definitely can't work in the garden at the moment because it's been so wet. There's always something to do and so little time to do it in.

On a plus point, the days are getting longer and spring is just around the corner. I used to like winter when I was younger but these days, I'm not so fond of it. Having spent two decades in one of the coldest places in the UK, winter is definitely not my favourite time of year.

Fortunately, I do now live in one of the "warmest" parts of England so things aren't so bad.


November 2023


Whilst HW 4 has long been superceded by later versions and obviously we try and encourage customers to upgrade to a later version of HW because of the extra features, there are still plenty of users out there who do not wish to move on to HW 5,6,7 and 8 for various reasons. For many, HW 4 provides everything that they need but obviously, a few older sample sets by ourselves and other producers, are not available for the 4 platform because they require the additional features of HW 5 and later editions.

The majority of our sets are available with versions for both HW 4 as well as the later editions. They are the same sets but require slightly different downloads in some cases. Most 4 sets will indeed play on later editions without a modified package but 5+ sets may not load on a 4 system unless they have a specific HW 4 version loaded.


The sets listed in the official site price list are for users of the latest editions of HW. HOWEVER, other sets which were originally designed for HW 4 are available if required but not listed. This applies most notably for the old Studio 70 and 80 sets which are wet (with built in convolution reverberation). These sets do not require the old HW 4 dongle since they are encrypted / protected / unlocked in a different way. Unfortunately the smaller models in the Studio series require the old HASP dongle to be unlocked and therefore are NOT available since the unlocking of that dongle is no longer supported by MDA.


As a result, for anyone wishing to avail themselves of either the Studio 70 or 80 (which are excellent sets) these are offered at a bargain price on request.


Is there a catch ??? Yes, there is.


Because of the bargain prices offered on these two sets, there is no longer a future upgrade path to later models such as those in the Concert series which was originally available some years ago. However, there may be some sort of loyalty discount available if a customer decides to move on to one of the later editions of HW at some point. Please email me if you are interested in either the Studio 70 or Studio 80. There are fully working demos for both sets which have an auto cut-out after 30 seconds until they are unlocked.


This ONLY applies to the two Studio sets: Most of the other sets are available for all platforms from HW 4 upwards - we just need to know which HW version you are using so that you get the right compatible set.



July 27th. 2023


Well we can scrub the beautiful weather because it was short lived and the last few weeks haven't been brilliant. I suppose that we can count ourselves fortunate in the UK that we don't have the terrible conditions of Greece etc. Although I like warm weather, I think Europe as a whole and elsewhere would probably be a bit too much even for me.


On the new sample sets front, I continue on a daily basis and some progress is being made in several different areas but there are only so many hours in the day and domestic issues as important. Top of the list at the moment is having to get a new boiler to replace the old Rayburn which despite a considerable amount of servicing and several expensive new parts is still playing up. I have taken the decision to replace it with a new one but they certainly aren't cheap. The only plus point is that a modern new boiler will be cheaper to run hopefully and will help sell the property when that takes place.


New sample set has been delayed slightly by a number of custom instrument productions. Some of them are relatively simple but others have required dropping everything else and concentrating on oftimes quite complex work. One can understand why very few sample producers are prepared to create custom instruments even though the returns are often better.


As mentioned previously, the garden is in severe need of taming. Some plants have thrived (unfortunately a lot of weeds) whilst others are not doing great. However, it looks like we will get a huge harvest of Kiwi fruits this year whereas in past years all we got was a handful of inedible bullets. One has to be on the lookout for ticks especially with so many deer around and I had to take a course of strong antibiotics after being bitten in order to prevent the very nasty Lyme disease.


The dogs continue to drive us all mad but are otherwise healthy and happy. Sadly, we lost the tortoise which escaped and was found dead about two miles away. He has been replaced by a younger female who is definitely grounded. There are a surprising number of tortoise breeders and owners in the vicinity and whilst I had always rather considered the beasts to be fairly dull and uninspiring, it turns out that they are really quite intelligent and definitely relate to humans in many different ways.


One other sad bit of news that I did receive was concerning my old friend David Aubrey Cuttill of Viscount Organs who passed away at the end of last year. I hadn't been able to contact him for a while and it seems that he went into a nursing home in his last year or so suffering from dementia. I was informed by an old colleague some months after he died. However, he was well into his nineties and had had a very good life full of achievements. Prior to his moving out from London, I was generally in contact with him every month or so.

Many of the old brigade from the music and organ business etc. have shifted their mortal coils and with a few exceptions most have lived long enough to get to the stage when nature took its course and they simply died of old age. We can't all go on forever.


June 7th 2023


We certainly had a very wet spring but the last couple of weeks have been absolutely splendid with blue skies and pleasant daytime temperatures. The nights tend to still be a bit chilly but it makes such a difference to not have continuous rain every day.


Thus I have been able to get out into the garden and do some rather overdue tidying up. With all that rain earlier and the onset of the warmer weather, stuff has grown like Topsey and parts have become like a jungle. Sadly, thanks to the very cold snap back in December, we lost a lot of fine specimen shrubs and trees which is a bit of a tragedy. Plants that I would have expected to have survived (and had hoped might shoot anew) are very definitely dead.

Others have started to burgeon like never before but there is no rhyme or reason behind things. As an example, I have two Daphnes in fairly close proximity. One has always struggled to do anything and the other was really flourishing. The one that was really doing well is as dead as a dodo whilst the other is now doing really well. Very odd.


I had an interesting phone call the other day from the organist of a famous instrument who was enquiring as to how much it would cost to reproduce his instrument as a HW facsimile for use by the organists and recitalists using the already midified pipe organ console. Basically, it would enable the organists etc. to practice using the real console in the building whilst using headphones - almost like the modern day "silent piano". It's early days as yet but it would be an interesting project if the authorities decide to go ahead. The only problem will be that the set would never be released as a HW set to the public. The logistics of sampling the instrument will also be rather interesting since the building has very large and complex acoustics. We will have to see.


Another customer wishes to reconstruct his house pipe organ using our HW sampled stops since he is dispensing with many of the existing pipe ranks for a number of reasons.


I do know of one or two other instruments that have been sampled for HW but will never become available to the general HW public because they were created for personal use. One wonders just how many other such instruments there are out there that are existing HW sets but are never released as commercial libraries.


Likewise, some pipe organ builders are now creating their own HW sets as reference archives whilst rebuilding of the existing pipe organ is being undertaken. These sets likewise, will never be released but are merely a reference tool for the organ builder to compare the before and after and possibly adjust some stops accordingly. Interesting times indeed.


May 9th. 2023


So we now have a new King and Queen. I watched the highlights of the service etc. and must say that the organ sounded very fine. I'm not always a fan of H&H work but the Abbey organ is certainly a superb instrument. However, it must be mentioned that the basis of the whole instrument is of course, the work of William Hill.


It continues to rain most of the time down here but of course in typical logical fashion, we have a hosepipe ban ! Fortunately, we don't need to use a hosepipe. The bottom "lawn" is a marsh and the river is pretty full. Sadly, the sharp cold snap back in December killed off a lot of well established and valuable plants and shrubs although other delicate plants etc. weathered the cold without problem. The Wisterias are all starting to bloom as are the rhododendrons. All of the fruit trees have have finished blossoming for the most part though whether we will get any worthwhile fruit depends on the forthcoming summer.


Tiverton still isn't finished but other progress is being made. There has been an increased interest in custom instruments from around the world including one very, very large one in the USA. It will most likely be the largest HW instrument in the world when done with over 200 stops and includes a number of pipe ranks.


It was rather sad to hear that the rather fine Willis III at my old school; Stonyhurst College is now inoperable and has been replaced temporarily by a Viscount Physis instrument. The old "new" console from 30 years ago has gone (fortunately) because it wasn't very nice and the school awaits funds to reinstate the Willis (hopefully without some of the disastrous alterations made 30 years ago). The other organs in the Boy's chapel and one in the music basement remain. The former being an ill advised and worthless restoration of a rather poor Bishop and the latter being a later small secondhand Conacher if memory serves me right.

However, the good news is that they have two "new" Lammermuir pipe organs - one in the Old refectory and one in the Sodality chapel. Both look to be fine instruments and although secondhand, they are of excellent quality. I really find it rather amazing that the relatively new (2016) and current head and deputy head are both organists and musicians. The headmaster in addition to having a normal music degree, is also an FRCO. In my day, although orchestral music making was well catered for by the school, the idea of someone actually going into a musical career in any shape or form was rather sneered at and the careers office had pretty much zero information on the subject. The fact that someone with an music degree and an FRCO could be a headmaster would have been unthinkable.


Of course, in those days, there wasn't the technology and music was considered to be a pastime at best. Things have very much changed and the number of possible professions directly in or loosely related to the industry is now quite considerable (including sideways into film and media production). These range from teaching through the construction and design of instruments to sound engineering and of course concert performance. How things change.


January 24th. 2023


As mentioned on the News page, the site is having a slight makeover and I hope that it will become a little easier to use when the redesign is completed.


It's rather cold here at the moment especially since the central heating failed just before last weekend. Hopefully it will be sorted out in the next few days. Heating by electricity is not a sensible solution as well as being outrageously expensive.


As also mentioned on the main News page, Tiverton is in its final stages of production before being sent off for the photo graphics to be done.


As usual there are 101 other things to be done every day.


December 2022


We did actually get some snow which is quite unusual and it stayed around for a few days. Since then, it's been very wet and the river has been quite high. I'm glad I managed to put in some "gabion" type construction during the summer when it was dry on the worst corners otherwise it would be eating away even more of the garden.

We are now over the winter solstice and the days will start getting longer. OK, we still have January and February to get through where it is likely to be cold but from thereon, the spring flowers will be out again.

It is possible that I will be selling up in the next year and moving to somewhere a little less isolated. Sadly there are few properties on the market that equal this place and I certainly don't want a place where I have to do a lot of work on the house and garden when we move. There is the added problem of the dogs all of whom need a lot of exercise and plenty of places to run about without escaping on to some road.


I did watch a couple of Christmas services on the TV and for the most part was somewhat disappointed. Once again, the St Peter's, Rome service was appallingly recorded - you would think that the foremost catholic church in the world could get it right for once !

The service from Blackburn was interesting. It's nice to see Blackburn finally getting more recognition as a cathedral and perhaps more impressive than anything was the reading by someone with cerebral palsy a la Stephen Hawking The choice of setting for the mass was also rather different to most years. However, I can understand why some people don't like the organ overall since the BBC recording very definitely resulted in an overall organ sound that would be far too extreme for those who are more used to a typical romantic ensemble.


I do have a copy of the new Blackburn set but as yet, I haven't really had the time to explore it fully.

I also have a copy of Inspirata from Inspired Acoustics which is exceedingly advanced. It approaches convolution in yet another way compared to HW and Altiverb. The parameters available in Inspirata are far in advance of anything offered by anybody else and it will be interesting to see what sort of results are obtained when I have had the time to really get my head around the program.


I'm still working on Tiverton and getting towards a stage when it will be finished. The more I work on the set, the more I understand why Noel Mander made some of the changes to the Choir organ back in 1967. The beauty of the HW set will be the ability to go back to the pre rebuild specification alone, move forward to the current specification alone or combine both together - possibly with the addition of a celeste rank to the Swell and a small amount of non detracting Pedal extension and duplexing. In the latter case, I think that the duplexing of one of the manual 16' stops as an independent register would be acceptable and the provision of an extra 8' and possibly a 4' as extensions to the Bourdon16' would be acceptable. Given the construction of the existing organ, these changes would not be anything that couldn't be done in real life during a rebuild though whether they would be is open to question.

Should Tiverton be rebuilt at some juncture the question will arise as to whether it should be restored back to the historical 1967 specification or whetehr the sort of changes that I have mentioned above would be instigated.

We have a local FW instrument which has remained tonally unchanged but has incorporated some minor pedal extensions. Apart from the change to an electric action, the additions don't alter the basic sound of the organ in any way but they do provide a couple of useful additional facilities.

There is always the difficulty on most instruments (especially those of respected builders such as Father Willis) of deciding whether to retain complete adherence to the original or bring it up to a more modern standard without compromising the original. One has to be very careful since it is all too easy to ruin an instrument by the inclusion of a current idea of tonal design where existing stops are replaced by ill advised new ones. Sadly many original instruments were very much ruined by the ideas of the organ reform movement and that applies to a fair amount of cathedral instruments as well as lesser church ones.


As a typical example, my old school instrument (a Willis III) really did need to have one or two alterations / additions such as an independent 16' pedal reed which was always missing (the original ones were a 16' extension of a Gt/Ch Tromba and a transfer from the Swell). It was rebuilt into a four manual with several additions and alterations which included destroying some of the original choruses and design. Some of the ideas were quite sound in principle but unfortunately, not only was the work carried out by a third rate builder but some of the alterations were very ill conceived. I'm not saying that the instrument is bad, BUT I feel that it would have been better to retain the original specification and add the "missing" desiderata rather than mess about with moving stops around and altering some of the compound work. After all, we are talking about altering the work of a master in Willis III.

The only really valid improvement was the stripping off of the dreadful original pink paint to reveal the beautiful oak underneath. As regards the console............ the provision of unpleasant Herrburger-Brooks keyboards (constructed after the company had transferred manufacture to Mexico) was a definite mistake. At one time H-B were considered some of the finest keyboards in the world but that ceased after they were bought out by the Habig family who also bought out Kimball, Conn, Bosendorfer and others. Fortunately, Bosendorfer remained unchanged but the rest !!! They should have stuck to making office furniture. I had the misfortune to work for the company some years ago - it was not a happy experience and their pianos and organs were absolutely appalling - badly made and utterly undistinguished in any way whatsoever. Conn was obviously of too good a quality and disappeared very quickly once amalgamated into the "corporation"


I remember a lot of furore over another instrument where they decided to replace some Father Willis pipe work with second hand Ainscough ranks. It has to be said that Ainscough was never a good builder even at his best and I have never come across a decent one yet. It's a bit like replacing solid oak panelling with "oak effect" chip board. However, it happens all too often.


Whilst on the subject of my old school organs, there was also a small two manual Bishop in the Boy's chapel. This was very typical of the "catholic contract" that Bishop's had with the catholic church though in this particular case it doesn't even get mentioned in the otherwise very comprehensive book on Bishop it also doesn't even figure in the N.P.O.R. 

It wasn't a great organ to start with and the same third rate builder made alterations to it some years ago to try and improve matters. I suppose that in some ways, the improvements didn't particularly detract from the original concept and provided a small improvement but the instrument was never really wonderful to start with. The fact that the authorities decided to restore this late Victorian instrument as something of perceived great value (at great expense) was very much ill judged.

It's a case that the original organ was definitely not good enough to warrant restoration in the first place and in light of this, they would have been better off ditching the whole thing and starting again from scratch. I'm sure that they could have found an excellent instrument on the second hand market which would have proved far preferable. Even the case is a singularly unattractive and unimaginative example of late Victorian design. Alternatively, for very little extra money, they could have had a completely brand new quality organ from a respected builder such as Skrabl which not only would have looked and sounded better but would have been more far more valid as a school instrument.

It is rare that I advocate complete replacement of an instrument because there is usually something of merit to retain but there are just some instruments that should be replaced entirely.


November 2022


The halcyon days of summer are almost a distant memory now and all it ever seems to do at the moment is rain. However, this has given me much more time to work on the Tiverton set (see the News page for further details).

Tiverton is quite special as I have mentioned in the past (despite Noel Mander's rebuild) and as I have probably also mentioned was the very first instrument on which the Mendelssohn Wedding March was played for the first time.

It is really quite surprising as to just how many Father Willis instruments are still extant and they seem to crop up in the most unlikely of places. I can think of at least half a dozen instruments within just 50 miles of where we live ranging from very small organs to quite respectable three manual ones.

Typically, some of the existing FW instruments in the UK are almost unknown. A typical example being one in Chesterfield (Derbyshire) where there is a moderate sized (20 stop) two manual in split cases which is completely unaltered and which boasts a metal 16' Violone in addition to the Open wood and Bourdon on the Pedal showing that a considerably larger sum was spent on it than was normal for most instruments at the time.


September 2022


Very, very sad to hear of the death of Her Majesty Elizabeth II and very proud to see how the country and indeed the world, has responded.


Of course, we all knew that she couldn't carry on forever but I suppose that the fact she was seemingly so well when greeting the new prime minister (apart from the bruise on her hand) meant that her passing only a couple of days later was really quite a surprise.


I suppose that most of us had rather expected her to take to her bed eventually, followed by a period of several weeks or months in gradual decline before passing. That is why it was such a shock to everyone.


I never met her, but both my mother and father did on separate occasions. My father met her at Chelsea Flower Show many years ago whilst he was manning the orchid stand and she spent a fair amount of time chatting to him about orchids in general. My mother met her at some event and HMTQ looked at my mother's medals and said "Aha, I see that you were at my coronation" and chatted for a while as to how my mother had come to be representing the Red Cross for Anglesey and North Wales at the ceremony. My mother also met the then Prince of Wales in the village hall in Batcombe which he used to visit regularly. He knew our garden since he was a regular guest (with Camilla) at the home of Sir Donald McCullen the photographer who was our next-door neighbour. Charles used to remark at how beautiful the trees in our garden were. My mother also met the Queen Mother at another separate event along with many other more minor members of the Royal Family over the years.


Living near Windsor, we often went down to the town for special occasions of pomp and circumstance such as jubilees and state visits of various dignitaries so we were often pretty close to the Queen in physical distance. I was also at college in Windsor so these sorts of occasion were quite common. During my time as a police officer in Thames Valley, I had to do point duty etc. at Ascot so various members of the Royal Family came through and traffic had to be stopped for them to do so. I got within about 3' of Prince Charles on one occasion in an unmarked car which I had stopped because it was trying to use an unauthorised entrance but that's another story. Sadly, I was working when given the opportunity to meet the then Prince Charles in person whilst living in Watford.


The only member of the Royal family that I was actually introduced to was Princess Margaret when she visited Plas Newydd in Anglesey. Henry Anglesey (the Marquess of Anglesey) and a long-time family friend introduced me when she paid a visit to some sort of gala when I was a teenager. I used to play the Steinway in the sitting room on occasion for the family.


However, I do have relations who have been very much closer to members of the Royal Family both in times past and more recently. My Gt. Uncle - Baron Forwood was equerry to Edward the VIII so obviously spent much time with him and Mrs. Simpson and one of my cousins was until recently serving as personal secretary to Prince William. It seems they were fond of him and asked him to continue in his post after they left the Valley RAF base in Anglesey.


So, a complete aspect of all of my life is now over since I have only ever lived during the reign of one Queen - just like the majority of the population of course. I think she was the most wonderful person and she will be so sadly missed by everyone throughout the world. I firmly believe that King Charles will also make a superb king and likewise William afterwards.


Sic transit gloria mundi.


July 31st 2022


Having finished the Walton Orb and Sceptre, I have concentrated on finishing off my own transcription of the Ruddigore Overture by Sir Arthur Sullivan.

To my mind, it perhaps the most musically satisfying of all of the Sullivan operatic overtures although the one most commonly heard was completed shortly after Sullivan's own by Geoffrey Toye. The original Sullivan is pleasant enough but makes no showing of several of the best tunes in the work. As such I find it rather unsatisfying and have always preferred the Toye version. The initial ghost scene beginning of the work is very much along the lines of a French toccata and I think it works admirably.

I did start of with a Mulet "Tu es Petra" style of writing but in addition to it being overly difficult to play, it didn't really work so well as the much simpler option that I eventually chose.


Apart from that, I am continuing to do work on the house and garden. I reckon that I will possibly put the place on the market sometime next year. Basically, as I have already said previously, we are very isolated and there is no community as such so we need to move into a place which is nearer to shops etc. before we get too old. It's been idyllic but there is no way that I am going to end up like my parents did (and many older people in the area) being pretty much cut off from everything and everybody. I had hoped to perhaps stay for another few years but we have got to be realistic and look to the future. There is the additional factor that currently, houses in this area are selling for a premium which may all change in the next few years so it's a case of striking whilst the proverbial iron is still hot and settling in to a new community whilst we are still young enough to do so.




July 20th. 2022


Finally, after a lot of learning and hard practice, I have finished the McKie transcription of Walton's Orb and Sceptre which was composed for the Coronation of Elizabeth II. It really is rather a difficult piece even though it is only in E Major with a central section in C. There is quite a lot going on throughout and although the score suggests 108, I reckon that this would be pretty nigh on impossible at that speed so I have opted for the more typical speed used by most organists at around 90-93

I reckon it's one of Walton's very best although on first hearing it can seem a bit discordant in places. However, on getting more familiar with it, the discordancies (?) become more acceptable. There are several good performances on YouTube as well as a couple of not so good ones and I reckon my favourite is the one from Yale by the very gifted Clara Gerdes. I also like the Richard Pinel one from St George's Windsor although it would sound better now that Nicholson's have redone the reeds etc.

I had to play and record the piece in several separate sections because there is no way that at the moment, I can get through the whole thing without making a mistake or mistakes somewhere either in terms of registration of playing. The hot weather has made it slightly easier since my osteo-arthritis isn't too bad at the moment thanks to the heat. Normally I find a lot of playing quite painful and of course, the condition also slows things down. One day, I can rattle off a piece at two to the dozen and the next, it's almost impossible to play at all. Sadly, this makes giving public performances very difficult because I don't know until the time comes to play whether I will be able to do so or not. Very annoying.

I am also working on a transcription of a Gilbert and Sullivan overture at the moment (although it has taken second place to the Walton recently. As far as I know, no one else has done a transcription of this particular overture which is definitely one of my favourites.

It has proved quite difficult to arrange in order to get the piece to sound right but I am getting there. A lot of it is relatively simple but a considerable section is based on one of Sullivan's patter songs which tends to be rather fast. There are two versions of the overture one by Sullivan and another later one. I don't dislike the original Sullivan one but the later version is so much better and is a master example of overture writing. Sadly, it misses a few of the really good tunes but it also includes others that are missed from Sullivan's original. It will be forthcoming in due course.

In the interim.............and in honour of Her Majesty



Sir William Walton: Orb and Sceptre (arr. Sir William McKie).

As a footnote, my mother was present at the Coronation representing North Wales and Anglesey for the Red Cross. Apart from the atmosphere that was obvious at the time, my mother's main recollection was having to sew up a peers flies (with him still in the trousers) which had burst asunder. When my mother met the Queen some years ago, HM remarked "Oh, I see you were at my Coronation". I still have one of the footstools from the event although the blue and brocade is a bit faded now which my mother purchased for £10.00 after the event. There were quite a lot of them so they aren't particularly rare.


July 3rd.2022


Can't believe that I haven't updated this blog since April !


I did manage to do the repairs and tune the little Methodist church instrument single handedly. It's really not bad at all and at least it all works now without ciphers and notes off.

Obviously other work continues though much of my time has been spent trying to learn a rather difficult piece which is now approaching something like playability. They say it's not for the faint hearted and other organists have described it as VERY hard.. I can agree with that since it definitely isn't easy. There are at least three versions of the transcription and unfortunately, I have chosen the best and most difficult. Having said that, the other versions aren't particularly easy either. The name of the piece and composer are remaining under wraps at the moment so that no one else can try and steal a march so to speak. I'll probably have something up here and on Contre Bombarde in the next few weeks since I have now broken the back of it.

Sadly, I don't think that I will be able to do it one take - partly because my osteo-arthritis makes playing painful at times and also because I don't reckon that I can get through the whole piece in one take without making a boo-boo somewhere at the moment. maybe in time it will become almost automatic.


Originally, I got into making sample sets for HW because I was utterly unimpressed by much of what was being produced by the toaster brigade and also what was being produced by the earliest sample set producers. I believed that I could do better and I also believe that I did offer a better product than most. Having said that, some of the earliest sample sets by all of us now sound pretty under par compared to what is available now but then, that's technology for you. Producing sample sets became more important than almost anything else and as a result I neglected my playing and composing etc.

To play well is in itself a very time consuming process n terms of learning and practice and there are only so many hours in the day so recently, I have concentrated a bit more on doing so.


So with regards to sample sets: work continues very slowly. After two decades of constant working on them, I have decided to take it more gently. I haven't got any exciting project on the cards at the moment - or at least ones that I consider worth putting in the tremendous amount of effort and expense that is required to make a sample set. Quite frankly, there is no particular organ that I might go out of my way to sample and process that I might have access to at the moment. Many HW users see to have come a bit punch drunk recently with the availability of so many new instruments along with restricted budgets due to the world situation so it would have to be something very special to get me interested. Otherwise, it just isn't worth the time and effort. I though that the forthcoming Blackburn Cathedral organ (by Llanerch) might have instigated more interest since that really is a very special instrument but it seems that despite the fact that it already sounds like it's going to be a very interesting set in the pre-release demos, people don't seem to be falling over themselves to enthuse much about it as yet. I really don't think it has anything to do with price, just a general apathy towards an over availability of instruments to choose from.


The garden is looking very nice although work is still being done and despite the dogs !

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, we got a new cocker spaniel puppy and she is proving to be an absolute delight. Terribly affectionate but also a complete bully when it comes to the two springers. She does not like being left alone for even a moment on her own even with the other dogs) and within a minute sets up the most heart wrenching wailing unless she can see one of us - preferably no more than a few feet away from her. "Her indoors" succumbed to letting her sleep in the bedroom and she has to go out shopping with us in a laundry basket (in the car). However, she is absolutely adorable and anyone who has seen her has gone all googly eyed. One of the most amusing things is seeing her being swung about on the elder springers tail which she seems to have made her personal chew toy - that's if she isn't biting both of their ankles. She eats like a horse and is growing fast.


April 20th. 2022


Went to repair a rather interesting little instrument in a Methodist church today. I visited it a few weeks ago for an initial inspection and basically it was unplayable with many notes off and several ciphers plus also being very out of tune having not been touched for some years. A little bit of research shows that the organ came from a church in Leicestershire and names a certain builder from the Midlands on the nameplate. I have had the misfortune to deal with a couple of their instruments in the past and I can't say that they impressed me very much at all so I was a bit unenthusiastic about having to work on one again. Quite frankly, their work is usually pretty awful in general although they seem to have improved in recent years (they needed to). The founder's background and training suggests that they should produce decent work but unfortunately my past experiences show this to be far from the case.

Digging a little deeper and it seems that the instrument is actually by Kirkland and they produced some decent stuff. Despite much of the instrument having obvious shortcuts in terms of the "rebuilder's work and materials, the basic instrument is fairly sound. I managed to get rid of all of the main ciphers and several notes back working but despite stripping down an off note block with three pipes in the display, I cannot at the moment understand why it isn't working. One note is just not working and the other two had been stopped off at the toe hole since the valves refuse to close. The leather work is fine, the springs are fine and although the pneumatic button valves are slightly mucky, there is no reason why it shouldn't work. I suspect that it is the small feed tube from the bellows that is the problem in that there is not enough pressure to work the pneumatics but sufficient to make the pipes speak (when not blocked off). I would have to bring it back to the workshop for repair.

Otherwise, the instrument has some quite nice stuff on it although there is a lot of dirt especially in the Dulciana.

Is it worth sampling once I have tuned it ? Yes I think so. The Open Diapason is quite pleasant, the Dulciana is dirty as stated but could be quite nice and the 4' Flute is very nice. On the Swell, there is a pleasant Gedeckt, a decent Gamba, a nice enough Gemshorn 4' (likely a slotted Principal) and a Fifteenth which isn't too bad. The pedal has the ubiquitous Bourdon and this has been extended up to 8' and 4' with electric action and a couple of new chests which are rather cosmopolitan but they do work.

Overall, it's not really that bad and once I have tuned it, it will be very acceptable for the purpose for which it is required by the church. We will see what the results are and once it has been made into a HW instrument from any samples taken, it will provide another typical small instrument found in so many churches - though perhaps rather nicer than many.


April 14th 2022


As per usual, time is flying by and Easter is upon us already. Unfortunately, this flying by of time has the effect of making the bills look like they are coming more frequently. The good news is that winter is now behind us although we have had a couple of quite sharp frosts in the last week. we have one rhododendron which flowers very early and the buds have been blasted a bit. Hopefully, it won't have affected the fruit trees too much which are in full blossom. It's nothing to do with global warming but down here, things tend to be several weeks ahead of more northern climes .


Unfortunately the yellow wagtail had her nest destroyed either by jays squirrels or possibly rats and suffered a total loss but hopefully she will build another and produce a second brood.


We had been thinking about a possible addition to the family with another dog and by chance, there was an advert for cocker spaniels locally - in fact only a mile up the road. One has to face facts that as one gets older, there comes a time when getting a puppy becomes a bad idea if it is likely that the puppy will live longer than its owners or its owners may not be able to give it the exercise etc. that it requires. We decided that IF we were to get another dog to join the two that we already have then it would have to be done sooner than later.

We went to see the litter and a week later, we now have a little girl to add to the family. Obviously very sweet as all puppies are and we are now back to the task of training the little mite. The existing couple were a bit non plussed at first but they have now accepted her, though she does have a habit of nicking their toys. The two existing springers (father and son) are very much my dogs and it seems that the new female addition has latched on completely to her indoors. She has even broken her cardinal rule of allowing the puppy upstairs to sleep on the bed at night.


Having said that, the youngest male is totally capable of opening closed doors - either with round handles or lever types so if he chooses to go upstairs he does. So far he hasn't learned how to unlock them or close them after he has come in.

The Tiverton Father Willis is making progress gradually and I am working on a couple of new pieces to post on CB and this site. Both are transcriptions one by myself and the other by a a famous organist. Both pieces are somewhat difficult and the one that I am transcribing is proving to be rather awkward to arrange into a playable piece whilst retaining as many of the orchestral parts as possible. It's actually only the first minute or so which is proving to be a pain and hopefully once this is sorted, the rest should fall into place quite easily.


April 3rd. 2022


I'm afraid that work on sample sets is pretty slow at the moment. The recent change in the weather for a bit of sunshine and warmth enabled me to get out into the garden and do some necessary work including clearing detritus from the earlier multiple storms. Everything is actually beginning to show th signs of stirring and apart from the daffodils, the primroses are all out. As the "county" flower of Devon, they are everywhere and we are fortunate to have a number of colours apart from yellow which makes things even better. I noticed that the strawberries are already in flower and it seems like the rare yellow wagtail from last year has set up her nest in the same place and is currently incubating five eggs. Last year she produced a couple of batches, maybe this year she may produce three.

The garden is absolutely full of the many different types of bird that are found in the UK. Apart from all of the different finches, we have all of the tits and we also have a couple of jays (a beautiful bird but a bit naughty with its unsavoury character).

I'm not fond of winter and by far my favourite time is early spring and summer. It probably comes of freezing my proverbials for most of my life in places like Derbyshire and Lancashire. Add to that the additional costs of heating and electricity which has now doubled and there really isn't much to recommend it.

Unfortunately, one of our local churches which contains a small original Father Willis has had to shut its doors. Apart from dwindling numbers of church goers which had already resulted in the Methodists and the Anglicans combining, the parish church has had to be closed because a recent inspection found that the electricity supply and wiring to be in a dangerous state. The electricity board has therefore disconnected the whole building not only for HSE reasons but to protect the main supply to the village. It's very sad but the church simply can't afford to sort things out.

The pub has basically gone (not just as a result of Covid) and attempts to change it into a house have met with strict opposition from the locals. Covid has obviously had a detrimental effect but the main reason is that the most recent landlord was totally unsuited to running a pub and alienated the natives. In addition, the landlord is asking way too much money for the business / building. However, the village remains a very desirable place to live and properties don't stay on the market for very long at all but then that applies to the whole area which has become very desirable indeed.


Otherwise, of course, the current state of affairs over Ukraine is worrying and appalling but there really isn't an awful lot that one can do about it without aggravating things to an unacceptable degree. One can only just carry on as normal, sympathise of course but there is no point losing sleep over the situation and hopefully it will sort itself out soon. I'm certainly not building a bunker.


March 9th 2022


As stated on the news page, TalkTalk are a complete waste of time so I am ditching them altogether even though the email is now working. they can't sort out the root of the problem so I have changed the email accounts to either my Gmail account or my Silver Octopus account which have additional security at the servers. I will try and contact all of my old customers and contacts to inform where necessary but this does take time to sift through over ten years of old emails without deleting essential details.


February 27th. 2022


The email problem has not been sorted as yet because TalkTalk / Tiscali doesn't work weekends and it takes three working days for them to get back to customers (not what I would consider a good service). It is most likely that I will ditch Tiscali altogether - even if they do get things sorted out because I can't have this sort of thing happening again. I do have other email accounts set up already so I can be contacted.

I stuck with Tiscali for all of this time because it provided a logical and sensible way to work with the many emails that I get from all over the world. I'm not fond of my other email sites because it is too easy to delete stuff and never get it back. I suppose I will just have to get used to the various idiosyncracies of these other sites and hope for the best.


February 25th. 2022


This is all proving to be a bit of a nightmare.


I don't know what one can really do when the problem lies in third party hands. Most email accounts are free, my Tiscali one is actually paid for so one would really expect a rather better and more secure service than that which is being offered. 

The problem has been escalated to a higher level but guess what, they don't work weekends and it takes three working days for them to get back to you. In addition their daily hours aren't exactly extensive and I got cut off more than half a dozen times before I as able to even tell them what the problem was (having gone through all of their auto service each time which in itself took several minutes every time).

Their whole website is down for maintenance at the moment which implies that they may have a problem that extends well beyond my own personal one. Even if it is eventually sorted out, my confidence in the TalkTalk /Tiscali company has been severely knocked so I'm not sure if I will use them ever again.

The hacker seems to be sending scam / phishing emails out to addresses including ones from well over 10 years ago (which had been archived long ago but still exist). Many of the recipients have probably died in that period and others will have changed their email addresses.


Some "advisers" suggest changing one's email address on a regular basis but both as an individual and as a company I can't be changing email addresses every year or so or even more frequently. That really starts to become ridiculous.


Don't get me wrong, I love the technology that Hauptwerk and other bits of software bring to life in general but I can't stand all these other things like automatic house gizmos and so on which is why I still turn my lights of by a normal switch and so on and so forth. I certainly don't do internet banking or anything similar purely because I don't trust the banks etc. to run a completely un-hackable service. It's not helped of course by all of the banks closing down their face to face branches and don't get me started on these out of the country call centres.


Unfortunately with emails, I have to rely on external providers and servers and of course there is no way in which emails can be conducted on a face to face basis. So all in all, it's a bad option but there is no alternative.


So my apologies once again to anyone who has received a scam email but rest assured that I am doing everything possible to get the situation sorted out.


February 24th. 2022


THE PROBLEM HAS NOT BEEN RESOLVED YET.


Please do not use my Tiscali email address for the time being because all my emails are being re routed to the hacker. TalkTalk (Tiscali) are trying to sort out the problem which lies in their servers or whatever but it may take a few days (if at all) even though it has been escalated.

If you need to contact me, please do so by either the silver octopus mail addresses or by my gmail.com account.

I have only retained my Tiscali address because I have been using it for a couple of decades. Perhaps it's time I changed it or start using my gmail account instead.


February 23rd. 2022

 

It's been a couple of somewhat fraught days since I became aware of the hack below. Thanks to those who phoned me or emailed me at an alternative address.

I run very tight security on my systems here at home and elsewhere which were not in any way compromised. The problem seems to been with the TalkTalk / Tiscali server and into which they are looking further.

Thankfully, the scam emails sent out by the hacker were pretty obviously not from me so it is extremely unlikely that anyone would have fallen for them but it just shows that we must all be very careful.

everything is now back to normal now that Tiscali have plugged the leak and hopefully it won't happen again. Apologies to anyone it has inconvenienced or worried.

It's a ridiculous situation because we all have email addresses and in the case of businesses, email addresses have to be available and are generally shown somewhere on the company website. Short of not having any emails at all, there doesn't seem to be any solution and someone's email address will always be available somewhere.

Pity we can't go back to the old days in some ways where this sort of thing couldn't happen.

The banks keep asking me why I refuse to do "online" banking. I think that my recent experience reinforces and reiterates my reasons.


February 22nd. 2022


IMPORTANT


I have had a couple of phone calls and an email from today informing me that the recipients have received emails purporting to come from me. It would seem that in one of them there was a request saying that my niece had broken down somewhere and needed a couple of hundred pounds to rescue her.


This is obviously a scam so please don't act on it or reply to it. Fortunately, most people who get emails from me will know what it genuine and what isn't - either by the content or by the subject but it's best to be on the safe side.


Firstly, I don't have a niece and secondly, I would certainly never resort to request money or payment from anyone unless it was via a Paypal transaction or via bank transfer to my own named accounts for a bona fide sale.


I am looking into this and I am also wondering how it could have happened because I run strong firewalls and several other anti-malware and anti-virus programmes. 


I have checked my whole system and there are no problems so it would seem that my Tiscali email server may have been compromised.


It would seem at the moment that some emails are being rerouted to the phisher / scammer although others are coming through. If you need to contact me, please use the company emails which seem to be routing messages correctly.



February 17th. 2022


Many thanks to James Flores in Australia for his recent YouTube presentation of Walton's Crown Imperial. There seems to be quite a burgeoning of YouTube organists as a result of lockdowns, many of them are young and most of them are using Hauptwerk. It seems to be fairly prevalent in Australia and James is amongst the foremost in the field. In addition, unlike many, he seems to be very modest and happy to support other young organists by encouraging and promoting them. With any luck, we may see a sea change in the way the organ is viewed in the future instead of being solely the realm of a few elite. One thing that can be said is that standards of organ playing by the young have really come a long way in recent times. I'm not saying that they're two to the dozen but there seem to be far more around these days and many of them are really outstanding.


I haven't got around to putting any of my own offerings on YouTube as yet. To be quite honest, it's another thing that I imagine takes a lot of time especially since I'm not a film maker nor even a good photographer. Having looked at the prices of Go Pro cameras which is what most people seem to use, I feel that I can't quite justify the outlay for the equipment and the time to devote to it at the moment. There just aren't enough hours in the day.


Unfortunately, Covid restrictions though much reduced, mean that "in the field" sampling of new instruments is currently still quite a difficult proposition. Perhaps when things are more back to normal, I will be able to get out once again. I did go and see a small two manual the other day by invitation but it wasn't ideal. OK, there were a couple of nice stops but there were ciphers in several places and the tuning was horrendous. In view of the fact that I would have to go and tune and repair the instrument free of charge before any sampling, it's probably not worth considering.


February 10th. 2022


I'm getting quite weary of continuing to create the wet version of the Willis 1894 which is progressing very slowly as a result, although it is progressing. The work seems never ending with no real results forthcoming until the whole thing is finished. Some of the work is quite easy compared to the original dry set creation but a lot of it is really dull. All sample set production work can be monotonous but this task seems worse than others. None of it is particularly difficult, just very time consuming. It's probably because the only difference between the two sets is the additional reverberation and it feels like I'm just doing exactly the same work on something that has already been done.


Fortunately, I have lots of other things to play around with and in order to break the monotony of creating the wet set, I have been gradually processing other stops and organs which were never really looked at in the past. Some weren't considered originally because the software of the time didn't produce decent results whilst others weren't looked at in any great detail because I had better examples to use at the time.


What is gradually being worked towards is a sort of organ builders "workshop". I have suggested the idea in the past as a future project and I am still trying to work out the most sensible format and how it might best be constructed.


In essence, the "library" would consist of all of the finished stops in one family such as Trumpets, Strings, Diapasons etc. Each individual stop would be available in its original pitch but would then be duplicated at the same pitch in separate divisions. These would then be available through coupling at different pitches so that various combinations could be tried out. As an example; Trumpet A could be teamed up with Trumpet B an octave above and Trumpet C a Octave below to give 16' 8 and 4'. These could be further swapped around to find the most pleasing combination. Likewise, a 4' Clarion would be available as an 8' stop or even as part of a 16' stop. The missing octaves could be catered for by providing just a bottom octave or two octaves that could be added in to complete the stop in it's new pitch for combining with others.In the case of Flutes etc. Thanks to HW it would be possible to have mutation couplers acting on the stops and as another example: Flutes A, B, C, D, and E could be tried out against each other at say 8', 4', 2 2/3', 2' and 1 3/5' to experiment with creating several possible Cornets. It would also allow for the creation of Compensating Mixtures for the pedal in a relatively simple way. If an extension organ was being designed, it would allow for the scaling and voicing of the extended rank in a more logical way and help to select the best result although a slightly different coupling procedure would have to be designed to make it workable.

Mixtures themselves with their breaking compositions would require a fair bit more thought but the basic idea remains the same.

For myself, it would allow me to create better instruments, for the hybrid or custom installer, it would allow them to select the most appropriate stops for their installation and for the home user, it would allow them to create their own completely custom instrument(s).

Since pretty much all of our sampled stops are interchangeable because they are dry and are recorded and processed in the same way, this would seem to be an excellent methodology. Obviously it wouldn't work with original wet samples because they are unique in themselves but the whole idea could be extended into taking dry stops and applying a single style and length of convolution to all of those stops such as a 3 second delay at 20' perspective or a 7 second delay at 30' and so on. The result would hopefully work out as a seemingly individual instrument if you like, a "super composite".

These are all just initial thoughts but it would be interesting to hear from anyone with additional suggestions as to how such libraries might be formulated.

Any such libraries of course, would be open ended and would grow over time as new stops were obtained (subject to the limitations of just how many divisions and numbers of stops are accessible as HW stands).

To some extent, I do much of the above already in creating our sets but on an individual experimental stop by stop basis. I reckon that if I were able to create such a facility as outlined above, it would make things much more flexible and would save an awful lot of time and produce far better results.


February 1st. 2022


So we are now into what they refer to down here as "fortnight" because apart from being the shortest month, it also passes more quickly than the other months.

I can't believe that we are already one month down into 2022 time just flies past so quickly.


Have you ever purchased a record or CD featuring the organ of a particular place and then visited the building in question only to find that the reality and the recording are very different ? Sometimes the real life experience is distinctly underwhelming and can be very disappointing. An example of this is St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol. Many of the recordings available of the instrument are really superb - so much so that for some people the instrument is one of their favourites above all others. Of course, even in the flesh, the instrument is very fine, especially after the rebuild. However, being in the building often doesn't show the instrument in it's best light.

One only has to listen to some of the Youtube recordings of other instruments to be quite surprised as to how the same instrument can sound very different ranging from the appalling phone recordings from the wrong position and with loads of unwanted noises to some very fine examples indeed such as the Jonathan and Tom Scott results.

The truth is that many commercial recordings are enhanced in one way or another especially when it comes to the acoustics.

The late Frank Fowler of Hill, Norman and Beard informed me years ago that artificial enhancement was the norm in these recordings and I remember him telling me that in one case (because reverb was quite basic in those days) that there was a set up in a private squash court where a decent speaker set up was situated at one end of the court and microphones at the other end. Recordings of instruments were played through the speakers and then re-recorded for the master release. So the addition of reverberation or the artistic mixing of the sound of an organ is nothing new. In addition, of course, most commercial recordings are rarely made with just one set of stereo microphones and multiple positions and microphones as well as different types and makes of microphone are used to capture the "nicest" result.

 

I have been doing some experiments recently and decided to take a piece posted by Mirch which is played on the 1894 Father Willis and was posted on the Contre Bombarde site just to see what different might be achieved even in the most basic of forms.

The original posting although incorporating a minimal convolution reverberation setting sounds very close - not quite in the organ sitting on the passage board but not far off which is of course, how the organ was originally sampled.

I have taken the exact same recording and run it through my own convolution reverberation set-up to give people an idea as to how different things can sound given even the most simple of different reverberation settings.

I have left things as uncomplicated as possible having chosen just one of many, many possible "rooms". In addition I have taken just one position and just one microphone distance along with the same type of microphone and pattern (ie: cardiod / omni / front facing / back facing etc.) otherwise things would become impossible. Every change of even very basic settings achieves a different result.

In view of the fact that there are a myriad of "listening" positions and literally thousands of different other settings that can be adjusted to the nth. degree, the possibilities are absolutely enormous. All of this is before one starts routing things to different channels within HW for surround sound and so on. And of course none of this takes into account different listening rooms, speakers, furnishings or even people's different ears.

I am not sure as to how many channels Mirch used in his original recording and have made the assumption that it was a fairly simple stereo recording without the possibilities above.

So all I have done is take the original recording (as outlined above) without any further changes in terms of EQ or anything else. What I have done however is to adjust the amount of reverberation percentage that is applied.

The results below are quite ear opening.

Of course the original recording was pretty dry and pretty close so things were rather more up front than if a more "reverberated" recording (or organ) had been used. Obviously applying the use of convolution to already wet samples leads to a lot of conflicting results and confusion of sound which is why using wet sets in a church building is generally far from successful. we have always taken the firm view that the most accurate samples are those that have been done close and dry to avoid any external infiltration. This is based on the premise as to how real pipe organs work in the first place because real pipe organs don't have reverberation built into the original sound; it's all additional. If you like, the room itself does the editing.

The examples below are designed to demonstrate in a very limited fashion. just how much difference can be achieved with relatively simple settings.

As I have said above, there is but one room setting, one type of microphone and one position plus a standard stereo soundfield. The only difference between the recordings is what percentage of reverberation has been applied and I have chosen 25%, 50% 75% and 100%. If you want to hear the original recording, it's on CB at:


HUBERT PARRY: Ye Boundless Realms of Joy @ 25% HUBERT PARRY: Ye Boundless Realms of Joy @ 50% HUBERT PARRY: Ye Boundless Realms of Joy @ 75% HUBERT PARRY: Ye Boundless Realms of Joy @ 100%


January 22nd. 2022

Unfortunately, a slight set back.........The wet set of the Willis 1894 has proved slightly problematical. Foolishly, I undertook the re-sampling of the long notes and releases separately to that of the medium and short releases. Unbeknownst to me was the fact that HW had reset the routing and positioning of the stops which meant as a net result that the medium and short releases did not match the long ones in that the phase was slightly out for each note. Thus a lot of time wasted. So I have had to start again.
In addition, there was some unwelcome background noise in the original long samples and their releases which needed to be removed. 
It takes half an hour to resample each stop thus 28 stops plus mixtures equals about 15 hours of resampling. It then takes about four hours to extract, cut, loop, mark and balance each stop which equals a further 120 hours. At this point the instrument is pretty much complete but the graphics haven't been done (apart from using a basic HW template).
Based on working non-stop for 10 hours a day (not really a sensible or productive option), that would mean a minimum of two weeks non-stop work. Even if one applied a minimum rate of £10 per hour, that would make a total of about £1400.00 alone.
Not included in this total would be the initial sampling on site of the instrument plus travel and hotel expenses where applicable. Also not taken into account is the provision of the various bits of equipment and software necessary to do this. Some of the really decent microphones cost a few thousand and some of the better software packages for editing are also pretty expensive.
All of this is for a very moderate sized instrument. 
Thus one can imagine what the sort of costs and time to produce a typical cathedral instrument might take.
If one then takes into account that there is often a fee for sampling or a percentage contribution from each set to the church or cathedral etc. The possible demand of third party distributors wanting at least 20%-25% of the total and the fact that many sample sets will not sell in significant quantities, then the amount of return on producing a sample set is pretty awful. Where VAT is charged, this amounts to another 20% approximately. Therefore in a worst case scenario, a sample set costing say £1000.00 is immediately down to approximately £800.00 without the VAT. A typical 10% to the owner of the organ brings that to £720.00. 25% profit (for doing basically nothing) to the third party distributor based on the non VAT total reduces this down by about £200 to a figure of roughly £500.00. Let's say that the organ has 50 stops, that works out at £10 per stop approximately - not taking into account the initial recording costs or photographic / graphics costs reduces that figure even further. Thus for a very desirable sample set there may be 50 sales (possible but unlikely given the small and finite market) which would mean that the sample producer would have less than £25,000 left over. In view of the fact that £1000 would make it one of the most expensive sets available and sales of 50 of those would be extremely unlikely given the price one can see that seemingly worthwhile "profit" disappearing rather fast. It doesn't matter what the instrument is, the time taken to produce a single stop is the same whatever the eventual price to the end user is. Halve the set cost and the quantity sold to say £500.00 (still pretty high in price) and say 25 sets (still quite a reasonable figure given the market) and that £25,000 comes down to about £6000.00 total giving a "profit" of slightly over £4.00 per stop which is about the cost of a single drink in the average pub.
OK, these are worst case scenarios in terms of percentages subtracted and best case scenarios in terms of set prices and quantities of sales but I'm sure that most people will be able to see that one of the main reasons why there aren't many sample producers is that it's a very poor business model and the returns for the amount of effort and cost put in are likely to be pretty small. The production of any set is going to be a gamble because it may not even sell more than a few due to being a "niche" instrument.

It always amuses me when certain factions on the HW forum and elsewhere state their "desire" that some famous giant of an instrument is sampled or complain bitterly that the price of a particular sample set is way too expensive (recently released large sets from this or that cathedral have come in for this criticism in particular). Some of the instruments that have become available or are going to become available in the future will most likely have large price tags on them. Some may be very successful and popular others may be less so but in such a small market, the number of sets sold is unlikely to be huge. There is the additional factor to take into account that for many people, they just don't like a particular type of instrument or its style which further narrows the possible uptake of a particular set.

The above is not meant to bemoan the situation but rather to put into perspective what the actual costs and returns are likely to be for almost any set. I believe that most sample producers undertake the task more out of the enjoyment of creating something from nothing and a desire to achieve a worthwhile result rather than any financial consideration. There are of course a few who are retired and would otherwise be bored or are very rich and do all of this for free but there aren't many of those around these days.

Whilst personally, I don't have any particular objections to any style  of instrument - be it baroque, romantic or modern and I enjoy each instrument for what it is. Certainly, I have preferences as to the sort of instrument that I like but I have never been able to understand the complete condemnation in certain quarters of a particular type of instrument.
I remember someone remarking to me a few years ago that they had been to some European city which is quite famous for some of its very representative and fine instruments but that they hadn't bothered visiting or going to hear any of those instruments because they didn't like those sorts of instrument. This sort of thinking shows a very blinkered perspective but then, they are akin to those who won't eat anything with any type of sauce on it. One can quite understand that having tried it, maybe several times, someone might genuinely not like say Asian or French food but there are many out there who won't even try it in the first place. The same goes for organs and everything else in life.

I must admit to some extent on having a restricted view at times myself. There are particular instruments (regardless of style or type) that I don't really like a great deal. Whilst I love the sound of St. Paul's in London for instance, I certainly didn't like playing it. However, when I did play it, it was before the new detached console had been installed. Played from the original console, all one could really hear properly in balance were the North and South choir divisions. I would imagine that playing it from the moveable console where things are very much more in balance would be a far more rewarding experience. I suppose the same can be said for many instruments and they all have their sweet spots. 
Although I have never played it, I gather that in the Royal Albert Hall (which only has the one console) the player gets mostly a reflection back of the sound which isn't too bad but standing away from the console at some distance as a listener, parts the hair in no uncertain terms and is a rather overpowering noise rather than being anything particularly musical and pleasant. However at the correct distance it cannot be described as anything less than a magnificent sound.
It is interesting to note that many of the newest installations in concert halls have two consoles - often one directly attached to the organ and a remote console placed in a more distant position. It is also perhaps interesting to note that very few organists want to use the "close" console despite the advantages of a direct mechanical communication for the player and opt for the less tactile remote consoles. I think that the time will come when the provision of these direct consoles may come to be considered rather a waste of money since they are so rarely used.

 have much admiration for Jonathan Scott and his YouTube presentations. Without doubt, he has got to be one of the finest organists in the world today. Not only does he play the standard organ works flawlessly but he plays many transcriptions (often his own) with superb imagination in terms of arrangement and stop selection and of course perfect playing. There has always been a band of diehards who frown on the playing of transcriptions sadly and they join the ranks of those who won't entertain some styles or types of organ. I think that if anyone can ever break down those barriers, it will be Jonathan Scott. The other point of admiration is that he plays on some pretty unknown and obscure instruments, some of them quite modest. It is refreshing to find someone so completely gifted who is completely unbiased.

We live in an ever changing world of styles and current favour in all walks of life. There was a time when it was almost impossible to gain access to sample most pipe organs for HW or any other platform. There will always be the bigoted individuals who won't ever entertain anything without real pipes but in many ways, thanks to HW, these are becoming fewer and fewer.
Some years ago, I wanted to sample a famous instrument and had everything arranged to do so until the organ builder told the church to have nothing to do with HW in any way. Thus was permission rescinded. There are still some of these outdated attitudes around but it shows that things have come a long way when an instrument like Peterborough can be sampled with the approval of the organ builders themselves. 
Although it is not yet commonplace, there are instruments where the authorities in charge are actively seeking to have their instrument sampled. In many cases, there is a waiting list before this can happen because there aren't that many producers out there. In some cases the authority sees the creation of a HW set as a way of making lots of money, in others it's a case of kudos. I believe that the idea that the creation of a HW sample set will pay a considerable sum towards the rebuild of a particular organ is rather misguided but is still a common belief. It might have been true to a small extent some years ago when certain instruments were sampled and produced relatively large amounts of sales but the reality today is very different.
In some ways, the choice has become too great and this further limits the amount of takers for a given set. Whichever way one looks at it, there comes a time when purchasing loads of different sample sets becomes pointless regardless of cost.
For the sample set producer with much of what has been written above borne in mind, it becomes a case of becoming very choosy as to which instrument one might wish to invest the time and money in. This mainly applies to facsimile sets of course and certainly these days, I would have to have a very good reason for going out and sampling a specific instrument to create a facsimile of it. It would really have to be something very special. That is one of the reasons why I am so looking forward to the release of the forthcoming Blackburn Cathedral instrument. I would love to have been responsible for sampling it and producing the library but in many ways, I'm glad that someone else is doing it. It's a bit like cooking a meal for oneself or having someone else do it for you.

In my case however, I am not so interested in obtaining a complete facsimile of an instrument because I am more interested in obtaining samples of outstanding examples of single stops and then compositing them into an unique new instrument. I remember an organ building friend of mine remarking about an instrument he was working on that the instrument overall was definitely nothing special as a whole but that the Open Wood was the finest that he had ever heard. There are quite a few organs out there where this applies and I have just the Trumpet from one instrument which was the only stop of any merit in the whole organ and was noted as being so in the N.P.O.R. The rest of the instrument was pretty much a waste of time and not worth the time of day.

So I will put the set-back of the wet Willis down to bad experience and persevere because I want people to enjoy an instrument that they may never get to play in real life. Add to that, that it is quite a special instrument anyway and it makes the effort worthwhile.

January 16th. 2022

The Father Willis 1894 is now complete with the new photo graphics created by Olivia Nagioff who has done a splendid job as usual. To her, many thanks (see also the News page and the HENRY WILLIS 1894 button to the left). 
It was interesting to hear of the future release of the Blackburn Cathedral organ and I look forward to hearing it. I know the instrument very well having been schooled only ten miles away. Out of all of the instruments that I would wish to be sampled, this one is probably top of the list.
Whilst on the subject of Lancashire, the county is lucky to have many fine instruments including two of the largest instruments in the UK; Liverpool Anglican Cathedral and St George's Hall in the same city. There is also a similar but larger and earlier Walker instrument to Blackburn in the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. Many fine instruments still exist (though many have been destroyed) and there are a very considerable number of Father Willis instruments scattered around; many of them in almost original condition.

The 1894 Willis just released above is just one of them. 

If one includes Manchester (originally part of Lancashire as was Liverpool) under the county name there is almost a surfeit of very notable instruments in this part of the UK. Still extant instruments include the large Cavaille-Coll's in Manchester Town Hall and the Parr Hall Warrington, the large Lewis in Ashton (Albion) and many others but unfortunately many have also been lost. 
These include the large four manual Father Willis in St Peter's, Blackburn and the large Rushworth and Dreaper in King George's Hall, Blackburn - both destroyed by fire although the former had been relocated. There was also the large Gray and Davison in Bolton Town Hall - completely destroyed by fire but replaced with a new sizeable Walker. The large Wilkinson in Preston Guildhall was also a considerable loss but at least re-found part of itself in the Catholic Cathedral in Edinburgh. The future of The Schulze in Hinckley is in jeopardy and others have just disappeared through churches being demolished. Tragically, one of the finest Hill organs of some fame in the Congregational church in Great George St Liverpool survived the blitz but was utterly vandalised under the supervision of a very stupid teacher who allowed the kids in her control to "remodel" the pipework into a "new expression" of art. Her excuse ? "That organ was the artistic creation of the past and these children are remaking it into the artistic creation of today !
And that's not to mention the  many, many cinema organs - the most famous of course being Blackpool.
Although there are all of these fine instruments the county also had quite a few organ builders of lesser repute than the big names. Unfortunately it also produced two of the worst organ builders in the UK who will remain nameless but whose work was quite appalling. In my youth, I had the misfortune of coming across quite a few products put together by these so called organ builders. It was not a pleasant experience.

January 1st. 2022

Happy New Year to everyone.

Post Christmas. Ante New Year.

Basically a very quiet Christmas. Her indoors was working the whole period doing care work and I just carried on working as normal.
Regardless of the "break" I couldn't have gone anywhere anyway because I had no car over the period.
Her car went in mid last week to have her rear shock absorbers replaced. I had noticed a strong smell of diesel around and inside the car over a couple of days so when I took her over to collect her car, I got the mechanic to take a quick look. He said that mice or rats had got into the engine area and had chewed through the fuel lines - in essence, it was really unsafe to drive since doing so might wreck the engine. So I left it at the garage over Christmas so that they could start work as soon as possible afterwards.
Fortunately, I have now got the car back (with a sizeable bill) and obtained a load of mice and rat traps in the hope that we can eliminate the problem. Seems that it is a very common occurrence, especially in the countryside and at this time of year.
However, it has also brought home to me just how isolated we are here and being without a car is an absolute nightmare. There is no public transport apart from a bus running once a week which has its nearest stop to us about 2 miles away. There aren't even any taxis. This means that idyllic though it is here, we will have to move in the next five years into more of a community with a local shop, pub etc. 
My parents left it too long and eventually couldn't and many of the old people still in their homes who moved into an equally idyllic properties maybe 10 - 20 years ago report that they wish that they had moved into a village or town earlier but now it's too late.
It is a sad fact of life that by the time has achieved one's "perfect" home (unless they're very lucky), it's too late to enjoy it for more than a decade or so. It should be the other way around.

December 2021

Work continues on the wet set of the 1894 Father Willis and I hope to have some more demos posted shortly. Olivia is working on the deluxe graphics so that the initial release will include both versions - standard HW graphics and the phot realistic ones. Depending on the progress made with the wet set, I may release the dry set at first, possibly in time for Christmas. The wet set will follow in due course. It is likely that the wet set will include the photo graphics and both perspectives; wet and dry so that customers can choose either one or use the facilities in HW V and VI to create surround effects using both. Whilst the wet set should not need additional convolution, the dry set may benefit from the introduction of a bare minimum of HW convolution to provide a more realistic result from the dry samples in advanced home set-ups.

November 2021

Please see our Black Friday Sale 2021 page for details of up to 70% savings on our sample sets.

October 18th.2021

It all happens here ! Her indoors was returning home and discovered an injured tawny owl in the road. She couldn't leave it and wrapped it in her coat and brought it home. What a beautiful creature with the most liquid eyes which drew you in. We weren't sure whether it was its leg that was injured or its wing but  we put it in a cardboard box in the downstairs loo where it was quiet and relatively warm and started doing some research on the net.
None of the various organisations dealing with owls were available so we kept it overnight. It was well fed so didn't want any food and seemed quite content apart from an occasional loud click if we got too close. One thing is for certain, they have exceptionally sharp talons and wearing gloves is a definite wise move. I have never been that up close to a live owl an it was really quite something.
We managed to get hold of the RSPCA the next day (Saturday) and they sent a very nice girl to pick him / her up. She reckoned that the wing was broken or badly dislocated. Sadly, she informed me that if it was broken, then the chances were basically zero since it is almost impossible to fix the hollow bones in an owl's wing and then it was very difficult because they need to hunt. So even if they are healed, the prognosis is not generally good and many places that used to care for injured birds are not allowed to take them in these days due to possible diseases. She said that it was pretty likely that it would have to be put down (with an overdose anaesthetic) but at least it would be done humanely.
It was very sad. We have that many owls in the surrounding woods and the gardens and have several owl boxes scattered about. Normally we just hear them or see them swooping and occasionally we see them sitting in a tree but we don't get to be in close proximity. Definitely my favourite bird.
The RSPCA lady did however remark that our place was absolutely teeming with wildlife which it is and has been pointed out in previous posts here. She was really quite surprised and said it must be a wonderful place to live - which it is. Just too many slugs but at least it keeps the badgers and the toads, frogs and slowworms happy.

Work continues on the Willis 1894 wet set which is shaping up. Most likely I'll release the dry set shortly and those that want it will get a free upgrade to the wet set when it is finished in the next month or so. Not sure whether there will be a deluxe version with photo graphics; we will have to see. I hope to have some initial demos up in the next fortnight or so.

The various flights of steps etc. in the garden are getting closer to completion and I will be so glad when they are finished. It has been a really big project and has required tons of materials despite having  a lot of on site material for backfilling. One thing is for certain, it will have made a large increase to the value of the property and looking around at other properties in the area, ours will fetch a premium when it is eventually sold in a few years time and all of the hard work and expense will pay dividends. Only problem is that it takes an arm and a leg to upkeep and pay all the bills whilst living here ! 

September 27th. 2021

And yet another month has gone by and the garden is beginning to show that the end of the season is approaching. Fuel is currently a bit of a problem and I was a bit worried that there would be a big problem since everywhere has basically run out  (despite what the news would have people believe). I was down to fumes and  just by luck we telephoned ahead to a "local" garage on Friday who said that they had just had a delivery but so far few people knew about it so I went straight down. There was a small queue and everyone was limited to £50 but hopefully that will be enough to tie me through the next week or so if I'm careful. Unfortunately, we live in the middle of nowhere as I have stated previously and the nearest shop is over 5 miles away. OK I've got frozen stuff and could manage for several days but the dogs need feeding and other things like fresh milk are necessary so we have to get out occasionally. 
Generally, I try to avoid using this website to express any political or religious views but It is perhaps a salient lesson to be learned that if people are underpaid for what they do then eventually they give up and find alternatives which is one of the reasons why we have such a shortage of lorry drivers at the moment. It also doesn't help when some people offer services or products for free or at vastly reduced rates because in the end it devalues everything and of course, people take advantage of this. Unfortunately, either one has to accept the fact that one's hard work is now paid less than it was a decade or more ago or one has to change professions. 
Unfortunately, lorry drivers are just the tip of the iceberg and one can expect care workers, shop workers and many more to become harder to find. It's all very nice to have cheaper goods but eventually it comes at a significant cost namely, that in the end, we will all have to pay considerably more for what we have taken for granted or quite simply, certain products and services will no longer be available.

September 6th. 2021

The 65-3 is ready now as per the News page and the 1894 Father Willis is finished from the point of view of the dry samples. I decided not to add an additional tierce based mixture for the moment although there are alternative mixtures available. The original "one shot" samples have the alternative of individual rank versions which have been matched to the original combined stops. Although entirely inaccurate, the use of both does give a certain extra to the whole sound of the organ - it's down to personal preferences of the user and some may like to use the voicing tools to use parts of one and parts of the other (by reducing the volumes down to zero). 
Not quite sure what the price will be at the moment but it will be very reasonable. Likewise, I'm not sure as yet whether there will be a Deluxe version with Olivia's graphics or not since that is down to her and also obtaining live photos of the actual instrument or one very similar. Unfortunately the actual instrument is about 300 miles away so it's not as if one can just pop in and photograph the real organ.

August 11th. 2021

The Concert 65-4 Deluxe with Olivia Nagioff's photo graphics and extra features joins the other larger models in the series. 

As stated in the News page the 1894 Willis is approaching completion of the dry recorded internal set. The mixtures are proving to be a little bit difficult since the originals aren't perfect in terms of tuning. The alternative separate rank mixtures are where the difficulty lies in matching them up to the single shot recordings and replacing some of the really bad notes on the originals. I am also considering whether to provide additional Tierce mixtures as alternative stops. Both would be available on the final release thus giving the choice of either. Tierce mixtures are very much a part of many Willis instruments although they have become out of favour these days. However, most cathedral and town hall instruments tend to retain them and add additional new quint mixtures to cover. I feel that it would be valuable to have both available although this moves away from the completely facsimile nature of the instrument.

Managed to get a section of new fencing up at the edge of the property since the old fencing was completely rotten. The various flights of steps connecting the levels are also reaching completion together with their rails and everything is beginning to tie together in some form of completion but there is still a long way to go. I also managed to sort out the gutters to some extent which despite measures were getting quite clogged and sometimes overflowing onto the external walls. It's a bit much to expect 40'+ feet of guttering with only one down pipe to handle all rain and the introduction of a second down pipe has helped matters considerably. The front isn't a problem since it has three separate downpipes  and there are several sections. Although the weather hasn't been particularly good, I have soldiered on outside and will wait until the colder weather arrives before sorting out some of the internal aspects including redecorating.

July 29th. 2021 

A lot of what's been going on has already been reported on the News Page. the largest models of the Concert Series have received their new graphics and extra features and it is expected that the remainder of the series will be finished soon. Once again thanks to Olivia Nagioff and the work she has put in to creating these "deluxe" sets.
I have just finished and uploaded my performance of the first movement of the Lemare sonata No. 1 which joins the Scherzo from the same sonata posted a month or so back. As I have worked through it, I have come to realise just how fine a composer Lemare was (as well as being the famous organist). I think that the sonata is really quite a phenomenal work with each movement providing interest. I suppose my least favourite movement is the Intermezzo which I find doesn't do much for me but the rest are really lovely. I have briefly looked at the Finale which sounds the most difficult but I have a feeling that it is possibly not as difficult as the first movement which sounds relatively easy but is actually really awkward. Not sure at the moment whether I will attempt the Finale and the pedal part looks to be very awkward on paper. We will have to see.

Otherwise, the garden is developing (especially with the recent fine weather) and the various flights of steps are taking shape nicely. Some fencing needs to be done and I am going to have to construct gabions in the small river at the bottom since it has got into the habit of taking out chunks of the garden when in spate. Normally, it's not particularly fierce being a small upland tributary though it does drop a bit but when in flood, there is really quite a lot of water rushing through which can be quite deep.

The rare yellow wagtails mentioned previously abandoned their nest when the five chicks fledged and the hanging trough was replanted. Within a week, they were back again and a new nest had been constructed with a further four eggs. These also hatched successfully and the chicks have just fledged in the last few days.

June 18th. 2021

The News page gives some details of the receipt of the newly designed graphics for the Concert 125 instrument and further details together with screen shots can be found under the Concert 125 Page. Once again thanks to Olivia Nagioff for creating the graphics and instigating several additions.

We are still the area with the lowest amount of Covid infections in the UK but unfortunately countrywide restrictions have been delayed from being lifted for yet another month. Otherwise, life goes on as normal. The recent fine weather has given me a chance to finally get on with some of the projects in the garden and these are progressing slowly. Most of the garden is on a 30% slope which means that there are many different levels with many retaining walls. All of these require steps and over the years since they were originally done, a considerable amount of re-pointing, remaking and redesign has had to be undertaken in several areas. The second terrace where the septic tank is situated has needed attention and it was finally emptied (having eventually found it) after what must have been a good couple of decades. Fortunately, it was in pretty good condition apart from the inspection covers which I have replaced with new and it means that should we have to sell the house in the future, there will be no hold-ups in respect of this department. The laws regarding septic tanks changed in 2020 and unless they are compliant with the laws, all sorts of problems have to be sorted out before a house can be sold. Fortunately, our system does not require the complete installation of a sewage treatment works and that aspect of the property is now sorted.

Unfortunately,the recent fine weather has seen everything starting to go mad - most noticeably the weeds which are getting a little bit out of control at the moment. However, the garden remains an absolute haven for wildlife and we have many nesting birds. Perhaps the rarest was a Yellow Wagtail which decided to make its nest directly under the kitchen window in a hanging plant holder. Five chicks were born and have just fledged this week. Now that the nest is abandoned, we can plant up the holder before it's too late. So far the two owl boxes have no new tenants but there are nests of other birds everywhere so one has to be rather careful. No sign of any reptiles so far this year though they are probably about and the main pond is teeming with both fish which seem to be breeding well together with the large colonies of newts, frogs and toads. The deer are regularly in the woods (fortunately not the garden itsef) and most of the other British mammals are here and there to some extent. Although I haven't looked closely, the small river at the bottom of the garden will no doubt have its normal collection of elvers, bullheads and other small fish which will in turn attract the kingfishers.

On a positive - negative note, we have loads of bees including the solitary ones and a swarm of black honey bees have decided to move in under one of the eaves. However, the occasional hornet and a few wasps have not been so welcome but at least they don't seem to have built any nests yet. Slugs and snails still remain a bit of a problem especially when they start attacking special plants and edibles like strawberries.

June 7th. 2021

So here we are only a couple of weeks off the longest day. Just where does the time go to ? The 1894 Willis is up and running in its basic form with all of the proper loops and markers in place (as opposed to the rough ones in the HW stop preparation software). The original mixtures are rather dire in places and will have to have many notes substituted - there's out of tune slightly with a few beats here and there and then there is out of tune hugely with really clashing notes everywhere. I have constructed a new mixture for the swell from the existing pipework which offers some improvement and will serve as a good replacement with a slight bit of de-tuning. I will also have to construct a new mixture for the great. Unfortunately when the organ was originally sampled, I only had a day to do it which only amounted to about 8 hours all told. There was absolutely no time whatsoever to tune anything or make any other minor adjustments (there wasn't even enough time to do multiple note recordings). In addition there was a problem with local kids screeching and shouting in the adjacent area and at one point they were actually throwing small stones at the windows. All in all it was a difficult sampling event. However, a valid instrument will result when all is said and done.

These were quite early days in my sampling "career" and many lessons were learned although it is not always possible to achieve the optimum circumstances for sampling any organ. Several things became plain at the time such as the need to sample overnight where possible to avoid traffic and bird noises and to spend time fixing small problems such as obscure rattlings, slipped tune pipes and off notes. As regards rattlings, these can be quite horrendous especially with stops such as Open Woods which have a lot of energy. Most of the time it's usually some part of the structure of the instrument itself such as the frame, one wooden pipe against another or a panel but at other times it can take ages to discover that it is a small pane of glass slightly insecure in its leaden seating causing the problem. In some cases, the application of some temporary "pritt" and gaffa tape or a bit of wedged padding will sort the issue. Sometimes I have had to remove the offending pipe temporarily or tighten screws in the stays, "pritt" or tape hissing leaks closed or cover trunking with a blanket. It is rare to find any pipe organ without at least one problem to have to sort.

Well, at least the weather has now improved slightly though how long it will be before all restrictions are lifted is still very much "up in the air". I think that the watch word at the moment is to make no firm plans. It must be quite trying for the young to not be able to go out to clubs or have a normal social life that we all took so much for granted before the pandemic. Fortunately, I didn't have to live through a world war which must have been very much worse.

May 1st. 2021

And so, now we are into May ! Time just flies and since the various lock-downs and restrictions came into place weekdays tend to blur into the weekends so that often as not, the week has gone and another is starting before one knows it.
Quite a few sets have been released in the last few months and thanks to Olivia Nagioff, they have photo realistic graphics and a few other features that were not present before. A few unreleased ones are awaiting their graphics but at the moment Olivia is concentrating on the Concert series organs. They will not only have new graphics but will also incorporate several features that have not been included previously including sustainers and "combinations coupled" stops. Eventually, they will probably be released in dry and wet editions.
However, I am currently working on a Father Willis from 1894 - what may be considered his later period. Although I have had the samples for some years now, many stops were previously unusable due to excessive noise and therefore only very few were incorporated into our earlier instruments. In other cases, better examples were found and used. The instrument has never been released as a facsimile model.
However, with some excellent new noise reduction software and some extra years more experience in editing and producing , I can now work on many samples from instruments that formerly were archived.

Initially I was slightly disappointed in the FW 1894 but as I have worked through the stops it has become apparent that although individually some stops might not seem to be the best examples of what is out there, once combined into conventional choruses, the instrument is developing a specific character.  In fact, despite the limitations of the specification at under thirty stops over three manuals, it really is quite an exciting instrument. I first played this instrument when I was a teenager and it has always remained a worthy instrument to remember.
It makes one realise just how brilliant the likes of Willis, Hill Cavaille Coll and so on were. Often as not individual stops exhibit no great astounding character but when combined with others, they take on a whole new life as part of the whole sound and something special starts to emerge.
Of course, I have always known this but when working at the level that of producing samples, it becomes so much more noticeable.
I remember chatting with Carleton Etherington from Tewkesbury a few years ago (we both come from the same area in upbringing) and both of us agreed that this particular 1894 Willis is something special. 
When released, I reckon it will be as a dry, close and distant set.

Meanwhile, the recent weather (warm days, cold nights) has allowed me to get outside a bit and attend to some jobs that needed doing. The main focus of events has been work on the lower terrace. Somewhere hidden was the septic tank which we have never had emptied. In fact, I reckon that it hasn't been emptied since it was put in a couple of decades ago ! After a lot of experimental digging, I finally found it. The whole area has now been stripped of several tons of gravel, soil and weed membrane. I have fitted new inspection covers and reinstalled a new vent, the old one being totally totally inoperative. It is surprising how much extra soil etc. accumulates in an area over time and I am now ready to put in a new tougher weed membrane and replace the gravel with new. Then it's on to the next job.

March 18th. 2021

Not much to say here that hasn't already been said on the news page. However, I have had my first vaccination and the progress in the UK seems to be excellent (despite the most recent slight hiccup). Hopefully the dismally wet winter of the last couple of months will develop into an early and fine spring followed by a halcyon warm summer. Trouble is that there probably won't be any pubs or restaurants left by then.

February 23rd. 2021

Congratulations must go to everyone involved in the successful landing on Mars which could of course be a major moment in history and is little out of the ordinary. So what has this got to do with organs or Hauptwerk ?
Quite simply, one of our customers who is an HW sample developer on his own account and who also happens to be a very proficient organist is a senior manager for JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) at NASA and obviously he has played a fairly major part in the above Mars project. We also both happened to have worked for Kawai at one time. It's rather amusing to get (external) emails from NASA.
As a small sideline, the parachute was made not far from us here in Devon at Tiverton which is home to an historically interesting instrument which we have sampled throughout and indeed, some stops are already incorporated into the Concert Series. The whole facsimile instrument will come later.
There is one sad aspect of the Tiverton connection and that is that the fine organist of the main parish church; Andrew Curtis passed away very suddenly a few years ago. He was a respected musician and teacher and a very nice person as well. The initial project was to create an adjacent temporary facsimile of the original instrument which could be used until such time that a complete restoration of the real organ could be undertaken. Sadly his untimely death rather put paid to that idea.
Of course there are quite a few other HW users out there who are also fairly famous either in the field of organs or in other fields. Quite a few are also long standing users of our libraries.
In addition, some other "movers and shakers" in the organ world have entrusted us to provide their own HW consoles and hardware along with consultancy services and advice.

In the interim..........Will it ever stop raining ? This must have been the wettest three or four months ever. Covid lockdowns have made sampling a complete impossibility although it would have been an ideal time to do so with little traffic in the air or on the road plus no visitors but we have not been able to take advantage of the situation. At least the weather and situation in hand has allowed me to work on some music as well as getting around to working on new sample sets. I have had many of the samples of these organs sitting on my hard drives awaiting an opportune moment and better software (plus the time) to make into facsimile instruments.
Finally this week, we have been able to do a tiny bit in the garden (quagmire) in the last day or so but look forward to a warmer and drier spring.

February 20th. 2021

Well "Fortnight" as they call it down here has nearly gone already just another week.
I find that YouTube is a very useful facility especially for research and when learning pieces (along with Contre Bombarde of course).
Whilst trawling, I came across an entry featuring the Heyligers organ at Apeldoorn. As some people may already be aware, I imported Heyligers organs into the UK at one time and thus got to know Hendrik Heyligers very well. I first came across Heyligers organs at one of the Frankfurt Music Messe's and was immediately impressed by their instruments. Without doubt at the time, they were the very best pipeless organs that money could buy anywhere in the world.
I negotiated with "Henk" and eventually made a visit over to Holland to Ermelo where he had his factory and after he had visited me in England, he agreed to send over one of his house organs as a demonstration instrument. I got to know Henk very well and whilst some people found him difficult, I always found him to be a very decent and generous sort of a person. However, his instruments were very, very expensive and apart from some small "cheap" models most were custom built.
During one of my visits to Holland after having dinner with him and his wife in their charming house on the outskirts of Ermelo, he played me a record of his organ at Apeldoorn played by Piet van Egmond. It was a complete ear opener as to what could be achieved in a pipeless organ. The bells at the end were produced by careful selection of stops and playing technique according to Henk.
The YouTube link is: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ6VxtbURk4

When one considers that this is an instrument that was built over FIFTY years ago and was entirely analogue it is all the more amazing. To me it still sounds pretty much 99% like a real pipe organ and there is very little that sounds "digital". Of course it does help that the acoustics of the church are very good and of course, Henk never held back on the amount of channels and speakers that he used. This was one of the reasons his instruments were so expensive plus the fact that components were only ever driven to about 30% of what they was capable of which gave exceptional reliability and longevity. No custom "chips" were used which means that even today, his instruments can be restored and repaired.
Unfortunately, his factory was destroyed by fire - I actually met the arsonist at Frankfurt Messe one year (then working for a competitor) and he basically admitted that he had set the factory alight. The factory was rebuilt but much valuable stuff was lost. 
The one thing that sticks in my mind is that when asked why he hadn't considered sampling he replied that when it had reached the next stage and where he could work directly with the samples himself then he would consider it. Sadly he died well before sampling reached the stage thta it has reached today. One wonders what he might have made of Hauptwerk !
The last time I visited Henk, he was selling up and about to retire and had decided to keep one last Model P instrument for his house.
My own house organ which was custom built eventually ended up in Downside School having been purchased by the late Chris Tambling who was then director of music at the school.

Whilst on the subject of YouTube, it never ceases to amaze me as to how good many of the current young generation of organists are. Equally there are also a few not so good ones. There is one that has many posts of himself playing organs here and there. Interesting because sometimes they are the only recordings of the organs that are available. I know that he states that he is not a professional organist but I do wish that he would show a little more imagination in his playing which consists of hymn tunes (played adequately well) on almost the same registration in every verse. No change in harmony, no variety, and really only demonstrating fairly full registrations.
Sadly some really good performances get little recognition whilst others get recognition that they don't deserve. Of course there are the idiots who either comment that some fourth rate organist is the best in the world whilst others rubbish some of the best performances ever by some of the best organists.
I suppose that currently, my favourite YouTube contributor is Jonathan Scott (and his brother Tom). I never cease to be amazed at just how "perfect" he is and many of the instruments are very interesting. Unlike the above mentioned, not only does he play interesting music but he also shows off the organs from their most intimate registrations to their plenums.
One day, I may very well start putting some of my own efforts on YouTube but for the moment i content myself with ContreBombarde and this website. Unfortunately, I am not a film maker, I don't have the equipment and I don't like being photographed or filmed especially when playing. The last time was on Spanish National TV some years ago and it wasn't a pleasant experience.

As regards ContreBombarde, there are fairly few bad performances and I have rediscovered one or two pieces that I "knew" and liked but couldn't remember who composed them or what they were called.

February 1st. 2021

It's been a nightmare weekend of wasted time ! My main working / editing PC working (running on the now "defunct" Win 7) decided to really play up (as opposed to occasionally throwing a small occasional tantrum). In the end it wouldn't even allow me to enter Windows in safe mode. I reinstalled Windows from my original disk and finally got it to work and was then able to transfer pretty much everything onto a removable drive. Wiped everything on the PC itself and started again. Unfortunately, it still insisted on closing down after a short time. Although it was high spec. at the time and still is to some extent being an i7, it is nearly a decade old. so obviously it is probably at the end of its useful life and I cannot work with a temperamental PC.
I then decided to install everything on my Studio PC which also runs on win 7 and finally managed to get that up and running but with one small problem: Since I don't run a multi channel speaker set up in my office, I was using a Steinberg UR44 for day to day work. The UR44 eventually worked fine apart from audio glitches on absolutely every source including YouTube and of course HW. Obviously this made it impossible to work with sound in any way. I altered buffers and loads of other things to no avail which took a considerable time going back and forth. Finally, I resorted to seeing if the problem was covered on the internet and low and behold, it transpires that if one uses an older USB port then this problem occurs. As soon as I jiggled all my USB ports around and connected the UR44 to a USB2  port everything was fine. Deo Gratias
The upshot is, I spent two and a half days of wasted time with a now defunct machine and transferring everything across, loading new drivers and so on. Hopefully I will now be back to normal. Also, it is often the simplest things that cause the most problems and take hours to work out why things aren't working only to find a stupidly simple answer.
Unfortunately, I still have to run an older computer based on Win 7. Firstly because some of my really good editing software will not run on Win 10 and secondly, because I am still running HW 4 on the older computer. I do have an all singing, dancing PC running Win 10 and HW V (and VI) but I can't use this for HW IV sample sets which I still continue to produce. I suppose that in the not too distant, despite my hopes of continuing to work with libraries for both HW IV and V+VI, I will have to only work with future sets in HW V + VI and hope that there is some editing software that will do the same job as my older software.

Otherwise, it's been wet, the dogs go out for a couple of minutes and come back in covered in mud. Everything is saturated and the bottom lawn is a marsh. The river at the bottom of the garden is constantly in semi-spate and absolutely nothing can be done anywhere at all since everything is "clag". The lockdown doesn't really affect us but it is a little inconvenient for a lot of things and of course, we can't drive anywhere unless we are going for essential shopping etc. Although it isn't more than about 15 miles to the nearest seaside and surfing beaches, there would be no really valid reason for going there and it is likely that we would be stopped and fined by the police. Fortunately, there is a long trail pathway a mere couple of minutes from the house that we can walk to in order to give the dogs a bit of a run and apart from weekends, it is normally pretty much deserted during weekdays.

January 10th. 2021

Not much has changed around here despite the new lockdown restrictions. It is interesting to see that our nearest town is considered to be the healthiest place to live in the UK (and that was before Covid) and we live several miles away from it in the middle of nowhere. The town in itself is nothing particularly special though it is pleasant apart from the parish church which part from having an interesting history, is also home to a rather fine and sizeable Father Willis organ to which I have access in normal times.
It's somewhat wet and cold down here currently although we have had no snow. Apart from the central heating breaking down earlier this week which was quickly got working again, not a vast amount can go on at the moment. However, I am taking the opportunity to work through some older groups of samples with the latest editing software and it is surprising what is emerging. Previously, very little if any, of this material could be used. 
I am gradually working through the smaller instruments to start with so the first two to be finished are the Johnson and the Prosser. Although both are single manual instruments with few stops they are quite different in character and ability. What is important is that they each represent typical instruments that can be found throughout the UK. With the Johnson, this is typical of the modern type of box or continuo organ found in some churches but more often in universities or music departments and in the case of the Prosser, it is the type of instrument that is quite common in many small parish churches.
Of course the greater proportion of church organs to be found in the UK are two manual instruments with about 20 stops or less and if you are an organist - especially away from the cities, these are the types of instrument that you are most likely to come across. The majority of them date from the mid to late Victorian period and whilst they may not have the resources of the larger instruments, they are often quite charming. 
Many organists hope for something with decent resources where the mindset is to have a decent plenum but we do sometimes forget that many of the lesser endowed instruments make up for their lack of stops by providing many individual stops and small combinations of great character and beauty. They may not be able to give the great combinations for some of the greatest organ works requiring cathedralesque specifications but then not all organ music has to be performed on full organ all of the time.
As Jimmy Taylor of Compton's once remarked to an organist playing one of their larger instruments who remarked that "it's a bit much" his  response was "well, you do know that you don't have to use all of it all of the time"

November 4th. 2020

We thought that we had escaped the recent regional lockdowns since our area is the lowest in the country but sadly, the powers that be have decided that the lockdown is for the whole country regardless. If it's anything like the earlier nationwide lockdown then it won't affect us too much but it still makes things all a bit of a pain.
I have not been working on sample sets recently since I decided it was about time to create some demos of what is already out there in the hope of drumming up some business Unfortunately there just aren't enough hours in the day for me to do all that I want and that's before taking into consideration the running of the estate and house plus normal living.
There is an added benefit of creating music on the existing sample sets because at times, the odd anomaly appears and this can then be corrected. Usually it's just a case of loud or soft notes but occasionally more important issues come to light. Until one runs through various scenarios or someone else discovers them and tells me, these problems remain although they don't stop the sets from working.
Obviously, I go through every new release with a fine tooth comb but it is impossible to find every single minor fault when dealing with many thousands of samples.

September 28th. 2020

For us down here, the Covid situation is more of an inconvenience than anything else and one gets used to the obligatory wearing of masks.However, going to the pub is really not worth it regardless of what the opening hours are since even one person becoming infected means that through track and trace everyone is under complete curfew. In the end, why pay through the nose for substandard drinks and gross limitations plus the threat of a 14 day enforced quarantine. The social aspect has already gone by the board so it's more than sensible to just not bother.
At the moment, there seem to be no particular restrictions on going to the supermarket so unless this changes dramatically, things remain almost unchanged. Of course it would be nice to go out for a meal somewhere but many of us have rediscovered our own personal masterchef enthusiasm and of course there are so many recipes and ideas available on the internet these days. Last night I made a Maltese octopus stew which was just like I had when I holidayed in Malta many years ago. Her Indoors settled for a nicely prepared Dover sole both served with home made chips done exactly as we both like them and not some sort of peenywally or overdone attempt by a disenfranchised back room cook.
Her youngest who is now independent has suddenly got into baking and much more besides so he is happy.
I continue on planting up the newly reclaimed bit of garden although it is a struggle against the deeply embedded brambles. Considering what it looked like a couple of months ago which was just a tangle of briars, it is really taking shape now. of course all of the work will not show until next year when something like several hundred bulbs will hopefully burst into life and the various shrubs will flower. Other work has included a new damp proof course and exterior wall waterproofing. The main water garden feature in the middle garden is working but losing a bit of water which will have to be addressed and the stonework is coming along gradually. It's all rather a lot of work and of course I haven't even looked at the lower garden at all. 
Still, when it's all finished it will be quite something.

August 7th. 2020

Finally getting to the very last stages of the beta F & A and I am quite pleased with both results - the very close and the close. It is really quite surprising what difference a microphone position makes by as little a four feet. Whilst each stop and its equivalent are obviously very similar and in some cases almost identical on some notes, there is a definite subtle difference between each of any two stops and various combination of stops. It is difficult to make a choice between many because both versions are good. Having said that, I must admit to preferring the very close Swell reeds as opposed to the not so close perhaps it's because they have a little more fire. However, some of the semi close flue stops are much nicer than the very close ones. It will be interesting to see what the various assessors reckon. I have several Hauptwerkians lined up and when the beta is ready, I will email them with the link to the set. However, if there is anyone missing when I do announce that the beta is ready to go who doesn't get an email and link or anyone else who would like to offer their considerations, please contact me.
The set in itself is going to be a bit unconventional in that there is one specification but a choice of either /or. Unfortunately it is not possible to have different individual stops from close or medium stops because there isn't the architecture available in HW unless all of the stops are duplicated but there are octave and sub-octave couplers available so that further combinations can be tried. All of the stops have been balanced but there has been no alteration to the brightness and any of the other parameters.

July 21st. 2020

It's been taking me a lot longer to complete the Beta Forster and Andrews instrument than expected for a number of reasons but it is gradually getting there. 
We had a rather serious situation earlier in the month where all of the mains circuits in the house were tripping out on an ELCB. Since I was uncertain as to what might be causing the problem and I don't have the test equipment available, I had to call in an electrician since I was totally baffled. For a while so was he, but after a few hours of testing all of the circuits on the ring mains, he found that one particular socket was at fault. It would seem that the downpipe from the main V roof had been overflowing with the heavy rain we had been having and the excess water was finding its way into the socket causing the leakage and thus the tripping. Eventually, it could have caused a fire. Although the main circuit board is not particularly old, the breakers etc.are now no longer made or are very difficult to obtain so we are going to have to have a completely new main circuit board installed. Not a cheap job but at least we will be safe.
Whilst Covid has been preventing outside sampling and much else, like many, I have had the opportunity of doing a fair amount of domestic stuff. There was an area of the grounds of the house which was basically just a sloping bramble thicket leading up to a corn field and woodland. Clearing this resulted in a completely new section of garden space which has turned out to be much larger than expected. Two large trees are now no more because one was leaning like the tower of Pisa another was a rather untidy hawthorn and there was an intrusive copse of holly which was taking over in one corner. The holly has been thinned out and a number of new shrubs and trees have been planted. These include Gleditzias, Liquidambers, Gingkos and several fruit trees, a number of Acers plus hydrangeas and roses. It will look a little bare for a while but in a few years time it should be quite something as it fills out and plants mature. Unfortunately, this has meant that the rest of the grounds have had to be left to their own devices for the moment. Hopefully by the time autumn comes, the rest of the gardens will look a little better but it's a lot of hard work and quite major re- landscaping.

July 2020

The latest Choir and Organ magazine has an interesting article about Allen organs written by the son (and current CEO) of the founder - Steven Markowitz. Although I am not the greatest fan of the mass produced instruments from the various manufacturers worldwide, it cannot be disputed that Allen does offer a fine instrument (providing it is set up correctly) as do the others. I would go so far as to say that there are few truly bad "toasters" in the current market place although some of the cheap end models from some manufacturers leave a lot to be desired. Certainly Allen generally provide instruments that are at the top end of the market in terms of decent quality when it comes to "off the shelf" models.

I remember the very first Allen that I ever played which had replaced the original scrapped pipe organ by Rutt / Norman and Beard. I remember in particular that the vicar had used the Open Wood to make a set of book shelves. the replacement (early) Allen had those horrid tiny stop tabs and there was a paper card reader slot at the side for new stops. I can't say that it produced a nice sound but then, nothing in those days really did. Sampling technology hadn't really been thought of and you could hear all of the various harmonics that went in to creating the sound (especially on the reeds). These were the days when the likes of Makin and others were still using spinning photo disks.

Whilst I can't say that I agree with all of the statements in the article, his observations (and that of his father) are very interesting when it comes to the question of sampling and are very similar to my own. In essence, he rather dismisses wet sampling for the same reasons that I do and points out that not only does dry (and close) sampling produce the most accurate results, it is also a very much more complex and expensive procedure to undertake. 

Whilst there have been some truly excellent wet sets produced by various sample producers which in a home environment give an uncanny experience of playing the real life instruments, the only proper route for really authentic pipe organ reproduction is via the dry technique. Now that convolution reverberation is readily available - as is the facility to place "pipes" where one wants them in the sound stage, I feel that the combination of dry sampling of a particular instrument together with a convolution(s) created from the original building that it is in is probably the best route to take and should in theory provide a far more accurate facsimile of a particular instrument than wet sampling alone. I assume that when Allen advertises their GeniSys organs (with sampled acoustics) that this also the route that they take because they still advocate the use of dry sampling as a matter of course. There is the additional benefit that this method allows for the production of dry, wet and surround samples with much less trouble than previously.

The whole article is really worth reading in full.

There is also an interesting article about my old company - Nicholson's together with a brief history of the firm. To think that when Dennis Thurlow took me on as his personal assistant he had intended for me to one day take over from him shows how the course of one's life can be altered by the most simple and earliest decisions in life. In all honesty, I doubt that I would ever have become the boss of Nicholson's when all was said and done but it could have happened. For those that don't know, Dennis passed away at the end of last year in his 90's. Who knows what happened to Ray Todd and of course Kenneth Jones is still around running a now totally separate company rather than being "Kenneth Jones and Associates" (ie Nicholson's) as it was then. From a rather shaky period at the start of the take over back in the 1970's, Nicholson's have very definitely become one of the world's leading organ builders with instruments that can rightly take their place amongst the best available anywhere. 

And one last observation over another company advertising in the magazine who are making loud noises about their work............... I have tried their offerings and it bears out my view that in the case of alternative digital techniques to sampling, things still have a very long way to go ! Then who could have foreseen how sampling techniques would become as good as they have become because certainly, the initial early examples were not exactly convincing although the potential was really exciting.

June 2020

So we are now into June and the longest day is fast approaching. The garden is looking a bit wild with the heavy rain followed by sun followed again by heavy rain but the formal feature which replaced an impossible sloping lawn is coming to fruition. The water feature isn't fully working yet since it isn't connected to the mains but most of the plants are now in and it's beginning to take on its final form.

I did visit the hospital for a meeting with the surgeon a week or so ago and he was rather disappointed that he is not now going to operate. In essence, he says there is nothing to operate on since the herniated disks have been absorbed by my body. I can't say that I was looking forward to having an operation so this is good news. it also means that I have been able to discontinue the more powerful pain killers although I do have to take some just to reduce my normal back pain. Sadly, I will always have a back problem to a degree because my spine is worn out and most of the disks are pretty much gone. These cannot be operated on and it's just the result of osteo-arthritis. at least my hips, ankles, kees and elbows etc. haven't gone yet.

The Foster and Andrews is getting nearer to the time when I can send it out to the chosen few for appraisal

May 2020

The Corona virus has obviously made things difficult as regards new projects.
However, in many ways this is a good thing since it allows me to revisit and complete earlier projects that didn't get finished to public release standards for one reason or another. 

My original method of working was to obtain and prepare stops from different sources and then combine the best examples into composite instruments. Although complete instruments were sampled in most cases, I never really sought to present the individual instruments as facsimiles of the originals either because they were relatively small organs or because certain aspects of them were limiting both in their appeal to many organists as well as their individual limitations.

However, each instrument that was sampled either in its entirety or partly had to be created in some semi complete playable form or another just in order to be able to ascertain which stops that each instrument did have might be worth using. It has been interesting to finish off some of these instruments as they are in the flesh - warts and all. For the most part they are capable organs designed to fulfil a basic job which most of them do adequately. However, their size often limits their use with little in the way of the frills and facilities of larger instruments and thus their ability to cover the wider organ repertoire is often limited. Nonetheless, they are often quite charming organs in their own right though not perhaps something that one would wish to have to play every week.

Those that are familiar with the old site blog will know that we have had a pretty horrendous year so far for different reasons - in fact most people have had a pretty dire year which has now culminated in the current health crisis. Fortunately we didn't have the floods and it must be pretty horrific for those that did to now have to deal with Covid on top of their existing problems.

In reality, the current crisis has affected us relatively little. Apart from the occasional shortage of certain items and the slight inconvenience of not being able to access normal facilities, things have not been that much different to usual. Since we live out in the countryside in relative isolation, our normal life isn't exactly dependent on having access to many of the facilities that are essential for others. Decent restaurants and pubs are few and far between down here and we have a large garden and plenty of things to do. I can imagine that life in the cities must be pretty horrendous and of course, it is often made more bearable by the fact that there are an infinite number of places such as cafes and bars to go out to to escape along with the convenience of "everything" on their doorsteps. When all of those are shut down and outside activity and travel is severely compromised, it must be proving quite stressful.

Although we are still mourning the loss of Demelza, the one male puppy we kept is developing into a dog with very similar nature and looks. Obviously like all springer spaniels he can be quite a handful and at times he can be quite destructive but we are so glad that we kept him.

The Corona virus has put my proposed back operation on hold for the time being for obvious reasons but thanks to decent painkillers, it is not making life unbearable at the moment.


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