December 12th. 2024

We seem to have been lucky over the last few years as all these different storms hit the UK. Storm Daragh proved to be somewhat windy but nothing worse than we have seen before. However, the local vicinity was somewhat different with loads of trees down and roads blocked. They were cleared relatively quickly but unfortunately, the storm did cause the power to fail. We occasionally get short power cuts but this time the power was off for a day and a half. What was a little bit worrying was that although the power companies were doing everything that they could to restore power, we were told initially that it might be up to three or four days before we got our power back.

Fortunately, it is not overly cold at the moment and we had camping gas lights and a camping gas cooker but it wasn't warm. These days except if one has a log burner, it doesn't matter what fuel you have for heating etc. it is all controlled by electricity so we were slightly concerned.

By late Sunday night, power was restored though there are still some areas where there is no power.

Storm Daragh at least saved us the job of having to use a leaf blower !

Everything is now back to normal.

November 20th. 2024

It's been a fairly eventful few weeks. Of course, living completely out of the way down here where life is based on "Devon Time", pretty much anything beyond the sun rising and setting each day can be considered to be "eventful".

Unfortunately, the weather over the last several weeks has been pretty awful which has meant that very little has been carried out in the garden, so it just carries on growing and getting more jungle like. As a result, I have been able to get on with a bit of decorating which after 8 years of living here (is it that long ???) definitely needed doing.

However, the most important bit of news has been that of my step grandmother passing away at a few months short of her 100th. birthday. It was only by chance that we discovered that she had died (and by that time the funeral had been and gone and went). Whilst she was only related to me by the fact that she married my grandfather, she had actually been part of my entire life since she "joined" the family as a maid in her teens and was already established as 'The' head housekeeper by the time I was born. When I was born, my grandfather still employed several staff including 3 full time gardeners but over time these diminished until there was only one left. When my grandmother died, he decided to move to the Isle of Man and in order to give his remaining faithful "maid" some form of respectability and security, he decided to marry her. I have the distinction of having served mass at my grandmother's funeral, played the organ at my grandfather's wedding, and played the organ at his funeral. On her death, my step-grandmother was whisked off to Ireland (as per her wishes) to be buried next to her parents.

It is rather appalling that given my step grandmother's complete assimilation into my grandfather's family for nearly a century, that no one whatsoever in my step-grandmother's side of the family saw fit to inform any of us (on my grandfather's side of the family) that she had passed away. There was no announcement in the UK papers and there was no announcement in the Isle of Man papers, which had been her home for nearly half a century. Quite frankly I think it is absolutely disgusting, and I sincerely hope that some of her remaining nephews and nieces read this and find themselves thoroughly ashamed if they read this !!!

Be that as it may be, having now found out that she has departed this life, that now means that I am "head" of the family - not that it means anything. My mother's side of the family is rather large so much so, that we even have a family magazine which was established during WWII to keep the various members of the family in contact with each other.

Although I had not seen her for some years, we did remain in contact by phone fairly regularly and she certainly "had her marbles" right up to her passing in a local nursing home.

So, her passing is the complete demise of pretty much everyone directly connected with me. Both of my parents, my aunt and finally my step grandmother are no more, so in some ways it is the end of an era. I have no siblings (my sister passed away when I was 5 years old) and despite the family magazine, I have no very close relatives on my mother's side of the family that I can trace the whereabouts of.

I have zero close relatives on my father's side of the family that I have any knowledge of although everyone with my surname can trace themselves back to a tiny village on the coast of North Devon called Bucks Mills.

It's not that far away from where we live currently although there are no residents with my surname living there now. At one time, everyone in the village had the same surname and local towns, villages and buildings in the relatively near vicinity of Bucks Mills reflect this. From known family records and research, I understand that I am part of "Branch 18". Some years ago, Prunella Scales (who has just lost her husband, the actor; Timothy West), made a documentary about being evacuated to Bucks Mills during the war where she lived happily until the war ended.

I suppose that I will have to go over to the Isle of Man at some juncture to collect a few family connected items. It is now some years since I have been there, and it seems to have become quite an awkward and expensive place to get to these days. There are few flights to the small airport and only two ferries that connect the UK mainland to the island. These diminish quite considerably during winter months and the Irish Sea can be pretty rough at times.

As regards the island itself: It's like stepping back in time. I have visited the island several times and my first ever official organ building job was at Peel Cathedral which is on the West coast.  The I.O.M. is an UK dependency and as such, is not "part" of the UK. It has its own Parliament and laws although many tie in with the normal UK ones. Residents are not subject to either Capital Gains tax nor Inheritance tax which is why it is classed as an off-shore tax haven and it is also why so many famous actors etc. decide to have a home there. It's very pretty in parts and rather quaint overall.

A lot of the organs on the island are nothing particularly special though they are relatively untouched. Most of them are fairly small, typical Victorian instruments built by mainly Northern England builders. However, there is a very fine three manual Hill in Douglas (the 'capital') and there is a new Harrison and Harrison also in Douglas. There is also small Wurlitzer (model F ?) in the Villa Marina (again, in Douglas) which has had several previous homes and was installed by the late Len Rawle.

The I.O.M. is famous for the TT races (a motorcycle race around the island), Manx kippers, Queenies (a small and very delicious scallop), fairies (yes, they do believe in them) and the Laxey wheel to name a few. The latter is an enormous waterwheel which was used to pump out the lead mines in the area. There is a steam railway covering the South of the island, a horse drawn carriage railway in Douglas and a rather unique electric railway which goes from Douglas up to Ramsey in the North of the island with a branch going off from Laxey to the top of Snaefell, the island's highest mountain at just over 2000' or 620 metres. From the top of Snaefell, you can see seven "kingdoms" (on a clear day): the I.O.M. itself, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales along with Neptune (the sea) and Heaven (the sky).

The topmost part of the island is called Point of Ayr and it is somewhat bleak. There is a building there which is intimately connected with organs in that the whole edifice is a Hope Jones diaphone. Hope Jones of course was responsible for much of the development of the Wurlitzer cinema organ and invented the diaphone or valvular reed which found its way into a few church organs and virtually every cinema / theatre organ. It also found a valuable use in the shape of the foghorn. The one at the Point of Ayr is huge (see Point of Ayr | Lighthouse & Foghorn, Point of Ayre, Isle of … | Dub Hundley | Flickr) and was built to prevent ships being wrecked on the rocky headland. It could be heard over 25 miles away (in Scotland)!

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As a result of feedback and communication with various website visitors around the world, I have created a new page for this website. I tend to visit YouTube quite a lot and as I have stated here earlier, I find it a very valuable resource in discovering new organs and music. Therefore, the new page called 'Discoveries' has been created which hopefully will introduce visitors to this website to music and other presentations that they might not otherwise have been aware of.

In addition to introducing visitors to some of the discoveries that I have made either by accident or query, I hope that people may email me with some of their own discoveries. In this way, a huge, quite specialised resource could be created which is not tied to typical social media.

October 2024

Already almost the end of October and quite frankly, it's been a pretty awful year in terms of weather. The poor farmers have not had a good year with everything being very late and at the moment they are flying around between bad weather days and the very occasional good weather day to gather in what little harvest they have achieved this year.

The rest of the world seems to be in turmoil at the moment with lots of uncertainty in all quarters. Fortunately, many of us can carry on life as usual without being particularly affected by the "going's on" elsewhere. We are all aware of tragedies happening in the Middle East and Eastern Europe no matter which camp we fall into and likewise we are equally aware of the problems in some of the UK or the USA. I suppose that whatever happens will affect us all over time but it's a relief not to be at the forefront of things.

I see that there is a new sample set from St David's Cathedral by another young sample set producer.  It's not one of the better-known organs in the UK and doesn't have a specific reputation but it seems to be a decent enough instrument.

I played it many, many years ago when it was still a three manual long before the most recent rebuild.

The organist at the time was Sir Nicholas Jackson (no relation to Francis) and I remember he had a load of engravings of organs on the walls of his house (almost adjacent to the Cathedral). These had been done by one of his relations from what I remember. I understand that he is still alive 'though having been born in 1934, he is now quite aged.

St David's is a lovely place to visit though somewhat "out on a limb". It is the smallest city in the entire UK and is right at the far end of South Wales - almost as far West as you can get. A beautiful location, though somewhat remote.

The organ had had some work carried out at the time and I remember one distinguishing feature being an electronic extension of the pedal reed to 32' which seemed to work quite successfully though at that sort of pitch, subtlety was not essential. There was nothing otherwise that set the instrument apart particularly from any other at the time. It wasn't in 100% condition at the time but a worthwhile visit, nonetheless.

Assumedly, the rebuild by H&H addressed any shortcomings and corrected the vagaries of age. However, pretty much any Father Willis organ is likely to be a fairly decent instrument and his organs tend to be fairly consistent across the board.

July 2024

As per usual, time flies past at an alarming rate and the interminable work continues - not only to produce sample sets but also to keep this place under control.

Of course, there is a lot going on in the wider world, much of it disconcerting but fortunately, we tend to be ensconced in a little bubble of normality down here.

One thing that does seem to be a sea change in the organ world is the increase in the number of younger people getting involved which is a good thing. Apart from the great strides made by HW in terms of enabling affordable instruments to be obtained by almost anyone, it must be said that the pipeless organ has enabled many to achieve so much more in comparison to former years. The days when the only possibility of practice was in some draughty old church with little or no heating and probably a rather decrepit Victorian relic to play on have been replaced by the convenience of home instruments.

In addition, the internet has allowed for faster learning and discovery which has benefitted everyone. Personally, I have discovered many new pieces that I would otherwise probably never have come across. Sites like YouTube, enable one to see multiple performances of some of the better known pieces and act like a masterclass - all without having to leave one's  home.

I have a feeling that these vastly improved standards of playing amongst the young and rising organists of the future owe an awful lot to the internet as a whole.

There is the additional aspect that thanks to YouTube etc. we can get to hear (and see) instruments that we would never otherwise have been able to visit and although I have visited many instruments around the world, many places would have at one time, merely been descriptions in books. I cite as typical examples, the Dom at Riga, Sydney Town Hall and the Bamboo organ in the Philippine's to name just three.

Despite the dreadful state of the world, there are still some good aspects of modern day life.

May 30th.2024

May has been a rather unpleasant month for weather and it is still rather cold - especially at night. I recently discovered a rather excellent Tuba Tune by Paul Edwards which I decided to purchase and learn. Not being of the Anglican persuasion, I wasn't overly aware of the enormous amount of music Paul Edwards has written for the church. whilst I don't like all of his music, I must admit that "No Small Wonder"; the Christmas carol (especially performed by St George's, Windsor on YouTube) is very beautiful and in my traipsing around YouTube I also stumbled across his excellent Turvey Tuba Tune.  Some pieces grab you straight away and this is one of them, so I wasted no time in purchasing the music in order to learn the piece. It's not particularly difficult though it does have one or two tricky moments and some of the jazz chords require a careful reading to get right. It has certainly become one of my more liked Tuba Tunes and I'm surprised it's not better known. My performance is below.

There aren't many pubs around these days and the nearest ones are at least 3 miles away. There is one very good pub which has its own personal brew and tends to be patronised by many of the folks who used to go to my nearest local (now closed). They also have a piano so having assured the landlord that I could actually play, I did so.

He was sufficiently impressed and so were the customers that he said he would like to book me to play officially in the not too distant. In addition, he actually offers quite a good recompense for doing so. I shall have to dig out and practice a few pieces.

I was able to get out into the garden on a couple of days (when it wasn't raining) and I have started to tackle the totally overgrown parts in addition to planting up the window boxes etc. IF the weather gets better, they should provide a decent display.

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: