Piano lessons

Oh, the problems of having taught myself piano. Over the years I have had several teachers who tried to pick up from -the skills I had, missing on some basic stuff I would have gotten much earlier if I had started with a teacher in the beginning. Saturday, my new teacher started me on Book I of the Aaron Adult method. While I know all the theory, timing, and rests, I need a lot of work on my finger position and fingering. My teacher explained to me that the reason I always hit a spot in my playing and could not go further was I was not paying attention to proper fingering and hand position. While this is tedious to start in the beginning of the book, we are moving very fast and I am sure this will be a big help later down the road. (I have to keep telling myself that... and I really do believe it although it is frustrating at times.)

Organ Placement

After much thinking, yesterday I decided that the place to put my new organ (when it comes) is no longer in the living room. I will be putting it in my dining room where I currently have my piano which I will be donating to my church. This will be good for two reasons. One, it will not disrupt the furniture layout in the living room and, two, since I live in a condo, my dining room is more isolated from my neighbors.

Full Ensemble change

After listening to several Theatre organ recordings, I have changed the piston setting on my fullest ensemble. I added a 2' and 1' Tiba.. WOW that makes a great difference. It is so much brighter and takes away all the muddiness.

Allen - 324 Lyn Larsen model

I was told by several people at Allen that that a LL-324 had been purchased by someone near me. I contacted the owner, Bob Van Zweden, who invited me to try it out. He was nice enough to leave me alone with it. After about an hour I got used to the instrument and possible registrations. I found it interesting that the solo manual had no 16' stops but had a base coupler and I since have been told that that is fairly usual with modern theatre organs. The experience was pretty good. I even made some recordings of my playing (many mistakes.) I tried some traditional ballads and a couple of novelty numbers. I really liked the piano sound. The instrument had not yet been voiced and it needed it! It has 6 speakers and the owner preferred to have the sound come all from one spot so he has mixed up the speakers so there is no separation between the two tibias, voxes, etc. He said I could come back again. I would love to try the instrument again when it is voiced. The whole experience made me look forward to the purchase of my Q-311sp...not soon enough!

Orchestral registration

I just listened to a Simon Gledhill recording on the 3/18 Barton of Warren Performing Arts center. Wow what wonderful orchestral registration! I don't know if it was the Barton (as opposed to Wurlitzer), but whatever... it sounds so orchestral! I am going to look for more of his CDs.