Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Pedaling problem

As my teacher has told me, I have started practicing using the pedals with the inside of my foot. This is an adjustment has been a challenge after doing the outside of my foot for close to 30 years. Since I have been doing this I have been getting cramps in my toes. I have been bunching up my toes. I noticed when I went to my lesson this week, my toes did not hurt and realized that I had the bench to close to the organ. Things are going much better.

Final voicing

The voicer for my 311 finished this past week and wow what a difference. Some of the ranks had a lot of variants in volume and tone.. especially the oboe. Now that everything balanced nicely, I have been readjusting all my pistons. The organ is a beauty to play.

Jelani Concert

I went to the Jelani Eddington concert at Octave Hall at the Allen Headquarters last Friday. It was very good. I enjoyed myself. Unfortunately I will not go to another concert there. When they end at 9:30 at night... I still have a 2 hour drive home. It is too much after a days work. So now I have two season tickets to give to someone for the last two concerts.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Acoustic Portrait Epiphany

I have not been totally pleased with the sound of my Allen 311 in my small space. No matter what I did, adjusting the total volume or upping the gain the Acoustic Portrait, it still had the bright in-your-face chamber sound of the George Wright recordings which I don't like. Today while listening to one of those CDs I realized what I needed to try. I went to the Acoustic Portrait and selected a much larger room and turned down the gain so there was not such a prevalent echoing reverb. It worked! The larger room Acoustic Portrait absorbed some of the high frequency in-your-face type sound. Acoustic Portrait does so much more than control reverb. The organ sounds really great now.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Jelani's book

Jelani's book on theatre organ arranging arrived today. It is a well designed book with a great deal of information. The arrangements look nice with plenty of "meat" in them. It is nice how explains all the things he has in the arrangements. I initially thought the book was pricey but it is well worth the money. Stroney may have to rethink he new edition after seeing this book.

My 311's software

The man came to voice my organ on last Saturday. It sounds so much better after he balanced the ranks the way they should be. Unfortunately, it appears that my new organ has a super new software update. They guy did not have the DOVE addon to be able to do the fine tuning, so he will have to come back again. The organ does sound 100% better though. Hopefully it will all be done soon.