Middletown Paramount

I drove up to Middletown, NY to hear John Baratta play the silent film, "Steamboat Bill" at the Middletown Paramount. He did a wonderful job and the organ sounds great. It is a 3/12 Wurlitzer and I was invited to go up and play it when our schedules could link up.

Oops...

I started learning classical organ pedal technique and my teacher suggested loosely binding my legs together with a belt. That worked great until the phone rang and I nearly killed myself trying to get it.

Christmas Music at Fair

Bristol Glen will be having its Christmas Fair this Saturday and they have asked me to play Christmas music from 9-11. Someone else will be playing from 11-1. Luckily I have been scanning Christmas music into my computer so I will have a large sample to play. It will be background music, not a concert, so 2 hours should not be a problem. I ran through most of my Christmas songs at home and it took 1 hour... playing the set twice will be okay... with a break in between for bathroom and whatever.

Transcribing King Kong March

I have had for a while the King Kong March (from the 1939 movie) but it is a very dirty copy. Just recently I started transcribing it into my music scoring program (Encore.) It is a fun project. As I go about entering each note, I can more thoroughly analyze the harmony.

All in the Family

I was watching "Family Guy" this weekend at someone else's house not something I usually watch) and thought the theme was a cute melody .. along with being something the younger crowd would recognize. After thinking of that... I decided to scan "Those were the days" from "All in the family." I remember years ago trying to find the closing theme (a piano solo) so I looked on www.freehand.com and musicnotes.com and they both had it at a vocal lead sheet. It is something I can work from. Now I will have an "All in the Family medley" ... luckily they are both in the same key (I know.. I should change keys.. but I need to follow music at least minimally.

Visit to Allen's Octave Hall

On this past Monday I got a chance to play in Allen Organ's Octave Hall in Macungie, PA. I played the LL324 which is the same one I play at Bristol Glen. But WOW what a difference! It sounded spectacular. What and experience. Hopefully I will get a chance to play larger theatre organ there when they have one there.

Introductions

I have always had trouble creating musical introductions on songs I play on the theatre organ. I usually end up playing the last few measures of a song. Yesterday I decided to look on Amazon to see if they had a books on keyboard introductions... they had four so I ordered them sight, unseen. We will see if they help (they couldn't hurt.)