The Elephant's Child

Home, Finally.

We are home.  This was our longest tuning trip ever.  Eleven days on the road. 1,393 miles clocked on our van's odometer. Eleven church  organs - or was it twelve? - tuned, both sides of the family visited, two overnight hotel stays, a funeral, and Thanksgiving dinner.  By the 8th day of the trip, I couldn't remember where I was when I woke up in the night. 

Everything really went pretty well.  No car break-downs this time; we had two last year on this same tuning trip.  No ice or snow, either; last year we had three major snow/ice falls to deal with.  We did have to scramble one day so that Mad Musician could continue tuning while I drove a four-hour round trip in a borrowed car to attend my aunt's funeral.  (A huge thank you to my in-laws, who loaned me their 34 mpg Ford Focus for the day.) 

I saw more interesting cars in one trip through Milwaukee, WI than I see in a whole month's worth of driving around here. I live in an automotive wasteland of pickup trucks, tapped out Pontiacs and posh, oversized top-trim Buicks.  Spotted: A Bentley. A hard-top Miata with liscene plates, TOPLES4 2.  A murdered-out Dodge Magnum in matte-black paint that actually looked  pretty good.  All the Porsches save a few Cayennes seem to be put away for the winter. Two 80's era Saabs.  Many modern Saabs.  Pretty Audis, too, with their seamlessly-fit taillight assemblies that keep catching my eye. Seeing a BMW Seven-series always makes me smile, even if they're huge, "bossman"-type cars. A lowered Honda Fit with an Illest sticker. I know there's a crowd out there that tunes Fits, but I hadn't seen one on the road. 

Visited a church with a big "missions" push going on to invite people to church, yet they haven't bothered to put modern paper toweling in the bathroom:

I know it's a little thing, but that's really gross. It didn't look all that clean, either. Forget the nametags and the free coffee mugs for new visitors.  How about some clean, fresh paper towelling in the bathroom?

Sitting on a hard organ bench all day long with your feet dangling because there's no place to rest them is really tiring. I did ok most days, but during the last day, at the console of the big four-manual Austin organ in Milwaukee, I got really sore and very cold.  Thank goodness I had saved my specially-purchased Top Gear magazine for the very last, longest-to-tune organ.  It helped to pass the time while I was holding keys. 

It's good to be home.  

He's So Mean!

The company where Mad Musician works is rebuilding a Wurlizter theater organ.  

MM: "I could get into playing a theater organ if I had one to mess around with.  I should learn something for the theater organ... what would be a good piece to learn?"

Me: "I'd say anything but Take Me Out To The Ballgame would be ok."

MM: "Oh, I most definitely have to learn Take Me Out To The Ballgame.  C'mon Sparkle, let's go down in the basement and see if I can figure out Take Me Out To The Ballgame!"

 

(I actually don't mind and I think it's hilarious.  I'm looking forward to the dedication of Wurlitzer when it's reinstalled in the theater. It'll be quite a show, I'm sure.)  

 

A Lost Organ.

Ok, it wasn't really lost.  But it was semi-abandoned.

A huge Aeolian-Skinner, originally built in 1935 for a church out east, was moved to the Midwest in the very early 70s.  But the job, which was underbid, apparently bankrupted the company doing the moving, and the installation was never completely finished.

The organ was playable.  Without a combination action, though, any permformance required two assistants to change stops. 

In the mid 90s, yet another organ builder was called in to do work. Phase One was completed in 1995 (Scroll down past the stop list for the full story.)

Mad Musician's been on the road tuning there this week. It doesn't appear much else or maybe anything else was ever done on the organ following the completion of "Phase One" in 1995.

Mad Musician says that even without all the intended stops complete and installed, it's a big organ, a concert-worthy organ.  Organs from the 1930s were not timidy mushy things. They were orchestral replacements.  If you know about organs, you might be interested in the stop list.  Four manuals, 62 ranks.   Mad Musician says the console has an awful lot of stop pulls that aren't connected, though.

Which is sad.  Because Mad Musician says this organ is to die for. And it doesn't get used but a few times per year. It's in a chapel, but it's not used for Sunday worship or weekly services.  The couple of people Mad Musician spoke with over the course of his work there don't seem to know a whole lot about the organ at all.

So there she sits, a grand old lady-beast of an organ, a nearly-forgotten testament to the waning days of the fantastic-ness that was the big, fat, lush, American-organbuilder sound of the '20s and '30s.

Almost makes me cry.

LOL Organ Builders

Home.

Home never looked so good as after this trip!

I had a big follow-up to this post outlining the rest of our trip, but the computer I was using ate it, and I'm way too tired to try to reconstruct it.  If you were wating with bated breath for a detailed version of the rest of the story, well, get used to disappointment.   Here's the short version:

Van got fixed; the AutoZone-purchased clamp between a fuel line and the fuel filter that Mad Musician replaced just a few months ago simply broke.  $2.75 clamp, $78.00 repair bill.  Bummer.  But a safe car that's not spraying fuel all over is a good thing. 

Van is still have some starting problems.  Mad Musician thinks there is moisture getting into the distributor somehow.  He'll replace the coil and the distributor as soon as he has some free time, which should be sometime in January.  For now, nursing the accelerator for a few minutes and then letting it run for a while to warm everything up and dry everything out when starting it is going to be our routine.

The rest of the tuning went fine. Had a harrowing trip from Green Bay, Wisconsin back south on dark and ice-covered roads on Monday. Washboard ice, black ice, packed snow, deep icy ruts, etc.  If Midwestern winters become such that roads like that are fairly common in the winter, we'll most definitely be shopping for a 10-15 year old Subaru Outback wagon with all-wheel drive.  The two SUVs I'd even consider owning are out of our price range, even used.  (Curious? This one and this one.)

And finally, on Thursday morning, we laid Mad Musician's dear Grandpa to rest in Jesus. *sob*

Following that, a six-hour drive in the dark, blessedly uneventful, and we arrived home last night at about nine pm.

 

 

 

 

Hello Mr Organ Tuner.

More Tuning.

Off to tune a big Austin organ, a Piskies (Episcopalian) one, and a Methodist one.  I'll try to remember my camera.

See you later.

Incomprehensible Jargon

Mad Musician writes an update on an organ he worked on:

The trouble I observed with the pedal stops, which happened both with generals and divisionals,  seemed to be a different problem from the drawknobs not having enough power.  It was something like the pedal pistons all coming half-way on while you hold the piston, and then reverting to (I think) the proper combination when you release the piston.  This happens for a few minutes when the organ is first turned on, after which it works properly.  So I think the correct combinations are coming on, but the behavior is strange and annoying, and definitely not right.  It looks to me like the Ped. motherboard might need to be changed out.

Hmmm. Uh-huh.  Yep. I'll get right on that.  More power! Motherboards!

Organbuilding.

Someone asked me what books might be good reference material if they wanted to build an organ.  I told this to Mad Musician.  He hit his forehead with his palm, shook his head, and said, "So, which one of the thousands of ways of building an organ do they want go about it?"

There are no how-to books.  No Time-Life series on how to build an organ.  No "Dummies Guide to Voicing Reeds."  You'll need woodworking skills, wiring skills, soldering skills, nunchuck skills*, small hand-work skills, and crazy-good general mechanical troubleshooting skills.

If you really want to do it, go buy a small church organ, cabinet organ or portative that's being torn out or thrown away, and spend the next few years of your weekends figuring out how to install it in your house, garage or basement.  You could perhaps start your search at the Organ Clearinghouse. Or ask around.  Sadly, sometimes people don't realize these things can be rebuilt and reinstalled and just junk them.  (Do not talk to me about the Skinner in the building the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee bought. I will cry.)  

And for Pete's sake, don't use non-reversible glue for leather, ok?  Leather gets glued with hide glue, not Elmers, not Sobo, not carpenter's glue, not super-glue.  See, then in 70 years when the leather wears out, it soaks off with hot water instead of having to be mechanically scraped off.

(And that little tidbit, my friends, is about the extent of my knowledge of building organs.   Everything else you've got to talk to Mad Musician about.) 

*I'm kidding.

The Multiple Personality Church.

We tuned this past week at a beautiful old Evangelical Covenant church. (For you Lutheran types, they're a 19th century off-shoot of Swedish Lutheran pietists. )

The organ was in a front-center alcove, with choir pews arranged between the organ console and the organ chambers up above. A distinctly Methodist-Presbyterian arrangement, despite the Evangelical Covenant Church's roots in Lutheranism.  Pietism brought them architecturally closer to the Methodists, I think. 

The entire alcove was shut off from the main sanctuary by an elaborate arrangement of screens and stage curtains set up for a rear-projection multimedia display.  

I realize that there are plenty of "faith traditions" among Christians that don't think the same things as Lutherans do about exactly what's going on on Sunday morning.  That's fine.  I disagree with them, but it makes sense that the worship at those churches would reflect what they believe about corporate worship.  So, while I'll push till I'm dead for liturgical, traditional, historical worship in a Lutheran church, I'd never insist that the Evangelical Free church down in Florida where my never-gets-Jesus-wrong brother-in-law is a pastor install an organ and start chanting. 

Whether you, as a church, are contemporary worshiping with a song leader, drums, and guitars, or whether you're an organ-using, liturgy-chanting group, decide on one.  Either decide - as an entire congregation - that you're going to be a contemporary worshiping group and sell the organ to a congregation that really would love to have it, or decide - as an entire congregation - that you're a traditionally-worshiping group and ditch the drum kit and the A/V equipment.

Trying to have it both ways means you're not working together as a congregation.  You're splitting everyone up into separate sub-groups which are unified around getting what they want, not around receiving Christ's gifts and serving each other in love.  Decide on one (better yet, let your pastor, whom God has put as a shepherd over you, decide); pick the way of "doing church" that best confesses what your church believes is happening on Sunday morning (God coming to us and dispensing his gifts?  Gathering to offer your worship as a sacrifice of praise?) and stick with it.  Be a united body, not two or three congregations living together separately under one roof, like a crotchety old married couple with "his bedroom" and "her bedroom"

Multiple personality disorder isn't healthy in people or in churches.