Forum Organists: question re Hammonds or other

[maggie~hamilton]

Looks like someone just wants to quibble.

So I should probably just drop this. Which I will, after making the point that the organist did not have the power or authority to decide what organ the church got. She simply made a recommendation based on her experience. And she made that recommendation AFTER the church was built, not before.

I am not sure why this is such a sore point, that sometimes architects DO make mistakes. In particular with church facilities, all you have to do is take a look around at a few of them and see many astonishing blunders -- particularly regarding acoustics and acoustical treatment.

After being a church organist for 35 years, I have seen some incredibly bad choices that were made by architects.

Okay, nuff said. It's really not worth arguing about.

 

[maggie~hamilton]

P.S.

And YOU made MY point by telling about the HUGE mistake that Frank Lloyd Wright made of not sufficiently reinforcing concrete with steel! Even the Great One was capable of making bad judgment calls ... e.g., MISTAKES.

 

[petek]

Now I want an Optigon! I can't believe I've never heard of them before that's truly, in the over-used phrasing of the ever-popular Lou Dobbs, mind-boggling. LOL

 

[maggie~hamilton]

Optigan

was a fun and interesting device but basically just a toy. It had a lot of moving, mechanical parts that soon wore out especially if you used it a lot. You changed the sound it made by inserting transluscent plastic disks about the size of a 45 record. The disks were some sort of optical media that were read by an optical sensor. Despite being a toy, it was a pretty sophisticated idea. The different disks included orchestral instruments, full orchestra, organs, strings, and so on.

A friend of mine had one and it broke after just a few months. Nowadays, since it's such obsolete technology you would have a very hard time finding someone who could repair it.

A similar instrument, but more durable and road-worthy, was called the Mellotron. It was invented in the early 1970s. The way it worked was that it contained 1/4" magnetic tape loops (the same size tape as used in reel-to-reel tape recorders if anyone here remembers those!) I believe it only had one kind of sound, a string chorus. But this was pre-synthesizer where the only other option was to hire "real" string players.

Quite a few rock groups used the Mellotron in the 70s, mostly "symphonic rock" groups such as ELO, Rick Wakeman, Pink Floyd, etc., and perhaps most extensively by the Moody Blues. But even the Beatles and Rolling Stones used the instrument.

 

[abcomatic]

HI there, If you get a Hammond with the tonewheel generator and a Leslie speaker, the slow speed doesn't sound too bad when it comes to playing classical organ music. I think an Allen or something close to that is the way to go. Happy playing. Gary

 

[hydralique]

Maggie . . .

My only quibble was with your assumption that the architect was stupid if the final church design didn’t meet your own programmatic requirements. Of course architects make mistakes, everyone does, even Frank Lloyd Wright, but that doesn’t make them stupid people regardless of their profession! Most architects have to listen to their clients better than Wright, though, or they will no longer have careers. He was brilliant but difficult.

I have consulted in a professional capacity on one church in my architectural career, and I can tell you it was a very, very tough job reconciling the various requirements of the church membership, the church leaders, two levels of local government and adjacent neighbors. Because my job on that project was primarily to facilitate a Conditional Use Permit to construct the church in the first place I don’t know if the church leaders approved hiring an acoustical consultant to deal with the acoustics, but if they didn’t then the sound quality was going to be a surprise as very few architects have the education or experience to provide professional level consulting on acoustic issues. All I can say is that after successfully completing my part of the project I was relieved to not have to deal with any more churches.

To all you Hammond guys: I just love the sound of a B-3 with a Leslie! Among my favorite artists are Joey DeFrancesco, Jimmy Smith, Tony Monaco, Jimmy McGriff, Wild Bill Davis, Charles Earland, Walter Wanderley, Jack McDuff, etc. For classical music there’s no question that pipe organs rule, but for jazz and lounge music give me that big B-3 sound!

 

[maggie~hamilton]

Good Grief!!

I -never- said the "final church design didn’t meet [my] own programmatic requirements!"

I came to that church in 1982, long after the building had been completed. When I interviewed for the job, I frankly asked the music director why such a large and otherwise very well-appointed sanctuary had such a mediocre organ. His reply, verbatim, was: "You can thank the stupid architect who designed the building." And then he told me the whole story of how it had all come about.

After I had been there a year and had been doing a lot of "pissing and moaning" about how crummy the organ was, the church finally got tired of my complaining and they formed an organ committee to start looking at replacement instruments.

At that time, the pastor gave me a file of correspondence from when the church had just been completed (mid 1960s) which indicated that they were looking AT THAT TIME to get a pipe organ. There were letters from no less than a dozen organbuilding firms including Reuter, Æolian-Skinner, Möller, Wicks, Schlicker, Schantz, Austin, Casavant, and a couple of local firms.

Only one of these companies (name withheld to protect the guilty) came up with a proposal to install an organ of approx. 25 stops (about half the size it should have been), which entailed significant retrofitting of the rear chancel wall of the sanctuary with all sorts of struts and steel beams and load-bearing supports and stuff to contain a free-standing, exposed organ. That proposal was rejected out of hand because the free-standing organ case would have taken up about one-third of the space of the choir loft which was already a tight fit for their very large choir.

All the rest of the respondents said very candidly in one way or another that "there simply is not sufficient space in your sanctuary for a pipe organ of adequate resources without major architectural changes." One respondent in particular said the required retrofitting to accommodate a suitable instrument would probably cost more than the organ itself!

According to both the music director and the pastor (both of whom had been with the church since the new facility had been constructed), the architect DID know that the church wanted to get a pipe organ. However, for reasons unknown (okay, perhaps he was not STUPID but merely UNINFORMED as to the amount of real estate a large organ would require), the space he stipulated for the organ was actually two little chambers on either side of the choir loft, each one with floor space of about 6'x9' (deeper than wider, another no-no for organ pipes), and a ceiling height of about 9'.

You can't put many pipes in a space that size, but you CAN cram in quite a few speaker cabinets, hence the church forever being doomed to have an electronic organ. (The three ranks of real pipes that were included with the organ they got after I left were just stuck on the wall in front of one of the chambers. These are called "flower-pot chests" and I can imagine how totally unsuccessful the blend would be --- with the pipes exposed like that, and the rest of the (digital) sound coming from behind grillework, well, that just doesn't work. But I am sure the pipes look "real pretty.")

"And So It Goes."

 

[bobofhollywood]

Custom Hammond with Leslie Tallboy 31H

Some organs just break all the rules.

Here's my 1953 Hammond Chord organ, which I recently attached to the Leslie Tallboy model 31H loudspeaker. The sound is out of this world, and absolutely no comparison to how the organ sounded with it's own speakers.

Show here in my nearly 80 year old Mom, who, as you can see, really enjoys the big Leslie sound. The little Hammond chord organ thinks it's a giant now. I play it for all my guests too, and they never cease to be amazed.

Whatever organ you end up with..just make sure to have fun with it and enjoy it for all it's worth.

By the way, nobody mentioned Wurlitzer theater pipe organs. I have a huge and growing collection of rare Wurlitzer pipe organ recordings, which I just adore. The sound of a Wurlitzer is absolutely dreamy.

Happily Hammonding in Hollywood,

Bob

 

[danemodsandy]

Saville in the FLLW Hanna House

I think I should clarify a point here. The Saville installation in FLLW's Hanna House occurred in the 1950's, some twenty years after the house was built. The Hannas had wanted a pipe organ when the house was being designed, but could not afford one, even though FLLW obliged them with loft space for pipes. In 1957, the Hannas had FLLW design a substantial reconfiguration of the house, since their children were grown and gone, expanding many areas (like the dining room) into space formerly given over to a very large playroom for the children. The Saville was installed at that time, with speakers put into the space FLLW had designed for pipes. There were 120 twelve-inch speakers! In their book about their house, the Hannas state that they upgraded their piano at that time, since their former Baldwin upright was not good enough once they got the Saville. Their new piano was a Mason & Hamlin grand. Adolph Baller was a friend of the Hannas, and played the Saville for them, as did Herbert Nanney, the organist at Stanford.

 

[maggie~hamilton]

Hammond and Leslie

The sound of ANY Hammond is vastly improved by the addition of a Leslie Speaker.

Ironically, when Don Leslie first introduced his new speaker, Laurens Hammond wanted no part of it and went out of his way to discourage Hammond users to get Leslies for their organs.

See link for an article about this that I wrote a couple of years ago.

http://www.137.com/hammond/leslie.html

 

[maggie~hamilton]

One of the highlights of my musical life

was to play a "command performance" on my theremin for organ speaker legend Don Leslie! He and his wife have an incredible, spatious, 1950s "google" style home in the hills above Pasadena California.

(Don died in 2004.)

http://www.137.com/donleslie/

 

[abcomatic]

The instrument I play at home

If any of you organists are members of the AGO, the pipe organ that I have at home is pictured in the April edition of the American Organist. We had our AGO chapter meeting at my house this past Jan. A great time was had by all. Gary