The New Organ

July is my month to play organ in church. And man, the organ and I just don't jive together yet. The manual professes it to be the newest, most bestest Allen organ. Except they said it different and used some different descriptions.

So you push the button and it turns on. It goes through its starting up process and menu. Then you can pick which "set" you want to recall. #1 is preset. #11 is mine. There's a dial that lets you select which set. There's a few other buttons that I don't know what they're used for. And there's a transpose button somewhere there.

Then you have your stops. Some of them have secondary sounds on them. There's a bass coupler and a melody coupler. There are also toe pedal stops in addition to the regular pedal stops.

So I'm playing around with my different options and trying some of the regular presets. And my ears start hurting. You know where there's just this.... almost hidden or low sound that just hurts right behind your ear? That's what it was. I couldn't tell if it was a combination of stops or the acoustics of the room (or both). The acoustics, by the way, aren't great.

So I finally decide on some different stops for my songs. Except there was still some problem. The most musical member of the bishopric called it 'reverb'. "The reverb is nice, makes me feel like we're the MoTab, but is there a way to turn it off?" Not to my knowledge! I couldn't figure it out. I don't know if it's the same problem, but to me, the sound lingered on after you stopped playing the note. Which... isn't usual for organs so I don't know how to deal with that.

Jared said it sounded big. Like we should have been in a cathedral instead. Someone else said it had kind of an echo. For me, it hurt my ears and made playing the hymns more difficult because I couldn't figure it out and it's not the way it should work.

Unfotunately, the Stake didn't see fit to have the ward organists attend the demonstration by the people who set up our organ. Luckily, our stake president's wife is one of my ward's organists with me. She talked about how you could make it sound like you were playing a grand march or whatever in a cathedral or you could keep it small or you could do this or that or the other with it. Somehow, I capitalized on the cathedral today. Except I used just normal stops! Ones that I used 7 years ago in Scioto Ward and again a few years later in Athens Branch. Our pipe organ only had 6 options for each keyboard so there wasn't much there.

Meh.... I need help. And more time.