In the style of collated microblogging
July
We’ve come to Switzerland to look at Alphorns, but we’re staying next to MUMM – museum of Clocks and Mechanical Musical Instruments in Oberhofen! They let me have a go on several of the organs!
Sepetmber-ish
James came to dinner and asked why I don’t have a pipe organ. Hadn’t I said I would build one? I certainly have the space for it!
Wow, organ pipes are expensive. And big. Maybe a portative or mechanical organ would work better.
Ok, well, portative organs are quite expensive, so what about grinding organs?
The Castlewood organ looks interesting but this seems to require woodworking skills and doesn’t support midi.
There are plans for sale that do support MIDI, but they are just plans and I’d have to do all the woodworking.
Annie says James has tools and might be up for a joint project.
Me, in email: Dear James, I found plans for sale for a busking organ, but my skills are mostly around electronics, but not woodworking. Annie says you have tools and a garage.
James in reply: I bought those plans, but I don’t understand the electronics!
October
I have got the plans from James and I can see why he doesn’t understand the electronics, as it’s a vague set of suggestions. It suggests including a floppy drive! The creator says this can be built for £500, but I think he died before Trussonimics…
Anyway, james told me of the British Organ Grinders Association, so I might join.
November
The BOGA website has an organ for sale with no price given. Surely the best way to understand how to build an organ is have a reference implementation.
The owners want me to come to Kelvedon Hatch, home of the secret Nuclear Bunker. I wonder if I can go pick up an organ without my spouse noticing.
I wonder if I can get anybody to come with me?
The previous owner of this organ died a few months ago and I met his sons, who told me a *lot* about him, as the buses only come once per hour. He sounds like a hoot.
I have an organ and a xylophone controlled via a scart cable.
And a coffee maker…
The spouse thinks the organ is pretty. (Thank goodness!!)
It turns on and seems to have a voltage meter. The voltage falls very quickly and the display quickly goes dark. None of the exterior buttons are labelled. There’s what looks like a barrel jack to charge it, but that’s not labelled either.
I’ve unscrewed the control components and it’s all very handmade! The serial number dates from 2019.
There does at least seem to be a MIDI jack, so presumably this outputs MIDI to some actuators in a windchest.
And I learned that it takes a 12V voltage adaptor and I have one that fits.
This organ is designed by the same person who made the plans that James bought, so I think it uses the 20 note scale in the appendix, but I won’t know until I can test it.
December
It’s charged and playing!
It’s come with several MIDI files on a large-format SD card. Fortunately, I have an SD card reader and I’ve made copies of the files, but the midi files I’ve added to the card won’t play.
I’ve found MIDI files for sale. They’re like £8 each!
There’s a lot of Christmas music. There don’t seem to be any of the Jewish standards.
My BOGA membership card and some copies of the organ grinder news arrived in the mail. This whole thing has strong CoE vibes. Like really very protestant.
I told Sheila I got a busking organ and she told me there is a Jewish children’s opera in which an organ grinder plays a major part! It’s called Brundibár. I must look it up later.
Brundibár was “made most famous by performances by the children of Theresienstadt concentration camp (Terezín) in occupied Czechoslovakia”. The organ grinder is an allegory for Hitler.
Shelia was not at synagogue this week.
The AMRO call for participation is live.
Evan told me to watch The Clowns by Fellini.
This was aired on Christmas Day in 1970, which seems wild.
It’s inexcusable that a film made in that year has black face minstrelry in it.
I was thinking maybe I could pair the organ with a dancer, but maybe what I need is a clown.
Brundibár is a perfectly fine children’s opera. It’s short. It has a good message about solidarity. There are a lot of recordings made by schools on YouTube. I was looking for documentary footage on Archive.org and I found neo-Nazi propaganda instead.
I want to replace the control electronics. Evan says I should a Bela, but the one I have is a decade old and I can’t find a system update. He says I can just plug a USB/MIDI cable into the cursed cable (presumably after I replace the jack) and it should be fine and I can run it from my phone or my laptop, but I think I also want bluetooth and the ability to run without relying on my phone. I’ve ordered some parts, as much as possible used from ebay.
Also, I kind of want to test this with a spare laptop first…
I got the wrong USB hub.
The MIDI files on the SD card are all type 0 and all divide the quarter note in 120 subdivisions. So I just need to find some MIDI utilities for linux.
I just need to find some MIDI utilities for linux that still have versions available and allow very low level changes like file conversions.
@mxfraud@tabletop.social has pointed me at a very useful guide to MIDI on linux.
smfsh is part of libsmf which is in apt. I converted one of my test files to type 0 and it plays! However, the scale is not what I thought it would be and trying to count notes was getting too challenging, so I made a new file that plays one note per second starting from MIDI note 0. I can look at the playing timer on the display when I hear a note and know what note number it is.
The notes are 38, 43, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 54, 55, 57, 59, 61, 62, 64, 66, 69, 71. Midi note 60 seems to be present but not really working.
January
I dusted off my transposition method from my FisherPriceRecords library to see if I could use some common Jewish modes with this organ.
Phrygian: No
Ukranian Dorian: No
Magein Avot: Yes
Yishtabach: Yes
Hashem Malach: No
And can it do common key changes?
Yishtabach Manoeuvre: No
Sim Shalom Manoeuvre: No
Honestly, I’m having a bit of an emotional reaction to being rendered unplayable.
Obviously, I need to build a chromatic organ, but I don’t want to commit to doing that by May.
