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Hi Everyone.
I am a new member to this website - going on about three hours now. I have a feeling I am in the company of truly telented musicians, so I hope you will bear with me and my meager abilities. Curiously, I also happened onto this website quite by accident - I was reading a thread in an Electrical Contractor website which dealt with the rising theft of copper (in this case, people stealing the pipes out of church organs, believing they were made of copper).
My musical skills are, at best, very limited. I took piano lessons for about five years, when I was a teenager about 40 years ago. I grew tired of the lessons and proceeded to give up. About three years later when I had moved to Southeast Texas, I started attending a local Methodist Church and singing in the choir. I developed an interest in the idea of sitting there in the middle of the choir and playing the small pipe organ there and wondered if I could tackle this new animal. The administrative board of the church was kind enough to allow me to have a key to the console so that I could "try my hand" at it. After receiving the only organ instruction I ever had - "Here is the switch for the sanctuary lights", "Here is the key to the console", "Here is the power switch and here are the stops", "Lock up when you finish", I settled in to produce some absolutely dreadful sounds from that poor instrument while I learned to play hymns and other music over the next couple of years. My first terrifying chance to play in front of anyone came very suddenly one Sunday morning when we were told that our organist had suffered a heart attack. There being no one else to fill in, the choir director asked me if I thought I could play the service, in a greatly simplified form - no prelude, offertory or postlude, and a simple hymn for the choir to sing, along with the selected congregational hymns. After I recovered from my own impromptu heart attack at that moment, I decided to try it. I was completely petrified, but I survived, and I have been playing in one form or another since then. I played during college at a very small rural church (where on Sunday morning I arrived for church and turned on the gas heaters, the lights, and the Hammond organ in that order). I have also played for TWO Lutheran churches at the same time - one with a 9:00 a.m service, and another in a different town 12 miles away with a 10:30 a.m. service (plus a little fancy driving between the two...no speeding tickets though). But for all this, and my limited abilities, the people of my churches have been very nice, and far more supportive of me than I deserved, and probably subscribe to the concept that "bad music is better than no music at all" and we should all "make a joyful noise" (quite literally in my case).
I am 55 years old now, and I still value every single chance I have to park my can on that organ bench, wherever it happens to be. They are priceless memories to me. I tell my wife that I look forward to the day when I pass from this life, go to Heaven and get to preside at a large 4 manual Aeolian-Skinner up there (and make no mistakes...).
Mike
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Originally Posted by Corno Dolce
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