Howdie from aus!

ashkinaze

New member
Hey!

I'm Ben, an about to be ex student living in Melbourne. I play saxophone and piano and am a lover of strange and interesting traditional instruments you can find all over the world, particularly woodwind. I just came back from a trip in Macedonia and Greece and managed to find an absolutely gorgeous kaval (appallingly hard to play but I working on it), and would love to expand on the collection! (Turkish Duduk and Sardinian launeddas are high on the list).

Cheers,

Ben
 

Albert

New member
When you get past the honks and squeaks, we would love to here a few samples of the odd instruments.

I also appreciate instruments that are rather unusual: one of the samples on my digital organ is an Oboe di Caccia (Hunting Oboe). WIKI describes it as a member of the Oboe family of woodwinds, pitched a 5th below the oboe, but sounding nothing like any other member of the oboe family. My friends in Chicago and I were curious as to the sound of the stop, labeled Oboe on the stop tab, but sounding rather unusual when we switched to the Baroque sample set. An inquiry to Johannus led me to a web search for instruments in Liverpool where that sample set was taken, and led me to believe that the instrument is the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. The search criteria for the two Oboe samples is Swell organ, Scharff mixture and oboe. Johannus pointed me to Jacksonville Illinois for the Romantic stops (Illinois College's Holtkamp fits) and to Liverpool for the Baroque above.
 

ashkinaze

New member
Interesting! I'm not at all familiar with how an organ works so the jargon went well over my head, but I'll keep a curious eye out for such an oboe.

On an unrelated note - I was having trouble using full functionality of the forum. I can't access general settings or edit my profile because the forum says I don't have adequate permissions, and I sent two messages to two mods but neither appeared in my sent messages folder. Any thoughts?
 

Albert

New member
Stop: a rank of pipes

Stop Tablet: a rocker switch that connects/disconnects the stop from the keys

Digital Organ: an electronic using digital samples or tonal definitions to sound somewhat like a real pipe organ

Sample Set: Sound definitions created by sampling (recording) the sounds of a real organ creating an electronic chip controlling the sounds the instrument makes.

Swell Organ: the keyboard that controls a group of stops. The sound can be Swelled soft <> loud with a foot control that opens and closes a vertical set of shutters on a big box (room) containing all the pipes of the Swell division.

Baroque/Romantic: The various tonal styles of pipe organs include these two and "Theatre" (Cinema) and whatever else some organ builder came up with

Scharff: A stop with several ranks of pipes that play as a single sound, high pitched and usually containing a rank of pipes at the fifth harmonic. The sound is painfully Sharp when playing in minor keys because the mixture of pipes is playing a major chord. In a C minor chord, way up in the top of the pitch range, the player is playing C, Eb and G but the Eb is competing with the E in the mixture in the group of pipes on the C note. It can be an "interesting" effect to the ears.
 
Last edited:

John Watt

Member
When I was younger, the first two piano albums I bought with my own money were by Vladamir Ashkenazi.
I'm not hot on computers to begin with, but I've been here for a while.
When you say "permissions", I think some functions need you to have a certain number of posts.
I know the number of photos you can use depends on the number of posts you have,
but the domain went down earlier this year and changed.

Pump Organ: Not a cathedral organ with people pushing bellows and walking on treadmills,
just an organ you have to pump up yourself.
Mostly known for being in the way and being left behind, or advertised for free.
However, if the organ is signed by Abraham Lincoln or George Washington it's priceless.
Sorry... I've been watching American Antiques Roadshow.
 

Ella Beck

Member
Interesting! I'm not at all familiar with how an organ works so the jargon went well over my head, but I'll keep a curious eye out for such an oboe.

On an unrelated note - I was having trouble using full functionality of the forum. I can't access general settings or edit my profile because the forum says I don't have adequate permissions, and I sent two messages to two mods but neither appeared in my sent messages folder. Any thoughts?

I had trouble too. The answer seems to be that you need to make more than ten posts before you get the permissions - though even now, I can do nothing about my avatar or profile picture.

It would be lovely to learn more about the instruments you've collected.

Best wishes.
 

John Watt

Member
I'm looking over this thread and see I spelled Vladamir Ashkenazy as Ashkenazi.
I must have been looking at your user name too long.
I hope I spelled Vladamir correctly.
I took out his first two solo albums from the library and decided to buy them for myself, uh... 1967-68?
The legendary pianists I kept hearing about seemed to be going through reflective, meditative renderings,
of pieces they played in the past, and even though Liszt was exciting Mr. Ashkenazy won out.
Les Gymnopiedes was so nice back then, all three versions, but that was then.
This new Canadian re-recording of that song with shore and marine mammal sounds is way better.
 
Top