Hello Folks out there in email land...
 
Here's a few of my thoughts on MIDI usage..
 
1) ALL ORGANISTS should be forced to hear how they sound in the listening
area.
 
        MIDI offers a great opportunity as a teaching tool
        At Penn we have about 40 hours of MIDIfied organ recordings
        some good and ALOT VERY BAD (and the names are attached to the
        files of who played them)
 
        Our instrument is 162 ranks and alot of people visit just to
        play it.  What is their first REACTION???  Turn on the TUTTI
        and play anything loudly.  SO we get LOUD bad music.. the
        first time we did this to a group of AGO conventioneers
        the list of 20 people wanting to play dropped to FIVE.
        YEA!, We don't sound the way we think we do until we get to
        hear it in 'person' via the MIDI
 
        The organ can produce 127 db's at about 6 stories from the source
        keep in mind that 120 db's DAMAGES the inner ear.  Now that we
        have our big tuba stop fixed the situation has gotten WORSE!!!
        The tuba is a one noter over the whole full organ.. Now some of the
        crazies put it on at 16, 8, and 4..
 
.       Making people listen to themselves can be a very humbling experience
 
2) I think that I would rather listen to good MIDI recordings of hymn
        playing than Sister Gia-Maria, OBGYN 's left footed, chord
        and melody RENDITIONS of 'Come to Jesus in whole notes'
 
3) The BAD organists deserve to starve to death as musicians and
        be forced to consider changing occupations.
 
4) The musically fine organist will always be sought after and have a job
        there is nothing more elegant than inspired hymn playing that follows
        the mood of the singing at that moment in time.
 
5) The more GOOD organ playing that youg people experience can only
        raise the standards of performance on new generations of organists.
 
6) GOOD MIDI recording maybe able to save the CATHOLICS from that D***d
        S***y Music and six-rank portative (six ranks of strings - the ones
        you pluck to make sound). Assuming proper performances are released
        on MIDI perhaps we can erase those EXTRA BEATS and strange tempos
        we hear in catholic style hymn playing...
        Didn't you know that 'O Come All Ye Faithful' has five beats
        to some of the measures in the refrain.. Yea ther are
        also other extra beats so we can have time for our sock covered
        toes to feel out the next pedal note.
 
Enough for now
 
 
Kevin
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