The Most "Aspie" Instrument?

Post Reply New Topic

in the classical/liturgical pipe organ days before wurlitzer/robert hope jones' innovations, it was truly "one keyboard for each" but unification was the great theatrical innovation, enabling the organist to play any pipe-rank from any manual. the days of dedicated accompaniment/solo/great/swell [and so forth] manuals were [largely] left behind since that point.

in the classical/liturgical pipe organ days before wurlitzer/robert hope jones' innovations, it was truly "one keyboard for each" but unification was the great theatrical innovation, enabling the organist to play any pipe-rank from any manual. the days of dedicated accompaniment/solo/great/swell [and so forth] manuals were [largely] left behind since that point.

One remarkable thing about many of these instruments is that they often had stops for piano, glockenspiel and percussion instruments. And these sounds weren't somehow simulated by combinations of pipes - they were REAL INSTRUMENTS remotely operated by switches and solenoids! 60 years before MIDI, you could play a real piano from the console of a theatre organ... A parallel development was the integration of electric or electronic tone generation into a pipe-based organ. Many Compton organs had an electrostatic "Melotone Unit" added, allowing the possibility of tones unavailable from pipes.

the greatest feature that robert hope jones [gifted english engineer] invented was the "second touches" in which beneath the primary pedalboard/manual key contacts was a set of secondary contacts which could be switched [via a row of "second touches" paddles mid-console] to play a second instrument by pressing an 1/8th inch or 8 ounces harder, so a talented organist could play a primary melody on the primary and a simultaneous counterpoint [of a different percussion instrument] with the secondary contacts, all on the same hand! this way, an organist could accompany himself with rhythmic percussions so it sounded like he or she was accompanied by a whole band and drummers!

By the way, don't know if anyone has noticed but my avatar is a Wurlitzer electric piano. This is an interesting instrument whose design in an amalgam of various concepts going back to the 1930s.

Inventor Benjamin Miessner designed an amplified upright piano which used electrostatic pickups to sense the vibrations of the strings. About 15-20 years later, Wurlitzer used his basic design but used a miniaturised grand piano action and substituted steel reeds for the strings in order to make tuning and maintenance less frequent(!) The reeds were borrowed from Wurlitzer's electromechanical organs of the time, so it made sense to incorporate them into a new product.

The Wurlitzer "Electronic Piano" (a trademark rather than a description) was launched in 1954, and within a few years had been used on record by Ray Charles, Sun Ra and others. In various forms it remained in production until 1982, and its funky, hollow sound made it a favourite with rock and pop keyboardists from Ian McLagan to Richard Carpenter.

The drawing is by myself. I have never owned a Wurlitzer piano, but my band owns one which I use for recordings. When we play live, I use a Casio WK-3000 which has an acceptable Wurlitzer piano sound, but hopefully I will be getting a Nord Electro 3 in a month or two.

i can play a lot of instruments, but drums were the one that i could never get going on.

i used to play trombone, guitar, and bass guitar, but i also grew up around a piano, but never learned to play it... but i still can play keys of different types at a rudimentary level if they are put in front of me. I actually own an electric organ, but it's broken and rings an A7. my neighbor calls the cops when i play it, even during the daytime, so i stopped trying to play it. i may invest in a MIDI keyboard when i get a new computer.

right now, i am playing a lot of ukelele, and i have a melodica, an alto gopichand, and a cheap hardware-store saw that i play with a violin bow. i wish i could get a more flexible musical saw, but i can't afford that now.

i asked my family for a hurdy-gurdy a few years back, and they said no because it was too expensive. i still want one. I am also interested in learning the banjo, the balalaika, the accordion, the clarinet, and picking up a Euphonium. i learn instruments very quickly.

^ Ah - now you're talking!

omg. i want it.

^ that is really cool. i saw a guy playing a contrabass gopichand with a rattle at the end on Youtube. apparently he makes them for his store, but he lives in Germany.

get a load of this-
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C8EkNeKJlo[/youtube]