Coordinates

12°2′36″N77°1′42″N

{{infobox instrument | name

Organ | names | image OrgueSaintThomasStrasbourg.jpg | image_capt1741 Pipe organ in Église Saint-Thomas, Strasbourg, France. | color #FFEC8B | classification Keyboard instrument (Aerophone) | range | related see Keyboard instrument | musicians see List of organists | builders see List of pipe organ builders and :category:Organ builders | midi 016/017 (Drawbar Organ)017/018 (Percussive Organ)018/019 (Rock Organ)019/020 (Church Organ)020/021 (Reed Organ) | articles Pipe organTheatre organElectronic organHammond organReed organOrgan repertoire }}

The organ (from Greek ''όργανον'' organon, "organ, instrument, tool"), is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with the invention of the hydraulis. By around the 8th century it had overcome early associations with gladiatorial combat and gradually assumed a prominent place in the liturgy of the Catholic Church; subsequently it has re-emerged as a secular and recital instrument.

Overview

Pipe organs use wind moving through pipes to produce sounds. Since the 16th century, pipe organs have used various materials of pipes, which can vary widely in timbre and volume. The pipes are divided into ranks and controlled by the use of hand stops and/or combination pistons. Although the keyboard is not expressive as on a piano and does not affect dynamics (pressing a key only turns the sound on or off), some divisions may be enclosed in a swell box, allowing the dynamics to be controlled by shutters. Some special registers with free reed pipes are expressive. These instruments vary greatly in size, ranging from a cubic yard to a height reaching five floors, and are built in churches, synagogues, concert halls, and homes. Small organs are called positive (i. e. easily placed in different locations) or portative (small enough to carry while playing). Increasingly hybrid organs are appearing in which pipes are augmented with electronic additions. Great economies of space as well as cost are possible especially when the lowest (and largest) of the pipes can be replaced.

Non-piped organs include the reed organ or harmonium, which like the accordion, harmonica or mouth organ use air to excite free reeds.

Electronic organs or digital organs generate electronically produced sound through one or more loudspeakers. .

Mechanical organs include the barrel organ, water organ, and Orchestrion. These are controlled by mechanical means such as pinned barrels or book music. Little Barrel organs dispense with the hands of an organist and bigger organs are powered in most cases by an organ grinder or today by other means such as an electric motor.

Pipe organs

The pipe organ is the grandest musical instrument in size and scope, and has existed in its current form since the 14th century (though other designs, such as the hydraulic organ, were already used in Antiquity). Along with the clock, it was considered one of the most complex human-made creations before the Industrial Revolution. Pipe organs range in size from a single short keyboard to huge instruments with over 10,000 pipes. A large modern organ typically has three or four keyboards (manuals) with five octaves (61 notes) each, and a two-and-a-half octave (32-note) pedal board.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart called the organ the "King of instruments". Some of the biggest instruments have 64-foot pipes (a foot here means "sonic-foot", a measure quite close to the English measurement unit), and it sounds to an 8 Hz frequency fundamental tone. Perhaps the most distinctive feature is the ability to range from the slightest sound to the most powerful, plein-jeu impressive sonic discharge, which can be sustained in time indefinitely by the organist. For instance, the Wanamaker organ, located in Philadelphia, USA, has sonic resources comparable with three simultaneous symphony orchestras. Another interesting feature lies in its intrinsic "polyphony" approach: each set of pipes can be played simultaneously with others, and the sounds mixed and interspersed in the environment, not in the instrument itself. (Contrast this with digital organs, where the electronically produced sound comes from loudspeakers.)

Church organs

thumb|left|150px|The Baroque Leżajsk organ, built by Stanisław Studziński and Jan Głowiński in 1693, has mechanical controls (tracker system) and 75 voices. It consists in fact of three separate instruments, this is why three organists can play simultaneously.

Most organs in North America, South America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand can be seen in Christian churches or Jewish synagogues. Therefore is generally called a church organ. The introduction of church organs is traditionally attributed to Pope Vitalian in the 7th century. Due to its ability to simultaneously provide a musical foundation below the vocal register, support in the vocal register, and increased brightness above the vocal register, the organ is ideally suited to accompany human voices, whether a congregation, a choir or a cantor or soloist. Most services also include solo organ repertoire for independent performance rather than by way of accompaniment, often as a prelude at the beginning the service and a postlude at the conclusion of the service.

Today this organ may be a pipe organ (see above), a digital or electronic organ that generates the sound with Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chips or a combination of pipes and electronics. It may be called a church organ or classical organ to differentiate it from the theater organ, which is a different style of instrument. However, as classical organ repertoire was developed for the pipe organ and in turn influenced its development, the line between a church and a concert organ is hard to draw.

Organs are also used to give recital concerts, called organ recitals. In the early 20th century, symphonic organs flourished in secular venues in the United States and UK, designed to replace symphony orchestras by playing transcriptions of orchestral pieces. Symphonic and orchestral organs largely fell out of favor as the Orgelbewegung (Organ Reform Movement) took hold in the middle of the 20th century and organ builders began to look to historical models for inspiration in constructing new instruments. Today, modern builders construct organs in a variety of styles and for both secular and sacred applications.

Chamber organs

A chamber organ is a small pipe organ, often with only one manual, and sometimes without separate pedal pipes that is placed in a small room, that this diminutive organ can fill with sound. It is often confined to chamber organ repertoire, as often the organs have too little voice capabilities to rival the grand pipe organs in the performance of the classics. The sound and touch are unique to the instrument, sounding nothing like a large organ with few stops drawn out, but rather much more intimate. They are usually tracker instruments, although the modern builders are often building electropneumatic chamber organs.

Theatre organs

The theatre organ or cinema organ was designed to accompany silent movies. Like a symphonic organ, it is made to replace an orchestra. However, it includes many more gadgets, such as percussion and special effects, to provide a more complete array of options to the theatre organist. Theatre organs tend not to take nearly as much space as standard organs, relying on extension and higher wind pressures to produce a greater variety of tone and larger volume of sound from fewer pipes.

This extension is called "unification", meaning that instead of one pipe for each key at all pitches, the higher octaves of pitch (and in some cases, lower octaves) are achieved by merely adding 12 pipes (one octave) to the top and/or bottom of a given division. Assuming there are sixty-one keys on an organ manual (a common number in concert organs and in North America), a classical organ will have, for diapason stops at 8', 4' and 2' pitch, a total of 183 pipes (61 plus 61 plus 61). The same chorus of diapasons on a theatre organ will have only 85 pipes (61 plus 12 plus 12). Some ranks, such as the Tibia Clausa, with up to 97 pipes, allow the organist to draw stops at 16', 8', 4', 2', and mutations from a single rank of pipes.

Unification gives a smaller instrument the capability of a much larger one, and works well for monophonic styles of playing (chordal, or chords with solo voice). The sound is, however, thicker and more homogeneous than a classically designed organ, and is very often reliant on the use of tremulant, which has a depth greater than that usually found on a classical organ. Unification also allows pipe ranks to be played from more than one manual and the pedals.

Other pipe organs

The bamboo organ called Bambuso sonoro is an experimental custom-made instrument designed by Hans van Koolwijk. The instrument has 100 flutes made of bamboo.

Reed organs

The reed organ and harmonium was the other main type of organ before the development of electronic organs. It generated its sounds using reeds similar to those of a piano accordion. Smaller, cheaper and more portable than the corresponding pipe instrument, these were widely used in smaller churches and in private homes, but their volume and tonal range was extremely limited, and they were generally limited to one or two manuals, pedalboards being extremely rare.

Chord organs

The chord organ was invented by Laurens Hammond in 1950. It provided chord buttons for the left hand, similar to an accordion. Other reed organ manufacturers have also produced chord organs.

Electronic organs

Since the 1930s, pipeless electric instruments have been available to produce similar sounds and perform similar roles to pipe organs. Many of these have been bought both by houses of worship and other potential pipe organ customers, and also by many musicians both professional and amateur for whom a pipe organ would not be a possibility. Far smaller and cheaper to buy than a corresponding pipe instrument, and in many cases portable, they have taken organ music into private homes and into dance bands and other new environments, and have almost completely replaced the reed organ.

Hammond organs

The Hammond organ was the first successful electric organ, released in the 1930s. It used mechanical, rotating tonewheels to produce the sound waveforms. Its system of drawbars allowed for setting volumes for specific sounds, and it provided vibrato-like effects. The drawbars allow the player to choose volume levels of 0-8 for each of the members of the harmonic series starting from 16'. By emphasizing certain harmonics from the overtone series, desired sounds (such as 'brass' or 'string') can be imitated. Generally, the older Hammond drawbar organs had only preamplifiers and were connected to an external, amplified speaker. The Leslie speaker became the most popular, which is a rotating type speaker. The three most popular models of Hammond organs were the consoles: the B-3, C-3, and A-100. Inside all three models, the tone generators, drawbars, and keyboards were identical. The B-3 cabinet stood on 4 legs, the C-3 was an enclosed "church" model, and the A100 series had built in amplifiers and speakers.

In addition to these console models, Hammond also produced spinet models, which differed from the consoles in the size of keyboard (44 keys per keyboard versus 61 for the consoles, and 12 or 13 pedals instead of 25) and the absence of foldback and scaling in the keyboards making them cheaper to manufacture. Other features of the console organs such as vibrato or percussion were included in the spinets; all the spinet models featured a built in amplifier and speaker; when used with the external amplified speaker (e.g.: Leslie) they sound similar to the console models. These smaller all-in-one organs were intended primarily for use in homes or very small churches.

Though originally produced to replace organs in the church, the Hammond organ, especially the model B-3, became popular in jazz, particularly soul jazz, and in gospel music. Since these were the roots of rock and roll, the Hammond organ became a part of the rock and roll sound. It was widely used in rock and popular music during the 1960s and 1970s by bands like The Doors, Pink Floyd, Procol Harum, Santana and Deep Purple. Its popularity resurged in pop music around 2000, in part due to the availability of clonewheel organs that were light enough for one person to carry.

Other electronic organs

Frequency divider organs used oscillators instead of mechanical parts to make sound. These were even cheaper and more portable than the Hammond. They featured an ability to bend pitches.

In the 1940s until the 1970s, small organs were sold that simplified traditional organ stops. These instruments can be considered the predecessor to modern portable keyboards, as they included one-touch chords, rhythm and accompaniment devices, and other electronically assisted gadgets. Lowrey was the leading manufacturer of this type of organs in the smaller (spinet) instruments.

In the '60s and '70s, a type of simple, portable electronic organ called the combo organ was popular, especially with pop and rock bands, and was a signature sound in the pop music of the period, such as The Doors, Led Zeppelin, and Iron Butterfly. The most popular combo organs were manufactured by Farfisa and Vox.

Conn-Selmer and Rodgers, dominant in more larger instrument market, also made electronic organs that used separate oscillators for each note, giving them a richer sound, closer to a pipe organ, due to the slight imperfections in tuning, by not using precise division.

Also available are hybrids, starting from early 20th century, which incorporating a few ranks of pipes to produce some sounds, and using electronic circuits or digital samples for other sounds and to resolve borrowing collisions. Major manufacturers include Allen, Walker, Compton, Wicks, Marshall & Ogletree, Phoenix, Makin Organs, Wyvern Organs and Rodgers.

Digital organs

The development of the integrated circuit enabled another revolution in electronic keyboard instruments. Digital organs sold since the 1970s utilize additive synthesis, then sampling technology (1980s) and physical modelling synthesis (1990s) are also utilized to produce the sound.

Virtual Pipe Organs, played via MIDI, access samples of real pipe organs stored on a computer, as opposed to digital organs that use DSP and processor hardware inside a console to produce sounds or deliver sound samples. They have high polyphony (up to about 40,000 pipes/1PC), which is necessary as there is a sample for every single pipe on the organ, plus samples and modeling effects such as mechanical action noise and pipe wind fluctuations. Addition of touch screen monitors or custom midi controllers allows the user to control the virtual organ console (drawing stops, operating couplers etc.) In its basic form, without a traditional wooden console, a Virtual Organ can be obtained at a much lower cost than other digital classical organs. With Stereo or mulitple channel audio systems, virtual organs can approach the acoustic realism of a real pipe organ. For example, for most Virtual Organs with a pedal division containing 16 ft or 32 ft pipes, a subwoofer arrangement is required to reproduce the powerful movement of air at frequencies around 32 Hz or lower. For personal purpose, typically small studio quality near-field monitors with subwoofer are used.

Steam organ

The wind can also be created by using pressurized steam instead of air. The steam organ, or calliope, was invented in the United States in 19th century. Calliopes usually have very loud and clean sound. Calliopes are used as outdoors instruments, and many have been built on wheeled platforms.

Organ music

Classical music

The organ has had an important place in classical music throughout its history. Antonio de Cabezón, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, and Girolamo Frescobaldi were three of the most important composers and teachers before 1650. Influenced by these composers, the North German school then rose to prominence with notable composers including Dieterich Buxtehude and especially Johann Sebastian Bach, considered by many to have achieved the height of organ composition. During this time, the French Classical school also flourished.

After Bach, the organ's prominence gradually lost ground to the piano. Felix Mendelssohn, A.P.F. Boëly, and César Franck led a resurgence in the mid-19th century, leading a Romantic movement that would be carried further by Max Reger, Charles-Marie Widor, Louis Vierne, and others. In the 20th century, composers such as Marcel Dupré, Kaikhosru Sorabji and Olivier Messiaen added significant contributions to the organ repertoire.

Because the organ has both manuals and pedals, organ music has come to be notated on three staves. The music played on the manuals is laid out like music for other keyboard instruments on the top two staves, and the music for the pedals is notated on the third stave or sometimes, to save space, added to the bottom of the second stave as was the early practice. To aid the eye in reading three staves at once, the bar lines are broken between the lowest two staves; the brace surrounds only the upper two staves. Because music racks are often built quite low to preserve sightlines over the console, organ music is usually published in oblong or landscape format.

Soap operas

From their creation on radio in the 1930s to the times of television in the early 1970s, soap operas were perhaps the biggest users of organ music. Day in and day out, the melodramatic serials utilized the instrument in the background of scenes and in their opening and closing theme songs. Some of the best-known soap organists included Charles Paul, John Gart, and Paul Barranco. In the early 1970s, the organ was phased out in favor of more dramatic, full-blown orchestras, which in turn were replaced with more modern pop-style compositions.

Popular music

Church-style pipe organs are occasionally used in popular music. In some cases, groups have sought out the sound of the pipe organ, such as Tangerine Dream, and Arrogant Worms, which combined the distinctive sounds of electronic synthesizers and pipe organs when it recorded both music albums and videos in several cathedrals in Europe. Rick Wakeman of British progressive rock group Yes also used pipe organ to excellent effect in a number of the group's albums (including ''Close to the Edge'' and ''Going for the One''). Wakeman has also used pipe organ in his solo pieces such as "Jane Seymour" from ''The Six Wives Of Henry VIII'' and "Judas Iscariot" from ''Criminal Record''. Even more recently, he has recorded an entire album of organ pieces – ''Rick Wakeman at Lincoln Cathedral''. Likewise, Keith Emerson used a pipe organ with The Nice and progressive rock group Emerson, Lake and Palmer on their earlier albums on the songs "The Three Fates," "The Only Way" and "Promenade." George Duke employed the pipe organ in a flamboyant manner in the piece "50/50" on the Frank Zappa album ''Over-Nite Sensation''. Dennis DeYoung of American rock group Styx used the pipe organ at Chicago's St. James Cathedral on the song "I'm O.K." on the group's 1978 album ''Pieces of Eight''. In 2000 Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke played the organ on the ''Kid A'' album to great effect, most notably in "Motion Picture Soundtrack". More recently, Arcade Fire have used a church organ on the songs "Intervention" and "My Body Is a Cage" on their second album ''Neon Bible''. Muse have also used a church organ on their album ''Origin of Symmetry'' in the form of "Megalomania", played by their frontman Matt Bellamy. It has been performed live only once on a pipe organ, at the Royal Albert Hall. Roger Hodgson (formerly of Supertramp) used a pipe organ for the songs ''Say Goodbye'', ''Open the Door'' and Danielle in 2000 for the album ''Open the Door''.

On the other hand, electronic organs and electromechanical organs such as the Hammond organ have an established role in a number of non-"Classical" genres, such as blues, jazz, gospel, and 1960s and 1970s rock music. Electronic and electromechanical organs were originally designed as lower-cost substitutes for pipe organs. Despite this intended role as a sacred music instrument, electronic and electromechanical organs' distinctive tone-often modified with electronic effects such as vibrato, rotating Leslie speakers, and overdrive-became an important part of the sound of popular music. Billy Preston and Iron Butterfly's Doug Ingle have featured organ on popular recordings such as "Let it Be" and "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", respectively. Well-known rock artists using the Hammond organ include Counting Crows, Pink Floyd, Hootie & the Blowfish, Sheryl Crow, and Deep Purple.

Recent performers of Popular organ music include William Rowland of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma who is noted for his compositions of "Piano Rags," which he plays on a Wurlitzer theatre organ in Miami, Oklahoma; George Wright (1920–1998) whose "Jealousie" and "Puttin on the Ritz" are some of the finest performances of this genre and Virgil Fox (1912–1980), who bridged both the classical and religious areas of music with pop and so-called Heavy Organ concerts that he played on an electronic organ accompanied by a light show similar to those created in the 1960s for rock concerts. Jimmy Smith was a famous jazz organist of the 20th century.

The American Theatre Organ Society ATOS has been instrumental in programs to preserve the instruments originally installed in theatres for accompaniment of silent movies. In addition to local chapter events they hold an annual convention each year, highlighting performers and instruments in a specific locale. These instruments feature the Tibia pipe family as their foundation stops and regular use of tremulants. They were usually equipped with mechanical percussion accessories, pianos, and other imitative sounds useful in creating movie sound accompaniments such as auto horns, doorbells, and bird whistles.

Sporting organs

In the United States and Canada, organ music is commonly associated with several sports, most notably baseball and ice hockey.

The baseball organ has been referred to as "an accessory to the overall auditory experience of the ballpark." The first team to introduce an organ during breaks of play (before and after games, in between innings, and during longer stoppages) was the Chicago Cubs, who put an organ in Wrigley Field as an experiment in 1941 for two games. Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, hired baseball's first full-time organist, Gladys Goodding, the following year. Over the years, many ballparks caught on to the trend, and many organists became well-known and associated with their parks or signature tunes: Eddie Layton playing at Yankee Stadium for over 50 years, Jane Jarvis greeting the New York Mets at Shea Stadium with their club song "Meet the Mets", Ernie Hays serenading a Busch Memorial Stadium crowd with "Here Comes the King", Nancy Bea as the organist for the Dodgers, Chicago favorite Nancy Faust urging Chicago White Sox fans to tell an opposing pitcher or a Pale Hose home run to "Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)" or Rick DePiro playing for Cleveland Indians games and known for his youth and controversy with songs like "If I Only Had A Brain" played often for the Umpires. During the 1990s, several teams fired their organists and replaced them entirely with recorded music and sound effects. However, many fans support organs at ballparks, believing it to be a traditional aspect of the game. As a result, several teams (notably the St. Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates) have begun to feature organ music more prominently, and in 2009 the Atlanta Braves re-introduced an organist at Turner Field, even going so far as to promote his Twitter feed to take requests from fans.

Jazz

The electronic organ, especially the Hammond B-3, has occupied a significant role in jazz ever since Jimmy Smith made it popular in the 1950s. It can function as a replacement for both piano and bass in the standard jazz combo.

Historical instruments

|}

Predecessors

Panpipes, pan flute, syrinx, and nai, ''etc.'', are considered as ancestor of the pipe organ.

Aulos, an ancient double reed instrument with two pipes, is the origin of the word ''Hydr-aulis'' (water-aerophone).

Early organs

3rd century BC - the Hydraulis, ancient Greek water-powered organ played by valves. 1st century (''at least'') - the ''Ptera''  and the ''Pteron'', ancient Roman organ similar in appearance to the portative organs 2nd century - the Magrepha, ancient Hebrew organ of ten pipes played by a keyboard

9th century - the automatic flute player (and possibly automatic hydropowered organ), a mechanical organ by the Banū Mūsā brothers

Medieval organs

Portative organ, a small portable medieval instrument

Positive organ, a somewhat larger though still portable instrument (occurs on an obelisk of the 4th century)

Regal, a small portable late-medieval instrument with reed pipes and two bellows. 16th century - useless resonance pipes were removed, and regal became a beating-reed organ. It may be seen as the ancestor of the harmonium and reed organs, and the varieties of 'squeezebox'

Various instruments

Reed organs

Harmonium or parlor organ, a reed instrument usually with many stops and two foot-operated bellows

American reed organ is a foot bellow or electric reed keyboard similar to the Harmonium, but that works on negative pressure—it sucks air through the reeds

Melodeon, a reed instrument with an air reservoir and a foot operated bellows—popular in the USA in the mid-19th century

Squeezeboxes

Squeezeboxes such as the accordion, concertina, ''Bandoneón'', etc., free reed instruments in which the bellows is operated by the squeezing action of the instrumentalist;

Mechanical organs

Barrel organ—made famous by organ grinders in its portable form, the larger form often equipped with keyboards for human performance

Novelty instruments or various types that operate on the same principles

* Orchestrion, fairground organ (or band organ in the USA), dutch street organ and Dance organ—these pipe organs use a ''piano roll'' player or other mechanical means instead of a keyboard to play a prepared song.

Sound art

''Hydraulophone''

Pyrophone (fire organ)

Sea organ

Water organ

Wave organ

Wind organ

Mouth-played instruments

''Pan flute''

Mouth organs such as:

* ''Recorder'', a kind of fipple flute that uses the same mechanism for sound production as the pipe organ.

* Harmonica, where the musician effectively blows directly onto the reeds, is also known as a mouth organ;

* Melodica, also known as 'blow-organ'

Bagpipes

Asian free reed instruments, such as the Chinese Sheng, Lusheng, Hulusi, Yu, Bawu, and Hulusheng, plus the Japanese Shō, Thai Khene, and Korean Saenghwang are known to be the inspiration for the western reed organ.

See also

Closed tube

Electronic organ

Hydraulis

Hydraulophone

List of organ builders

List of organ composers

List of organists

Open tube

Organ recital

Organ repertoire

Organ tablature

Organist

Organum

Pipe organ

Residence organ

Street organ

References

External links

Organ Music of the Day - Discover fascinating world of organ through Organ Music of the Day. Reed about and watch performances of some of the most exciting organ works. Updated regularly.

Music and organ recital at Notre-Dame de Paris

iao.org.uk - Regularly updated list of over 1600 hand-crafted links to websites covering all aspects of classical organs and organ music

npor.org.uk – Homepage of the National Pipe Organ Register of the British Institute of Organ Studies, with extensive information on and many audio samples of original instruments

orgel.edskes.net – Edskes Organ website with information and photos of various organs

Encyclopedia of Organ Stops – Information on construction and sound of various organ stops

Pipe organs

* ibiblio: The Organ UK Quarterly Magazine about pipe organs

* ibiblio: The Pipe Organ

* The American Guild of Organists – A professional association serving the organ and choral music fields

* The Incorporated Association of Organists - UK umbrella organisation for 90 affiliated organists' associations and 6,000 individual members

* The Organ Historical Society – The Society promotes a widespread musical and historical interest in American organbuilding through collection, preservation, and publication of historical information, and through recordings and public concerts.

* Organlive.com – Over 10,000 tracks of free organ music, delivered via streaming audio

* Pipedreams – organ radio broadcasts, articles, and more

* Pipe Organs 101

* The World's Largest Organs

* nzorgan.com – a vast website that chronicles in detail the installation of a pipe organ in New Zealand

* A Great Dom-Bedos Roubo Organ Project in Italy

Theatre organs

* American Theatre Organ Society

* TheatreOrgans.com

* The Walker Digital Unit Orchestra

Electronic organs

* Allen Organ Company history

* Hammond organs history

* Electronic Organ Constructor's Society

* Makin Organs (digitally sampled and hybrid organs)

* Rodgers Instruments (stereo digital sampled organs and hybrid digital/pipe organs)

* SCPOP : a digitally low-cost emulation of a pipe organ

Resources for Organ Audio Recordings

''Aeolus'' Germany CD company with recording of historic European Organs often with under recorded music

''JAV Recordings'' American CD Company with recording of historic American Pipe Organs by Skinner & Aeolian Skinner and also European Organs

''Regent Records'' British CD Company with recording of historic English Pipes Organ

Category:Keyboard instruments an:Organo (instrumento musical) roa-rup:Orgã bn:অর্গান be:Арган be-x-old:Арган bs:Orgulje bg:Орган (музика) ca:Orgue cs:Varhany cy:Organ (offeryn cerdd) da:Orgel de:Orgel et:Orel es:Órgano (instrumento musical) eo:Orgeno fa:ارگ (ساز) fr:Orgue ko:오르간 hr:Orgulje io:Orgeno id:Organ (alat musik) it:Organo (strumento musicale) he:עוגב csb:Òrganë la:Organum tubulatum lv:Ērģeles lb:Uergel lmo:Orghen hu:Orgona (hangszer) ms:Organ (muzik) nl:Orgel nds-nl:Örgel ja:オルガン no:Orgel nn:Orgel nds:Orgel pl:Organy pt:Órgão (instrumento musical) ro:Orgă ru:Орган (музыкальный инструмент) qu:Puywanku simple:Organ (music) sk:Organ sl:Orgle sr:Оргуље sh:Orgulje fi:Urut sv:Orgel th:ออร์แกน tr:Org (Erganun) uk:Орган (музичний інструмент) vls:Orgel zh:風琴

Coordinates	12°2′36″N77°1′42″N
Name	John Reed
Birth date	February 07, 1969
Birth place	TriBeCa, New York City
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Columbia University
Occupation	novelist
Website	''http://www.johnreed.tv''

John Reed (born February 7, 1969) is an American novelist. He is the author of four novels: ''A Still Small Voice'' (2000), ''Snowball's Chance'' (2002) with a preface by Alexander Cockburn, ''The Whole'' (2005), and ''All the World's a Grave: A New Play by William Shakespeare'' (2008). His fifth book, ''Tales of Woe'' (2010), is a collection of twenty-five stories, chronicling true stories of abject misery.

Biography

Born in 1969 in New York City, Reed is the son of artist David Reed and Judy Rifka. He attended Hampshire College, and received a Masters in Fine Art in Creative Writing from Columbia University. He teaches at The New School.

Reed was an early contributor to, and subsequently an editor with, ''Open City'', a New York literary journal published by Robert Bingham, who later founded the book series.

Works

thumb|left|Reed in Brooklyn reading from his non-fiction ''Tales of Woe'', at the [[MTV|MTV Press/Brooklyn Rail launch party.]]He is affiliated with the ''New York Press'' and ''The Brooklyn Rail''. "Americans are extremely sophisticated in terms of narrative forms," said Reed in an interview. "We see it in commercials, we see it on TV, we see it in movies. But the narrative forms we're talking about are three acts, five acts, depending on how you want to look at it. They're all based on a Christian model of sin, suffering, redemption; which is not a large model."

A Still Small Voice

''A Still Small Voice'' (Delacorte 2000, Delta 2001), Reed’s first novel, is a historical novel based on the life of a girl growing up in Kentucky from 1850-1870.

Snowball's Chance

''Snowball's Chance'' (Roof Books 2002/2003), Reed’s second novel was a controversial send-up of George Orwell’s ''Animal Farm'', and ended in a cataclysmic attack on the “Twin Mills” (reminiscent of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center). It became a bestseller in the field of books by independent literary publishers.

The Whole, or, Duh Whole

''The Whole'', Reed’s third novel, parodied MTV and was released in 2005 by MTV Books (Simon & Schuster). The novel described a gigantic hole that appears in the middle of the country, which engulfs four states.

All the World's a Grave

Reed, in a new work, returns to the overhaul of canonical English writers in ''All the World's a Grave'', fall 2008, Penguin Books. The work, subtitled "''A New Play by William Shakespeare''", is a tragedy in five acts, a "mash-up" constructed of lines drawn from five Shakespeare tragedies and one Shakespeare history; Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo & Juliet and Henry V. In the "literary trick" (as described by Page Six of The New York Post) Shakespeare's lines are rearranged into a wholly new story, in which Prince Hamlet of Denmark goes to war to claim his bride and the daughter of King Lear, Juliet. Upon a triumphant return home, Hamlet discovers that his mother has murdered his father, and married Macbeth. Visited by his father's ghost, and goaded by the opportunistic Lieutenant Iago, Hamlet is driven mad by the erroneous belief that Juliet is having an affair with General Romeo.

References

External links

John Reed's website

All the World's a Grave'', book website.

Kill the beavers!, ''The Daily Telegraph'', November 22, 2002.

John Reed: Saint George and the Damn Truth, ''Moby Lives'', Nove,ber 10, 2003.

John Reed: The Whole, an excerpt, ''Brooklyn Rail'', January 2005.

Dinitia Smith: A Pig Returns to the Farm, Thumbing His Snout at Orwell, ''The New York Times'', November 25, 2002.

Cathy Young: Blaming the Victim, ''Reason.com'', December 3, 2002.

Andrea Scrima: Review of Tales of Woe, Rumpus, November 16, 2010.

Interview with Arthur Phillips on rewriting Shakespeare

Category:1969 births Category:Living people Category:American novelists Category:American humorists Category:Writers from New York Category:Hampshire College alumni Category:Columbia University alumni Category:George Orwell Category:The New School faculty

Coordinates	12°2′36″N77°1′42″N
name	The Organ
background	group_or_band
origin	Vancouver, British Columbia Canada
genre	Alternative RockDark WaveNew Wave | url | title | author | work | date | accessdate
years active	2001–2006
label	Mint Records, 604 Records, Too Pure, Talitres, Popfrenzy
website	Official website (Archive.org)
current members	Katie Sketch (vocals)Jenny Smyth (Organ)Debora Cohen (Guitar)Shmoo Ritchie (Bass guitar)Shelby Stocks (drums)
past members	Ashley Webber (Bass guitar) 2001–2005 }}

The Organ was a Canadian indie pop band formed in 2001 in Vancouver, British Columbia. They officially broke up on December 7, 2006, due to illness and personal conflicts in the band.

Biography

Early years

The Organ were conceived in 2001 by frontwoman Katie Sketch, born Katie Ritchie, in Vancouver, BC. Sketch's musical training started at the age of three, when she began classical training on the violin. Her childhood was spent largely in ignorance of the underground sounds of The Smiths, The Cure, and Joy Division, whom The Organ would later often be favorably compared to. "Tiffany and Bon Jovi - that was my take on ’80s music."

Sketch has said of the time of the formation of the band, when she and the band members were in their early to mid-twenties. "I was in a musical lull, I couldn’t stand what I was listening to," naming Sleater-Kinney as one example. “The local scene was also pretty shitty, and of course the radio was brutal. Then, by total fluke, my mom’s friend’s husband, Ron Obvious, hired me to help with the audio wiring for a studio he was building for Bryan Adams.” Obvious introduced Katie to the world of independent music, and what she calls "that ’80s sound." He created mix-tapes of bands he thought she’d appreciate as a violinist (Roxy Music, Ultravox) and singers with an "amazing natural vocal pitch" (Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nina Hagen, Kate Bush)). This job also led Sketch to Tara Nelson, the engineer who would later record the Organ’s first EP.

It was at this time that Katie joined with her friends Sarah "Sketch" Efron (on bass and keyboards) and Barb "Sketch" Choit (Hammond organ, guitar, bass) to form the instrumental trio Full Sketch.

"I met Katie Sketch when we worked morning shifts at a wretched cinnamon bun shop," says Efron, "but we really became friends on a road trip where we ended up breaking down in the redneck town of Hermiston, Oregon. On this trip, we decided to form a band and call it Full Sketch." Katie, though she was already a proficient multi-instrumentalist, decided this would be a good time to try her hand at drums.

"The concept was, 'Let's start a band where you play an instrument that you've never played before.' It was basically drunken ridiculousness, but all of a sudden I felt like life made more sense. Sarah was involved in CiTR, and Barb was big into indie rock, so what started off as a joke got me out going to see shows. The way The Organ began was as an offshoot of Full Sketch—I wanted to take the same sound and do it with singing."

Efron was also the news director at UBC’s CiTR, where she, Sketch and Choit co-hosted a raunchy late-night call-in program called "The Dead Air Show."

After about a year, Barb Sketch left the band to focus on her career as an artist and Full Sketch ended. According to Katie Sketch, "Barb Sketch is now in suburban California. She’s long forgotten her Canadian roots and lives on a ranch with her man and a team of horses." At this point, organist Jenny Smyth (born Genoa Smith), replaced Choit on keyboards. Together with Efron, they founded The Organ.

In 2001, a long audition process began. Eventually, Sketch "tired of auditions," and decided to "just hire some people." After finding a handful of like-minded musicians, Katie assigned them instruments and taught them to play. Taught is a relative term though—Debbie had been playing guitar for three years, and Sketch has expressed distaste in interviews when portrayed as a "music teacher" to the girls: "[The press seems] to think they had a lot of help or something, but mostly it's just the drive to be able to learn the instruments and play them," Sketch said. "[My teaching them] was maybe a half-an-hour, hour process."

Sinking Hearts EP

The full formation of the band that would appear on their first EP took three years. "It’s not like the five of us got together and spontaneously created this," Sketch once commented in an interview. "Jenny and I had a direction we wanted to go in and then we slowly recruited people. We could tell if someone didn’t get it, which is why we had to get rid of so many players. It’s funny, sometimes people say the band’s moving really quickly, but I feel like I’ve been doing this forever."

The original group eventually rounded out with Katie, Jenny, Sarah, drummer Shelby Stocks, and guitarist Debora Cohen. In summer 2002, The Organ made their debut with the release of the ''Sinking Hearts'' EP. The Canadian press and indie publications across America praised The Organ's dreampop-inflected presentation. By January, The Organ was signed to Chad Kroeger's 604 imprint and Mint Records. However, before the year was out, Efron would leave to focus on her journalism career and be replaced by Ashley Webber.

"The rock n’ roll lifestyle wasn’t for me," said Efron, who is currently working for the financial section of ''The National Post'', a conservative Canadian newspaper.

Even with the band finally complete and their first EP released, it would take years before they would release their first proper album; the process of writing and recording (the album would end up being pieced together in four different studios) would take years—two, to be exact, to finish up as ''Grab That Gun'', an album that barely breaks a half hour in length and recycles four of its eleven tracks from ''Sinking Hearts''.

"We knew we had a problem when the album was being mixed," comments Cohen. "When we heard it, we knew that it didn't sound like us. It was too, I don't know, crisp."

After much agonizing, the Organ decided to scrap the Dahle sessions and rerecord the album with producer Paul Forgues, who Sketch knew from her days at the Warehouse Studio.

"It was a really, really hard choice to make," Stocks says. "We had a window where we could have just released something that we weren't totally happy with. There was so much hype at that time, but we were like, 'No way. Let's fuck the hype and start over.' And I think that we ended up with a great album. I know that people who like us for being amateur and really simple are going to get it."

Grab That Gun

Despite numerous set-backs, their five years of slow going had produced a relatively sizable fan-following, and their new material showed even more promise than their first EP, which had done very well indeed, especially for a record that had gone largely unpromoted. As such, ''Grab That Gun'' spent more time on top of the Canadian campus-radio charts than any other record released that year.

That December (2004), Ashley Webber left the band.

"I think it's the usual reasons," explained Sketch in an interview. "I mean, I love Ashley, but we had different ideas. And then she wanted to try being in other musical projects, and we support her in that ... [but our band has] got to be a high priority, I guess that's what it comes down to."

However, with their first international tour looming and no replacement in sight, Webber was asked back and subsequently rejoined the band in the new year.

The Organ began touring heavily across Canada, the United States and Europe. They also produced a music video for "Brother," (directed by Robert Morfitt) arguably the strongest of the seven new tracks appearing on the record. The video consisted of a fairly straightforward montage of the band performing on a moodily lit stage. A fictitious reenactment of the video shoot for "Brother" can be seen during season two, episode two of the Showtime original series ''The L Word''. "Brother" also appears on ''The L Word'''s season two soundtrack.

Following the well received promotion of "Brother," The Organ began production on the far more ambitious "Memorize the City" video, which depicted a dizzying tour through a city of sound, light, and color. The higher artistic standard and production quality of this video reflects an amazing amount of growth for the band in a very short period, and is very impressive considering that it was shot at a time when the band was engaged in the biggest tour of their careers. That July (2005) the standalone 7" single, ''Let the Bells Ring'', was released on Go Metric Records. The title track was paired with a remix of "Memorize the City" by Dustin Hawthorne. Later that year, a second remix appeared on the French CD release of ''Grab That Gun''.

During another North American tour promoting ''Grab That Gun'', Ashley Webber left for good. She was then replaced with Katie Sketch's sister, Shmoo, who affirmed that she was "definitely permanent in the band" before it broke up in 2006.

On November 14, 2005, The Organ appeared live on BBC6 Radio with their new bass player. They gave a brief interview and performed live renditions of the songs "Nothing I Can Do" and "Love, Love, Love." On the 27th, a little over a week later, The Organ announced via their website that they had just been signed to Too Pure Records, through which ''Grab That Gun'' would be available throughout the world in February 2006.

The album cover was design by David Cuesta at 7th Avenue house, and is based on a grid constructed around the Fibonacci sequence, to match musical scales. He also designed the logo based on sketches by Katie and Jenny.

Breaking Up

On 23 August 2006, the band released a statement on MySpace saying they were canceling the remaining portion of their UK tour which included dates at the Reading and Leeds Festivals. The reason given was illness to a band member and they assured fans the band were not splitting up.

On 7 December 2006 the band released a statement on their MySpace and official site stating that they were breaking up. The statement read:

:''"We are sad to announce that we're breaking up. We want to thank our friends, fans, and family for all the support you gave to us. Thank you.''

:Shelby, Jenny, Katie, Debora, and Shmoo."

In an interview on CBC Radio 3 the following day, Jenny declined to discuss the reasons for the breakup saying that there were issues they preferred to keep private but implied that it had little or nothing to do with either geography or Katie's modeling career. "There were," she said, "so many reasons," she "wouldn't know where to start."

Two years later, Katie Sketch would later go on to detail the full story behind the break-up in a 2008 interview:

"When the band ended, I was really burnt out. I thought if I took a few months off then I wouldn't be burnt out, but now, when I think about it, I wouldn't have the energy to do touring right now. I just feel absolutely exhausted with it, and band politics, and all that stuff. I am still writing music, but it's not my first priority any more. [My first priority now is] getting my life back together. We'd been touring for so long and working so hard that I didn't know how to function on a daily basis. So just little things, like, I'm going to have breakfast today, or I'm going to the gym, or I'm going to get a job. I didn't really have any concept of how to do it any more [...] I spent the majority of my twenties wanting to be in a band and it's all I ever thought about. And by the time the band ended I was in really bad health. Like drinking was a problem, and not knowing how to deal with personal crises. I was in bad shape. [...] If a band is really supportive of one another and can help each other through things, it works really well, but at the end we were completely unable to communicate. We'd all become self-deprecating, we were fighting all the time... we were basically just drunk all the time. We had no time to separate, so it was like being in a bad domestic situation, all the time. [...] When you're five girls touring in really terrible circumstances, where you're all in the same van and all sleep in the same hotel room every night, and you're drinking a lot, you have a lot of really fun times, but there's always fighting, there's always something going on. Towards the end, where things were becoming irreparable, it got to the point where we should have been in therapy as a group. And we should have taken breaks. And I knew that, and I was pushing for that. But the way our career had gone, we released the record in Canada, then somewhere else, then somewhere else, touring the same record. It was staggered, so we were always touring where the fanbase was hearing it for the first time. We built it like that, which is how a lot of bands do it, but it was gruelling. [...] We were at that point where everyone in a band wants to get, right where the financial stuff isn't going to be such a big deal, where we'd be able to tour and take personal space, but our relationships had deteriorated so much by that point. [...] It's like, you're doing everything that you dreamed of your whole life, and yet you've never been more miserable. You can't get away from these people. It's like you're married to them, basically. And we had other problems as well. What I consider to be a major part of our break-up is that this whole entire time that we were touring and doing all the stuff, we were never signed in the States. And to not have a record label in the States is to not have a career. We live in Canada so it's right there, but whenever we'd play in the States it would be to nobody. So we worked really, really hard to get a label in the States and when we finally had label interest there, and a label we wanted to sign to, our Canadian record label, who own our record, wouldn't let us go with what we wanted to do. It felt like we'd been busting our asses for however long, and we felt like we had no control. So what was going to happen? We'd finally sign in the States when I was 35, and we'd do gruelling tours then? You know what I mean? That was a major knock-down for us.

[...] By the end, I feel like everybody in the band was mentally ill. [...] Quite frankly, I was not mentally well. [...] I needed to get away from it, or something really bad was going to happen. [...] We really needed a break and the record label, everybody, was pushing, pushing, pushing. And there's always the feeling that you're in financial debt too. The more you do it, the more money you make, and we felt like we owed it to people. And that's how management and the record company played it - "you kind of owe it to us to do another tour right now.

[After the breakup,] I moved to Toronto, had a mental breakdown, then I just got a job working for a doctor [...] I interview people with drug problems, and alcoholics. [...] Jenny the organ player just moved to Toronto and she and I bought a restaurant bar about two months ago. We're renovating it and we live above it in a teeny weeny apartment together. [...] It'll be a brunch place in the day, and we have a liquor license so it will be a bar at night. [Now that Jenny and I live together,] it's constantly like, "Remember the time when we..." and we'll laugh and it's hilarious. So the whole thing wasn't horrible. It's not like I'm saying "don't start a band". I'm just saying, you've got to set your personal boundaries, as far as touring goes. As far as the grind. It's really important to take a break and we never got one."

2008 EP

Less than two years after their breakup, the band released one last EP of unreleased material titled, ''Thieves'', on October 14, 2008. In the same October 16 interview where she would finally reveal the reasons behind the band's breakup, Katie Sketch would give insight into the motivating factors which caused the band to reunite in the studio one last time.

"I had heard a rumor that my record label was going to release songs that we hadn't released, from some demo recording we had done earlier. I was not happy with that. At all. Threatening isn't the right word, but I heard they were thinking about releasing it. So I freaked out, and during that freak-out period I realized that I really like the songs. People have been writing us, fans, asking about the songs, so I thought we should record them while we still remember them. [...] I can only speak for myself, but I found that [the recording process for the ''Thieves'' EP] was extremely emotionally draining. I made sure we did it under our own terms. I had a friend who engineered it and we did it at my mum's house in BC. She lives on this island, so it was really relaxed. And we did it in stages so the band was never there at the same time, so we couldn't fall back into the band dynamic because "the band" was never there. I gave my friend strict instructions, like, sit in the back seat and don't offer any opinion. We need it to be the easiest session ever, because people are really sensitive, and if one person says, "Fuck this, I'm leaving," then it won't work. So we did it like that. [Having to release the EP on the same record label] is fine. I've really separated myself from the situation. But that sort of thing, being bound by a contract, straight up, that's a major obstacle in my desire to do music any more."

Post-breakup solo projects

Since the band's breakup in 2006, several of the members have gone on to pursue solo projects. Debora Cohen has begun making demo tracks available through her myspace under the name “Lovers Love Haters." Shmoo has gone on to front Vancouver hardcore band, "Keep Tidy", whose EP is available free online. Video of Katie Sketch performing with a new band called "Mermaids" as early as October 31, 2007 has surfaced on the internet. Sketch has publicly stated that she fully intends to release a solo effort, but that legal complications have thus far prevented the band from officially releasing any music. According to Sketch:

"I feel like, OK, so I'm going to write a solo record and pour every part of myself into it, and I won't have control over where it's released in the United States again? [With regard to the possibility of releasing solo material independently,] I'm arguably bound by contract. [...] It's seriously debatable and is being debated and has been for the last two years. I like to think that I'm not, and they like to think that I am. And that stress alone, honestly, keeps me from sitting down and working on music. I have no control over my own career. [...] I can play live, but when it comes to releasing a record, they've straight up said to me, if you release any music you will be sued. And that kind of pressure, after all the work that I've done, really isn't like anything I need in my life right now."

Discography

Full lengths

''Grab that Gun'' (2004)

Singles and EPs

"Full Sketch" (CD, 2000):

:"Picky" — "Cooler Than Clean" — "Steven Smith" — "Soundtrack" — "Sketchersize" — "Ice Fishing"

"The Organ" (7", 2002):

:"It's Time to Go" — "We've Got to Meet"

"Sinking Hearts" (CD, 2002):

:"We've Got to Meet" — "I Am Not Surprised" — "It's Time to Go" — "Sinking Hearts" — "There Is Nothing I Can Do" — "No One Has Ever Looked so Dead"

"Memorize The City" (7", 2005):

:"Memorize The City" — "There Is Nothing I Can Do"

"Memorize The City" (CD, 2005):

:"Memorize The City" — "There Is Nothing I Can Do" — "Memorize The City [Remixed by Simon Bookish]"

"Let the Bells Ring" (7", 2005):

:"Let the Bells Ring" — "Memorize the City [Remixed by Dustin Hawthorne]"

"Brother" (CD + 7", 2006):

:"Brother" — "Love Love Love" (Gideon Coe BBC 6 Music Session 14/11/05)

"Memorize the City" (CD + 7", 2006):

:"Memorize the City"— "No One Has Ever Looked So Dead" (Gideon Coe BBC 6 Music Session 14/11/05)

"Thieves" (CD, 2008):

:"Even In The Night" — "Oh What A Feeling" — "Let The Bells Ring" — "Fire In The Ocean" — "Can You Tell Me One Thing" — "Don't Be Angry"

Katie Sketch is nowadays performing with Gentleman Reg and has been seen in some shows at the Gladstone Hotel and the Beaver in Toronto, Ontario.

Sources

/ Full Sketch Interview with "The Ubyssey," February 1999

/ Interview with "Discorder," March 2002

/ Interview with "The Ubyssey," February 2003

Interview with "Straight.com," May 6, 2004

Interview with "Exclaim.ca," June 2004

Interview with "Straight.com," December 2, 2004

Interview with "Cokemachineglow.com," 2004

Interview with "Sceneandheard.ca"

External links

Official Website on Archive

The Organ 5x live videos Nov 2005

''Grab That Gun'' album review on Sound Generator

Mint Records

[ The Organ] at Allmusic

View "Memorize the City" music video

The Organ on MySpace

"Nothing to frown about hammond-heavy new-wave sounds" The Organ in Session at CBC Radio 3; story by Elianna Lev

See also

List of bands from British Columbia

List of bands from Canada

Category:Canadian indie pop groups Category:LGBT-themed musical groups Category:All-female bands Category:Musical groups from Vancouver Category:Musical groups established in 2001 Category:Musical groups disestablished in 2006 Category:Mint Records artists

es:The Organ fr:The Organ it:The Organ no:The Organ