Hymn books are for singers.

As an organist, I came late to hymns, playing in churches at which just a few hymns were sung over and over again.  My organ teacher introduced me into hymn playing and The Parish Organist by Concordia Press, something that I recently revisited.  More about that soon.

While working with The Parish Organist and having recently had a meeting in which helping pianists become organists was impressed upon me as clearly important, we've created, with some great assistance, a new book that will at first be available in a Catholic edition, The Catholic Organist's Book of Hymns.

Hymn are printed to be sung. Hymn books are singer's books, not books for organists.

Organists cannot play the organ from a hymn book with confidence and style without lessons that teach the traditions of playing hymns from hymn books.

It's really, really hard for a pianist, used to playing the notes on a page to face having to to learn how to ignore notes written for singers, convert them into notes that serve as organ accompaniments and also carry the rhythm and insert the breaks needed to adequately accompany hymns being sung on the organ which is being played.

Why I didn't buy a __________ organ.

I read this recently and just had to shake my head:

At the AGO convention I attended recently one of the exhibitors was ___________. They had a very nice digital organ on display. The unit included a headphone jack so, with the head phones in, I played a few bars. Or course it sounded much more like a pipe organ than my 1970′s electronic organ. I also liked the headphone feature as it would allow me to practice with some privacy. My husband and those walking on the sidewalk would not hear me practice. The idea of having a newer model was tempting.

__________ sells many different organ models and prices range from ___________ and up. The price range is very similar to a new car. New car or new organ? It could be a tough choice for me. I brought home one of the _____________ brochures showcasing the _________ which according to their website is “is equally at home in a church, practice room, school or community hall.”

The reason I didn’t buy a _______ organ:

Bottom line is a new organ will not make me a better organist. Sure it would sound better but it would not improve my technique. It would not help me learn new music faster. It would not correct my tempo issues. Some things, like organ skill, can’t be bought and require hard work, practice, and persistence.

Organists say the strangest things...not a nod to the inspiration that comes when playing an organ that...inspires.

Floppy no more...

We live in times when technology of a few years ago is replaced with newer, smaller and faster technology and this has been the case with the very popular Rodgers PR-300 MIDI module, later upgraded to the R-300S.

This module as actuality two modules in one - a voice module with MIDI instruments and a sequencer that records and plays back anything played on organ stops and also on the MIDI instruments in the module itself.

Four years ago we began searching for a USB drive replacement unit and were told that they were available - but none of them worked.  We finally came across an engineer in Italy who told us why and, encouraged by his comments, we continued to search out and finally found a unit.

6 weeks of testing and the unit works very nicely.

The PR-300/s floppy drive was limited to storing only 99 MIDI song files.  The USB drive unit has 999 banks for storing information from floppy drives.

See www.frogmusic.com for more information.