Not too long ago, I posted an improvisation on an organ that was REALLY out of tune and boy did I have a lot of fun with it. If you haven’t listened to it yet, go check it out here. I think it’s an absolute blast as the organ so rarely is able to do anything microtonal. On a small note, the organ was tuned shortly after I made that improvisation and the folks that tune the organ said that they would be willing to make adjustments for me so long as we plan it ahead of time. This is not a spoiler, but I am working on and planning out another album with organ and synth and to have also a detuned rank of pipes as a possibility is quite appealing.
Over the past couple of weeks, it has been pretty cold here in Pittsburgh. Hovering between the 10s and 30s, this can cause quite a bit of havoc on the tuning of an instrument. And some ranks are more susceptible to going out of tune than other ranks. As I have been getting more acquainted with the organ at St. Andrew’s, I have discovered which of those stops go out of tune more regularly. WELL, there was one stop on a few particular notes that went REALLY out of tune this past week and after monkeying around with it, I arrived to the following improvisation.
I was being hyperbolic when I said the organ is not microtonal, it is in two general ways: the celeste stop and mutations. The problem with the celeste is that it is usually pretty quiet and the mutations are usually quite high and hard to fit into a more central tessitura and that’s if they are tuned to their fundamental. There are improvisations where I have tried to manipulate that in interesting ways and it is something always on my mind in the right circumstances. Combine that knowledge with a rank that has a few notes that are really out of tune and we have another cool improvisation!
This improvisation centers around a couple of pitches: E, F, G, and B, all in the tenor range of a 4′ stop – which is above middle C if you are keeping track. If you watch the video, my left hand is in that tenor range and the right hand in the octave above so the two stops are playing the same notes. Where I had fun is in using the mutations – those stops generally emphasize harmonics of a fundamental and at St. Andrew’s there is a Cornet stop on the Great manual that provided a nice contrast to the out of tune stops. Throw in some tremolos for effect and I think the improvisation is a lot of fun. Enjoy!