I have several CDs worth of organ music I recorded in concerts 20 years ago purely for distribution to libraries so public utility could be claimed for a grant application. Most of the players have gone on to prestigious careers - I heard one on Radio 3 this morning, as it happens. Again, there must ...

I’ve noted that composers over the ages have gone from being “pleasers” to “self-satisfiers” or vice versa at different stages of their lives. I had to sort out a few people back in the 70s who thought Stravinsky and others were lesser composers because they changed their style as they went on. The p ...

Yes, so good I now want/need one! You keep doing this to me, Mr Robjohns. If only you didn’t know what you’re talking about, I could safely ignore all this. I’m planning to reduce my eating to the value of one of these. Not going to be pretty, or quick. One of these days I’ll have to assess a bit mor ...

Yes, you may find a longer mike cable makes everything work better. Churches are quite up to moving everything round and if it looks roughly the same as when installed, be surprised it doesn’t with quite like it did before. Possibly thinking they’ve inadvertently mashed a mike and that accounts for i ...

All too true. I’m a traditionalist by inclination and I love a good evensong. The last one I sang at was performed by singers from two large Churches as well as from our own small one, but as with all evening services nowadays, hardly anybody else came. I’m not keen on our present arrangement with ne ...

Executive decision, it’s going. Strangely, I have found an organ in my Yamaha MX61 that is absolutely beautiful, after a bit of tweaking, it's very much like my dream organ, that Robert Wyatt uses a lot, the MX organ is it, spot on. Oddly enough, I had a similar thing happen to me after I started p ...

Absolutely, Hugh! Couldn’t agree more. Back in the day I was running an IT department, and was no stranger to all that fiddling with PCs, especially as we ran everything off a PC running Unix for some years. I’m perfectly aware of the danger of fiddling, but we hardly ever even rebooted our PC-based ...

Apple takes the view that progress will mean dropping support for older products which goes on a roughly 7-8 year timespan. Yes, the hardware will run happily for longer, and if you’re happy with older versions of the OS and, potentially, not being able to run newer software, then Macs will run for a ...

I moved to Mac 20 years ago and it’s been good. Instead of incessantly reconfiguring and upgrading my PC, I just “used” the Mac. Apart from one Sibelius release that ran very badly on the machine I had at the time, I’ve managed to run each Mac until it can’t run the current OS without running out of ...

I’m near Northampton. If I get any rounder I could easily roll down the hill into Pitsford Water! I’ll hold on in case you do want to have a look; eventually I’ll have to find it a new home. I have a Nord C2D for actual use, which has its good and bad points but I can still move it easily! I hadn’t c ...

If you don’t fix it, would you like my Wersi Orion (1970s?). It was given to me so I’m giving it away. As far as I can tell, it works, but it has more buttons, tabs, drawbars, knobs and controls than I can deal with. And I need the space so I can give my friends afternoon tea with music …

Spot on, Drew! I once saw a comment that pro wind players use about 15 times as much air as rabbits playing 3rd clari. The difference between mumblers and projectors is probably similar, and I wouldn’t put it past being in proportion to trying to amplify a mike in a line level input. Our church has a ...

I have the Yamaha two-manual supposedly portable combo organ (YC25?). It hasn’t been out for a while but with the help of a Sonorous Leslie-alike I got it to make some fairly Hammond-y sounds, though I had to shift up or down an octave to get the right footages. I’ll have to get it out again soon …

Yes, cable coiling is important. Snakes I do in a figure 8 into a crate as anything like the over and under used for single cables is like fighting pythons (and not M. Palin et al). I’m just wondering why you have to tear down the pa every time. Would it be possible to lock it in a cabinet so no-one ...

I’ve been consistently impressed by my K702s which I bought under a recommendation here for a general quiet listening solution. They are very natural. No idea how the DT990s compare. Overall, I’ve bought various ‘phones over the years and use most of then from time to time, even my old DT150s. I have ...

Very true, James. As I dig further down into this problem area I find the iPhone problem is largely that its battery is beginning to wear out. My son’s got through so many phones that I usually wait until it’s vital to act before I actually do. As this one’s lasted long enough to reach “iPhone Old Ag ...

It’s both, really, and he does choose how he films accordingly. I think the main problem is he likes the sound from the iPhone better, ht if he uses it all day on a solo trip, he can be running the battery pretty hard. Maybe we need to look at the phone’s battery, but whichever, we’d like to have the ...

It was my first thought, bearing in mind I already have a Zoom F3 and any number of mikes to use with it. It went down like a lead balloon when I suggested it. However, the “chat” I mentioned above might open him up to the idea. TBH, the Akaso camera appears to be the weak link here. We may do bet ...

Ta for that. I know he’s had Bluetooth mikes for the iPhone - I bought ’em - and that one looks better than anything he’s had already. Won’t connect to the Akaso camera, which may or may not be a problem. I’ll be in the car with my son for several hours in the mornings so we’ll have a bit of a discus ...

Hi, all, Here’s a hive mind conundrum to ponder while you recover from your Sunday lunch. My son is a bus enthusiast and makes videos of bus journeys and related stuff. While the number of bus enthusiasts is not large, it appears to be as varied as one would expect of any bunch of people following t ...

I'm reminded of the time I set up a contemporary music course and was amazed at how each student basically wanted to invent their own genre/sub-genre. I suppose this makes 'marketing' sense, if you can convince consumers you have created the latest, greatest music genre since a 'Sliced Bread ...

I'd look for a small church (or similar) that you could record in. IIRC there's some stuff about how Julian Bream liked to record in his book "A Life on the Road" but I can't lay my hands on it just now and of course, it might have been somewhere else, but he did many of hs recordings in a chapel ...

I forgot about the Dell DPC issues when I posted but I must confess that most of my experience with Dell hardware goes way back to when they first set up in the UK. As one of their early commercial users I visited their UK HQ and was given a tour round the plant and was amazed to find everyone ...

I’m very happy with my iMac, which takes about as much desk space as an open laptop (which is effectively what it is), and no space under the desk, of course. I only do classical-style recording and although I have a carry-case for the iMac, I usually have a Zoom F6 for remote live recording work. ...