The Birth of the Mad Organist

Reposted from November 16th. I accidentally deleted it. Hard to get good help when you are doing your own blog. :)

How did it all start.... Well to bring you up to speed, I have a Gulbransen Pacemaker Custom organ that I have learned to play (well 5 songs anyway....) as part of a Halloween Yard Haunt. I needed a character.

I didn't just want to dress as Dracula . I wanted to be something unique. So to paraphrase steve jobs (lower case on purpose... if you ever met steve you would understand) 

"The Great Ones Steal"

So I looked at a few great characters from the movies and TV... So here is the recipe...

Take a little of the wit and charm from Seymour Larry Vincent

Mix a little Lon Chaney from London After Midnight

AKA They Hypnotist

 Mix in a little Michael Cane and The Continental for the Ascot or Cravat

 

The cape with a design from Zombo on the Munsters

 This came from the good folks at classicmoviemonsters.blogspot.com

Plus some of the humor of Count Floyd 

Mix up a stove pipe hat 

 

Some makeup from Party City

Plus one crazy obsessed Yard Haunter and you get this:

Here is how I looked on Halloween morning (We can wear costumes at work.)

And here is what I looked like out front on Halloween night.

Here is a video of me playing on Halloween night at dusk.

Professor Johnson Organ Donor

It was a great night for all. I turned up the organ to full volume. You could hear it three streets away. While my repertoire isn't very deep (Haunted Mansion, The Shining, Tales from the Crypt, Dark Shadows, and Intro from Phantom of the Opera) the organ gave me so many variations of sound it kept crowds entertained. 

Yes I said CROWDS! People out trick-or-treating were amazed I was playing it and were surprised it wasn't a recording. I even had soccer moms come back with their wine after their husbands finished taking the kids around. I had parents ask to have their kids pose with me for photos. What a great time. I would send the kids to the front door for their candy (my wife and grown kids gave the candy out) and keep on playing. I even had young couples (teenagers) hang in front of the organ while I played for them.

The Mad Organist was born this Halloween. And his official name is:

Well that's it for tonight from 1313 El Potro.

How I became the Mad Organist - Part 1

 

Here it is. My Gulbransen Pacemaker Custom Organ. What would Halloween be without a haunted organ?  Much to my wife's surprise I came home with one back in June. I spared no expense. I spent $35.00. The company I dealt with specializes liquidating estates. The salesman told me how their clients have no idea that old organs from the 60's & 70's are basically worthless (except Hammond's). This Gulbransen Transistor organ sold for about $2,700 new in the 1970's.  I had lofty goals of animating it. Like it was being played by a ghost. I had some very strict design goals.

1. It must use the built in electronics of the organ to get that real (NOT MIDI) sound.

2. The keys must move to activate the organ. So if the "ghost" is going to play middle C the middle C key must depress.

Here is a picture of the organ so you can see the beautiful instrument I had to work with.  

My wife is the greatest when it comes to my Halloween hobby (Obeseeion?). Here only rule was "If you buy it you have to have it ready for this Halloween"  


So the plan was to create a system to read midi files, convert that into a 5 volt electrical charge, connect that to a solenoid that presses the keys and 5 years and $1,000 later I would be done! Well it wasn't that bad. I was able to scuttle that project before I got too far along. Now what?

I decided to learn how to play an organ. Here are some details about my Gulbransen.

 It can really play lots of variations between organ, flute, calliope, piano, harpsichord, very creepy. Now how to learn a few spooky songs in a couple of months? (I finally gave up on the automated organ idea in September). Where else, but YouTube.

I thought of one of my favorite spooky sounds, the organ from the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland. So I typed "How to play haunted mansion" into YouTube. Here is what I found.


How to Play Disneys- Haunted Mansion

Perfect! I mastered this in a week and tried a few more. As of Halloween I had mastered Tales from the Crypt, Haunted Mansion, The Shining, Dark Shadows, Chopin Funeral March, and finally The Phantom of the Opera. Here take a listen:
 

Next time I will have some samples of what the organ sounded like on Halloween.
That's it for tonight from 1313 El Potro.