Star Spangled Banner registration

[Melanie B]

I'm preparing to play The Star-Spangled Banner in July, and it's going well except for my registration.  I want a strong bass, brassy even, but not too harsh and everything I come up with is just too loud.  I don't want my congregation to go away with bleeding ears, but rather a feeling of pride for our country. I'm brand new to this, and haven't even played a week at church yet, so maybe it's not as loud as I think. 

Also if I want a full vibrant chorus, does that mean I want all the vibrant stops on?

Quiet meditative I can do, it's loud that's tricky.

Thanks!

[Joshua Tolley]

On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 10:18:57PM -0700, Melanie B wrote:
> I'm preparing to play The Star-Spangled Banner in July, and it's going well
> except for my registration. I want a strong bass, brassy even, but not too
> harsh and everything I come up with is just too loud. I don't want my
> congregation to go away with bleeding ears, but rather a feeling of pride
> for our country. I'm brand new to this, and haven't even played a week at
> church yet, so maybe it's not as loud as I think.

My own experience is that in a decent sized ward, it's harder than you might
think to get it too loud. Lots of bodies tend to absorb lots of sound. During
practice you may feel like you're overwhelming the empty room, but that
feeling goes away quickly when people start filing in.

I once decided I would finally exercise some of the big pedal reeds on our
organ, which had a nice 16' Posaune I'd never used except during practice. Our
chorister, Sister Halsey, was not related to the famous WWII admiral so far as
anyone knew, but she had earned herself the nickname "Admiral" anyway, because
of her commanding presence in front of the congregation. I knew she didn't
exactly approve of some of my more energetic playing, but I kicked the posaune
on anyway for the last verse of some rousing hymn or other and really opened
things up. As she was sitting down after the hymn, she whispered a
disapproving growl at me, asking, "What on *EARTH* did you do?" My only answer
was a wide grin. There was no official survey taken, of course, but I got lots
of approving comments from the congregation afterward.

> Also if I want a full vibrant chorus, does that mean I want all the vibrant
> stops on?

My opinion: probably not. Often a few stops with the volume up works better
than lots of stops with the volume down. Especially on a real pipe organ with
actual swell boxes (or on an electronic one designed to imitate a swell box,
such as many new-ish Allen organs in LDS chapels) the sound ends up confused
and muffled when you turn on lots of stops and keep the swell boxes closed.
But opinions vary widely, and even if there's any truth at all to my own,
there are plenty of exceptions.

--
Josh Tolley

[Dan Eickmeier]

Hi Melanie, what size organ are you working with? If you have a good reed chorus on the swell, I'd use that  coupled down to the pedal, and  utilize the swell box, ie start out with it   closed. If you could possibly record what you're doing, so I could hear  and send that to the list, then I'd be able to help you  more efficiently

Sent from my iPhone

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[LISA]

Just my personal preference, but I would not use reed tone throughout the entire hymn; it is just too tiring.  Maybe on the third verse or even just the last half of the third verse, would I add a trumpet stop.  If you are only adding reeds in the pedal, that would be great on the final verse, but even then I wouldn't do it for the entire hymn.

Looking at my markings in my hymnal, what I have used in the past is: verse 1) principal chorus up to 2'; verse 2) add to the principal chorus to make it fuller--more 8's and 4's; verse 3) add a mixture.   That is a somewhat understated registration, but I'm not sure the organ needs to compete with the congregation.  Another possibility would be to have a principal chorus to mixture on verse 1; take off the mixture and add 8's and 4's for verse 2; bring the mixture back on for verse 3 with a trumpet added at "then conquer we must...".

Lisa Glade

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From: learni...@googlegroups.com <learni...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Melanie B <mel...@buttars.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2017 11:18 PM
To: LearningOrgan
Subject: [LearningOrgan] Star Spangled Banner registration

 

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[MusicalMom]

Don't be afraid of loud--they'll be standing up to sing, and it's a very well known hymn. It's important to make sure the registration is balanced, though, and not ugly. It would be helpful to know what organ you're playing, but a registration plan that I've use in the past is similar to this:

Verse 1: All Principals 8', 4', 2' with all Flutes 8', 4', 2', and Swell mixture with pedal to balance (principals and flutes 16', 8', 4', optional couplers from manual)

Verse 2: Remove Mixture and 2' Octave (Principal) to reflect the "silence" text

Verse 2 Chorus: Add them back

Verse 3: Full organ (minus reeds)

Verse 3 Chorus: Add reed(s) to manual/pedal and add some fun things in the pedal.

Good luck!

Jennifer Morgan
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-LDS-Organist-Blog/334614664920

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"Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons.  You will find it is to the soul what a water bath is to the body."
Oliver Wendell Holmes

[MusicalMom]

I should add that full organ doesn't mean every stop.  Don't use celestes, and you may or may not want to use mutations (the fraction stops). Let your ear guide you as you listen to what each stop adds to the whole.

--Jennifer

[Paul Slaughter]

I just realized I forgot to respond to this.

I always go all out on this one. A few important things first: 1. I have a fairly large ward, so lots of people singing! 2. The volume of the organ has been adjusted at the amps to match the size of the chapel and the size of the ward (this is something that can be done for free😀 - no FM Group involvement needed!) and 3. The members of my ward are used to this sort of thing by now (I've been the ward organist in this ward for over 10 years now).

A typical registration I'd use for this:

Verse 1.

Great:

8' Diapason

8' Rohrflote

4' Octave

4' Spitzflote

2' Super Octave

Mixture IV

Sw. to Gt. coupler

Swell:

8' Gedeckt

8' Viola

4' Spitz Prinzipal

4' Koppelflote

2' Blockflote

Pedal:

16' Bourdon

16' Lieblich Gedeckt

8' Octave

8' Gedeckt Flote

4' Choral Bass

Mixture IV

8' Trompete

Sw. to Ped. Coupler

Verse 2:

Add to Swell:

2 2/3' Nasard

8' Trompette

Add to Pedal:

16' Posaune

Remove from Pedal:

8' Trompete

Verse 3:

Add to Great:

16' Lieblich Gedeckt

Add to Swell:

Fourniture IV

4' Clairon

Add to Pedal:

8' Trompete

After the fermata in verse 3:

Add to Swell:

1 3/5' Tierce

16' Basson

(So, yeah, that's full organ minus the celestes 😀 )

I also like to use this reharmonization from David Bytheway: http://ldsorganist.org/song_file/file/49/The_Star_Spangled_Banner_320_in_Ab_no_key_change.pdf

It's very effective. Always get lots of favorable comments about it.

Paul Slaughter

[Max Walker]

Bravo, Paul! I like that a lot, both registration and reharmonization. My ward also sings strongly and they have grown accustomed to and appreciative of this sort of registration. 

[Max Walker]

Oh, and would you talk more about the adjusting of the volume at the amps, etc.? There was another thread here about such options. I'm very curious. 

[Paul Slaughter]

I've never experimented with this on a Rodgers, but have on more than one Allen.

If you remove the back of the organ console (on an Allen, anyway), there will be something (or more than one thing) that looks like this: https://reverb-res.cloudinary.com/image/upload/s--Z8DgAFoC--/a_exif,c_limit,e_unsharp_mask:80,f_auto,fl_progressive,g_south,h_620,q_90,w_620/v1472074274/whxs4akoxcokobokzpw8.jpg

There should be one volume knob per channel. My chapel has an MDS-6, so only two channels. Other models may have anywhere from 2 to 7 channels. It's really easy to just simply turn down the volume on the channels. You just need to make sure to keep the channels balanced, so that some stops are not suddenly louder than others

The result of adjusting the volume this way is far superior than trying to adjust the volume with the expression pedal 😀.  My personal opinion is that full principal chorus through mixture on the great should be usable on lively hymns, and this is an easy way of adjusting an electronic organ to an appropriate volume level, especially since so few are actually installed or voiced for the chapel they're in.

An additional thought on this: if you're Ward meets in a Stake Center, you can have the volume set lower for Sacrament Meetings, and then turn it up for Stake meetings.

On Fri, May 26, 2017 at 12:20 PM, Max Walker <maxw...@gmail.com> wrote:

Oh, and would you talk more about the adjusting of the volume at the amps, etc.? There was another thread here about such options. I'm very curious. 

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[Max Walker]

Much obliged!