Waaaaayyyyy Analog
Jonathan Kruk will be telling "The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow" this October in The Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow, NY. I'll be providing a live score on the church's pipe organ.
This post is slightly off-topic, but I thought it was too cool not to write about. This October I’ll be accompanying storyteller Jonathan Kruk as he tells “The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow” in The Old Dutch Church- the actual church named in that famous story. While Jonathan is telling the story, I’ll be providing the score on the church’s pipe organ. Awesome.
Even though the Old Dutch Church dates back to the 1685, the Organ was installed in 1998. Nevertheless, I’m really excited about getting my hands on it. Actually, I’m excited about the whole project. Jonathan has been telling stories in the Hudson Valley since I was in high school (he hasn’t seemed to age, though).
Because the Old Dutch Church still has an active congregation, we’ll only have one afternoon of rehearsal available to us. Frankly, I’ve been a little uneasy about sitting down to a pipe organ without re-familiarizing myself with one. I’d played one or two in college, but that was twenty-plus years ago. What’s a guy to do?
I contacted St. Paul’s National Historic Site. St. Paul’s is a very old church with a cemetery attached to it. Some of the graves date back as far as the American Revolution. The church itself was used as a field hospital during the Revolution. In fact, there are Hessian soldiers buried in the churchyard.
Every year, St. Paul’s re-enacts a Revolutionary War encampment. While not a re-enactor, I’m hired by St. Paul’s to play music from the period at the event. I also frequently present workshops on Colonial music to school groups. I briefly talked about this in my post about the Zoom H-2.
Every year, St. Paul's holds a re-enactment of a Revolutionary War Encampment
I like St. Paul’s for all of the above reasons, but my favorite things about it are the sound of the room and the pipe organ. St. Paul’s, obviously, was constructed long before the advent of sound re-enforcement. The ceiling is curved and the walls are very thick. No matter how quietly you sing or play, this design carries the sound. It’s so cool. That’s acoustics for you.
The pipe organ was built by Henry Erben in 1830. Originally the bellows were powered by a pump. The handle sticks out of the side of the organ. It took two people to play it; one to pump and one to play. Now the organ has an electric blower to power the bellows. From the bellows, the air is forced into pipes. Each key (or pedal) opens a pipe, which allows the air to flow through the pipe, causing it to sound. A pipe organ will often have groups of pipes which are controlled by stops. These control which pipes get the air. If you’ve heard the expression “pulling out all the stops” that’s a pipe organ reference.
St. Paul's National Historic Site is home to this Erben Pipe Organ, made in 1830
Yesterday was a great day for me. I got to spend the afternoon in that church playing that organ. There’s something really compelling about playing such a large acoustic instrument. You can really feel the sound waves vibrating around you. The entire building resonates. It’s not just the organ you’re playing; you’re playing the building as well.
Talk about analog!
Naturally, I brought my trusty Zoom H-2 along with me. I placed it on the edge of the choir loft and set it to record in surround. In this instance, that means that the front stereo mics and the rear stereo mics are active and recording. I turned it on and just let it run while I practiced.
When I got home, I took the card out of the zoom, put it into a reader and pulled the audio off of it. Now I had two stereo files, front and back. I ran these through my mixing console to blend them together into one stereo mix. The front, as you can imagine, gave me a drier, more accurate picture of the organ. The back gave me the room. Together, these conspired to make a really nice recording.
Once I had the mix I wanted, I ran the alt out of the board through a pair of Ampex tube pre-amps (there’ll be a separate post about those later) and then back into the computer. I loved it! Here’s a short improvisation I recorded. I hope you enjoy it.
And, hey, if you’re in Sleepy Hollow during October, come down to the Old Dutch Church and watch Jonathan and me do our thing!
