Organ - Different Channels per staff?

Ok, I’ve got this part working, but now I can’t seem to figure out how to do the Expression Map entries - in Finale its a snap, you just assign a program change to some text…

I get that a new technique needs to be created, but then I can’t seem to access it in the expression map to define what it should do…

The missing ingredient is the creation of the playback playing technique in Engrave > Playing Techniques to correspond to the text instruction you created, then map that same playback playing technique in your expression map.

Thanks, Daniel…

I tried that, and it still didn’t show up when trying to make an expression map.

Is there a particular order in which it should be done?

I’ll try it on a new file, too… just to see if I can get it to work a second time.

Best,

Sometimes a custom playback playing technique can (temporarily) end up at the bottom of the list rather than at the expected alphabetical position…

I checked out HW5 this weekend and successfully made some expression maps. I can upload a demo project here when i’m back at the computer on wednesday should anyone find it useful…

If you’re having problems, Jonathan, please feel free to zip up and attach your project together with the salient details I would need to investigate, such as the name of the playback playing technique you’re expecting to see, and I will gladly take a look.

Thanks, Daniel…

I’ll have another go at it this weekend - if any other issues arise, I’ll indeed .zip up a file. Appreciate the support!

I would be interested. I’m a big HW user and run it side-by-side with Dorico every day at my office and frequently at home as well. (We are in the process of moving to a new house and this past week my father, a friend, and I managed to heave-ho my 3m organ down into the basement of the new house. The stairwell has a turn at the bottom and we found ourselves in a bit of a pickle when the organ couldn’t quite make the turn and we had to flip the organ up on its side to get it around the bend… it was a hairy situation but we did it! We did have a little run-in with the law, however… (the wall). Alas, it turned out fine in the end and miraculously the organ doesn’t have a mark on it. Good thing I shrink-wrapped it first!

I’ve never futzed around with expression maps as I’ve never really had the need; most of what I compose I can play myself directly into HW and more complicated things are rendered using NP. That said, I’d love to know how to get D to control HWV directly.

Gee, if you had used more shrink wrap, perhaps you could have shrunk the organ enough to get it around the turn in the staircase more easily. :confused:

…and if you’d used less you might have made the turn :wink:

That’s not quite as bad as a colleague with a nice 6’6" grand piano who moved house, and discovered the only way to get the piano into the new house where he wanted it was to hire a crane operator to lift it over the roof of the house and lower it onto a first-floor balcony, operating completely “blind” except for an assistant with a cell phone giving the driver instructions.

Amusingly, the crane operators originally thought the job was impossible, because none of them knew you could take the legs and pedals off the piano. Once they had learned that, they thought that having a £50,000 piano swinging around 30 feet in the air was no big deal - just a normal “day at the office”.

If only… the shrink wrap is the only thing that saved my woodwork from getting a facial. lol.

At one point I had to exclaim to my compatriots that “we need to move the organ back from the wall to turn!” they didn’t seem to understand at the time that what I meant was that the corner of the organ was about 1.5" INSIDE a baseball-sized hole in the wall at the time I made the comment, hence no matter how hard they tried, it wouldn’t turn. It was only after we were walking back upstairs that my friend started laughing upon noticing the hole and only then realizing what I meant and why I was so insistent at the time. Unfortunately, that was the best phrase I could think of at the time whilst pinned between the organ and the wall holding well over 100lbs on my corner. Two days on and my peck was still sore from taking a sharp corner of the instrument to the chest. I only weigh $1.55 so my words were a little breathless at the time. :laughing:

At any rate, all’s well that ends well, and I look forward to getting back to business in my new study in about two weeks time.

I used to own a stunning 6’6" Chickering parlor grand from 1903 with ivories; the whole bit. It was a massive piano and one set of movers told me it was the heaviest piano they had ever moved. It was a fascinating piece of piano history. The treble keycheek was over 4" thick and the bass cheek was over 8" thick; the result was it was a full foot wider than most pianos of equal length (and 6’+ pianos are rare enough to begin with—at least in private residences) so its sound was enormous.

The first home we had it in required us to roll it around the back of the house and go in through the master bedroom door which opened up to the back patio. It was good fun trying to roll it around the house. The second set of movers—decidedly less professional, despite their promotional materials—ended up breaking one of the legs off and then nearly dropping it off the side of the ramp up to the big truck. I watched in horror as someone jumped 5’ down off of the ramp whilst grabbing one of the straps wrapped around it to oppose the force as it began to tip. (Coincidently this also broke one of the wooden levers that makes the pedaling system function…) These same fools only brought one skid board to move the piano and organ and then tried to wheel my organ around the house the same way without a skid board. I threw a royal fit and ended up on the phone with the company’s CEO after a rather insistent call with the secretary. I told her if she knew what was good for her she’d get the poor sap on the phone post haste.

They rather wisely offered to not charge me for the move and pay for a piano technician to make the appropriate repairs and also upright the piano (which had to remain on it’s side in it’s new home for a good two weeks while the leg was being repaired…). I’ll never forget that day. It is seared into my memory. It is one of only two times in my entire life that I have cried out of overwhelming anger. That poor CEO got a mouthful from me that day :laughing: . You can’t damage a (then) 113yo piano (which had been previously professionally restored complete with having the original soundboard recrowned!) and just replace it. Ohhh no you don’t! 4 years on and my blood pressure still rises just thinking of it.

Edit: sadly I had to sell the piano when we moved cross country. I didn’t have all the proper paperwork to prove provenance to cross state borders with ivory. Besides, cross country moves are expensive enough without paying an additional 4k to have a huge piano and an organ moved by dedicated instrument movers. One day, in my forever home I’ll get another historic grand. One day…

The crane guys weren’t bothered about the risk of breaking the legs, but the balcony (with a safety railing of course) was only wide enough to put the piano down on its side, and they couldn’t think of a way to lower it onto two out of three legs and then get it inside the house while still supported by the crane.

The actual lifting was uneventful compared with the first step, which was driving the crane into position in a narrow London street and getting its safety legs extended with literally about an inch of clearance from the parked cars on both sides of the road. They had arranged to get the road officially closed for half a day, but decided it was going to be too much hassle to get all the residents’ cars moved as well!

PIVOT! PIVOT! :laughing:

Glad the balcony was able to handle the weight; modern balconies might not.

Indeed.

The house owner was a Mechanical Engineering professor (in the British sense of the word, not the grade-inflated US sense), so he probably considered that.

In fact he did consider it, and when somebody mentioned it the response was “well, the piano weighs about 700 pounds. Would anybody think twice about having a party in that room with the balcony doors open, and four adults weighing 200 pounds each standing on the balcony at the same time? No, they wouldn’t!”

Of course a balcony that was only meant to look pretty and not to be used for anything might have been a different story.

A very interesting thread! I’m playing around with an expression map to drive the GPO5 custom organ console with mixed results so far. I’ll try adapting the suggestions here.

Adventures in piano moving :slight_smile: I’ve had plenty. I spent most of the 70’s as a piano tuner/tech including a stint at $&$ in the Concert and Artists Department under Franz M. Knowing the proper moving techniques for various situations and more importantly, which movers were actually qualified was an important part of the trade.

BTW, here in the US, grade inflation doesn’t extend into mechanical engineering and most of the other “hard” disciplines. The same cannot be said for some other “soft” disciplines. My son is an ME with a graduate degree. One of his high school friends, the son of a British IBM executive on a five year assignment here in the US, went back to the UK for his university (Southampton, IIRC) studies in ME. Comparing notes, they found that their respective programs were almost identical. If you can’t do differential equations, you can’t be an ME, period, end of story. :slight_smile: Most engineering failures are usually ultimately caused by bean counters and poor management. See Richard Feynman’s comments on the subject in the appendix of the Congressional study on the Challenger space shuttle disaster.

Chris

I was talking about academic job titles, not necessarily about course content. In the UK “professor”, only applies to the highest ranked members of a university. In the US it is more like the French professeur - anybody at any level who teaches.

Some UK universities have adopted the US meaning, but even so only about 10% of academics in the UK have “professor” in their job titles.

At the “old” UK universities the proportion is much less. For example at Cambridge only about 200 of the 8,000 academic staff have the formal title of professor.

Here in the US, those are referred to as “Full Professor”. Lesser titles are Associate Professor, Adjunct Professor, Lecturer, etc.

On a more musical note, the pianists in old time American brothels were traditionally referred to as “Professor”, often pronounced as “Perfesser”.

Chris