I’ve been an organist for over thirty years.  Excuse me, I have to go and lie down now.

*recovers from shock of typing that*

Ahem.  Anyway.  Five years ago, in part due to several house moves and relocating from one end of the country to the other, I was obliged to say goodbye to my delightful Wyvern Toccata III digital organ, which had given me many happy hours of entertainment, and didn’t upset the neighbours too much.  Fast forward to 2017, and my lifestyle has settled down to the point where I have the time and energy to devote to practice (all Bach, all the time).  My goodness, how time has moved on!  After looking at several digital instruments, wincing at the price and slinking sadly away, I came to the conclusion that I wouldn’t be able to afford a new organ, so perhaps something would show up on eBay.

It was then that I discovered Hauptwerk.  If you have been living in a cave (or, like me, Norfolk) and have not heard of Hauptwerk, it a virtual organ application which runs on the Mac as well as Windows, connects to a MIDI keyboard stack, and turns your lounge into Salisbury Cathedral (only, without tourists interrupting you to take pictures when you’re trying to nail that little Krebs passage which keeps tying your fingers in knots, and asking you to play Widor’s Toccata).  When you are bored with Salisbury, there are dozens of instruments which have been professionally and extensively sampled, ranging from small parish churches to the great cathedral and concert organs of Europe and the US.  I also learned that a friend had built a Hauptwerk console out of an elderly electronic organ, so off I toddled to have a twiddle.

I was hooked.

Dear Reader, I now recount the curious tale of how I picked up an old analogue console, and document its transformation into a thing of beauty and delight.  Unless you’ve read the posts backwards.  In which case, I would like to reassure  you that there are no hidden messages to be revealed by so doing, and you can stop now.