Barrel Moreneta

Thinking about a mannequin to run off the machinery, a Darwinian take on the patroness of Catalonia and her composite stone chimneys came to one’s fetid brain: Has anyone else noticed the similarity between the Catalan regional patron and her mountains, and a monkey and its barrel organ pipes? (The stop-motion monkey unharmed by this…

Test version of Valencian sloth song

The text is blogged here. This uses the virtual organ I’ve rigged up and the procedure is still as here. I’ve got Audacity 1.3.1 now and tried out the ANWIDA Soft DX Reverb Light effect to try and disguise my 5€ Skype headphone mike. I’m still struggling with the fact that I can’t use all…

Paintings by Yefim Ladizhinsky of street organs accompanying shows

A guy winding a handle isn’t much to look at, so it was cool to find this site dedicated to Yefim Ladizhinsky (1911-82), whose work I really like, and who shows Odessa organ-grinders working with other performers. Re Spectacle (organist bottom left) he writes: A street-organ is a musical chest the size of a small…

MIDI versions of player piano rolls

I just found Terry Smythe’s tremendous player piano site, which roughly 5782 MIDI files converted from scanned rolls. The relevance to street organ repertoire development is obvious – an hour’s tweaking and you’ve got something perfectly adequate for purpose. I hope someone, somewhere is writing a PhD answering such questions as: did piano rolls influence…

Preview of organ grinder repertoire suggested by you folks

Re this post: the form is still here. I still need to get someone to fix the texts etc etc before ElOrganillero.com is broadcast to the world, but we’ve got a few provisional bookings starting July. Now, how’s organ construction coming on?!

What musical or theatrical numbers would you like to see performed on a barrel organ?

Any suggestions deeply appreciated. Here’s the form, the results of which I won’t publish live in order to discourage Looby from submitting the complete works of Nam June Paik. Perusable results there will, however, be, soonish. This is the original–from an old band of mine–of one arrangment I did tonight, but obviously I’m hoping you’ll…

Ultimate cargo bike

From Madras, via Wikimedia. The bike issue has been on the back burner for a few months. Maximus are wonderful but very expensive, so I’m hoping I’ll pick one up second-hand and cheap next spring as we start saying goodbye to the euro and the EU.

Automata YT channel

Here Playlist to g(r)o(w): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=148EFC1DED9AFD31 Stuff like this should be fittable onto the MIDI slot assigned and purchasable on that basis from various. How to drive karaoke-style screen subtitles for songs from MIDI track?