Baldwin Organ (16mm 1950s)

[Music] so [Music] maybe you'd be interested to know how it happened that three organs were delivered at oliver street in one day to understand how it happened you have to know a little about some of the folks who live in those houses on the street they're nice houses those three and the folks who live in them are nice people too kind of different from one another but all pleasant people that's pete baker on his way to the biggest outfit in town has a very important job down there tell me that's his wife betty as your guess marjorie and jimmy with his usual amount of time to spare that's mr and mrs green who live next door retired folks and that's doc miller's house looks real quiet from the outside doesn't it doc miller looks real quiet from the outside too just like lots of us [Music] what's it this time harry glasses they're not in the desk there well you know where they are well gladys if you know where they are look it's getting late thanks [Music] bye goodbye there [Music] maybe you're wondering what's on doc's mind if you're expecting something dramatic you're wrong there's nothing on his mind today there isn't any day he's just in a hurry like most of us gladys that's his wife keeps telling him he needs some way to slow down some way to relax if you've ever seen doc down at the drugstore you'll admit that gladys has got something there doc fills about a million prescriptions a day but he never gave much thought to a formula for forgetting the daily pressures that go with his work that is not until one afternoon a couple of months ago doc was ambling along as usual when someone happened to get the message through [Music] can't tell you just what hit him but it hit him hard [Music] i suspect he's had a yen to play one of those machines [Music] he felt kind of strange at first standing there asking questions but the way he tells it he kept having this picture in his mind he could see himself getting home from a rough day and sitting down at the organ to play a piece nothing elaborate just a little tune before dinner [Music] one way or another he had about a million questions to ask the store manager suggested that a home demonstration of the organ might be just the thing to answer them maybe doc would like to invite some neighbors in too doc agreed that might be a good idea and the date was made for a few evenings [Music] later [Music] folks mr osborne eddie osmond here is going to show us how this little organ works now i don't know exactly what he's going to do with it but i'll leave that up to him thanks a lot mr miller the whole purpose of these gatherings is to acquaint people with this organ now i'll probably say some things you already know but usually there are some folks who don't know anything about this instrument at all so uh i just like to start from the beginning mostly my part of these demonstrations is to play i've played pipe organs since i was big enough to reach the pedals i just get a kick out of it and that's why i'm pleased to demonstrate this little home organ especially for folks who aren't interested in becoming professional you see there are two keyboards manuals we call them the upper manual is a solo you play that with your right hand [Music] now a beginner can concentrate on that right hand because down here on the left side you don't need much this lower manual is called the accompaniment and you use it to do just that accompany the tune you play up here but you see all you have to do is put three fingers here [Music] now here then there's another group of keys called the petals your left foot plays them one at a time these are pretty terrific for a little organ [Music] put them all together and they spell organ like this [Music] now the thing that makes the organ so fascinating is that it doesn't have just one tone actually it has four tonal families sort of like the sections of an orchestra the reeds that is the saxophone the clarinet the oboe and over here the trumpet then the flutes the board on the flute the tibia family the flute the strings the solutional the celloset the gems horn and the violina the diaphasians here's the petal diaphasin and over here the horn diaphasian and way over here the octave they are the pure organ tones only on the organ these tablets you call them stops are the way you choose the various voices or tone colors now for instance suppose we take the reed family see if anyone knows what this solo stop is that's a trumpet that's right jimmy now in the same family see if you can tell me what this is [Music] is it a noble exactly the fun of playing the organ is that you combine these different kinds of sounds you can play one instrument or a combination of instruments up here and accompany it with a different sound down here but the big thing about this little organ and this is really a test of an electronic organ is that it has pure organ tone look this is too much talking and not enough playing and now for mrs green i'm going to feature the flutes in just a part of an old favorite [Music] well that was straight oregon just sit back and relax now and listen to this number in real theater style remember charmaine [Music] foreign [Music] now i'd like to show you a really new feature on this organ this is something that's really fun especially for a beginner it's what we call our percussion ensemble you see you can get some wonderful effects with it for instance let me take just a soft accompaniment a little bit of pedal nothing up here on the solo accepting percussion just the vibraharp [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] operations [Music] and here's another very interesting combination on the percussion uh it sounds sort of like a tinklebell or maybe a glockenspiel i'm taking a real old tune and i'm playing it real simple i hope you like it [Music] so [Music] i'd like to wake up to that every morning but the percussion stop that impresses me most is the hoan guitar i think it's one of the greatest um you'll be the judge palm trees [Music] wasn't that real pretty well there are just a few of the effects that we can get with the percussion ensemble there are many hundreds which i don't have time to demonstrate at this point but here's one of my very very great favorites it's the old banjo uh see if you can keep your feet still on this one [Music] well and now before i go on of course i kind of like this stuff you know but uh are there any more questions well yes uh doesn't that take a lot of current to run oh uh about as much as an electric iron mr miller but it sounds ever so much prettier than an electric iron mr osborne marjorie stop bothering mr osborne what i want to know is how she works well of course i know something about pipe organs but this is the first time i ever saw one of these electronic ones what uh what makes the sound i brought something along that i think might explain better to you how this organ works um would you all like to see it oh yeah well fine i'll get it be right back this is very much simplified but i do think it'll show all of you just how an electronic organ works first of all i'll plug this into the electric socket just like i did the organ here let me do it thank you jimmy you see the current comes in this way and it goes here first this is the power supply and your alternating current is converted to direct current here then it flows along to the tone generator that's where this tube is lit up you mean the tube itself makes the tone that's right the tube oscillates well i'd say it vibrates electrically uh sometimes a tube in a radio will do the same thing when you're tuning in you know kind of a high whistling sound well actually the electricity comes into the tone generator or the tube and is converted into a signal that signal flows along to the key but it stopped right there because there isn't any contact right now when i push down this key the signal will come this far to the tone color tabs these are just like the stops on the organ they choose that part of the signal coming through which sounds like the instrument we're trying to simulate and they filter out all the rest of the signal like putting something through a strainer exactly now i'll push the key down there's no sound because the signal stopped here but when i push one of these stop tablets just the part of the signal we want will go through the amplifier here the amplifier builds up that signal so it can be heard through the speaker [Music] so it goes round and round and comes out here then this parts just like a radio or phonograph that's right but in the organ it's really high fidelity just one more thing now and then i think we're ready to try it out you see here when i press this down it makes a gradual contact this light shows you how that works further down i push the key the more signal gets through it's a gradual contact any special reason for that as far as organ tone is concerned the most special reason in the world you see the effort here is to get as close to two pipe organ tone as possible now a pipe organ tone sounds that way as the air goes into the pipe the tone gets rounder and fuller you won't find this on other electronic organs by the way this special gradual contact arrangement also eliminates that pop and click that some electronic organs have well now uh let's try it do you want to take a chance me sure okay choose your stop oboe or flute oboe now let's uh let's try the flu all right say that's very interesting very ingenious that's great but could you play a couple of more tunes for us well if you'd all really like to hear some more we'd love to okay i'll go to some stuff that i really have fun with okay hang on to your hats now we'll have a little rock and roll [Music] um um [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Applause] um boy i'd like to play that thing brother hey dad now just take it easy jimmy take it easy say can i try it a bit you bet you can mr minnow that's what it's here for come on sit down i have the left hand here now i got a nice cord fingers are kind of limber you know what that is that's all right now listen to that song i agree why [Music] makes you feel powerful you know what i mean i know just what you mean maybe we'll just leave this baby here or get its twin sent over you know i don't suppose i'll ever get to play like you do but after all i'll get some music out of it by and by i know you will it didn't take that long doc miller was able to play a little tune that night made him feel as though he had just climbed mount everest made his wife feel that at last doc had found something important for himself i guess you could call it a hobby if you wanted to or maybe something a little more important than that but one way or the other it was fun once those organs had found their way to toliver street there was pleasure for lots of people it was mr green one of the organs but mrs green said if her granddaughter could get a sense of how to play the organ from a color chart or she was willing to start too mrs green went on to study with a qualified teacher really the best way of all to get the most from a home organ mrs green found out that learning to play had changed a lot since the time she was a girl she was playing tunes from the word go meanwhile jimmy baker began to learn to play by a new simplified chord system a fast easy way to learn which suited jimmy you uh may have noticed that jimmy's a young man in a hurry and doc doc began to pick up speed with a special device that thinks up the cords for your left hand didn't mind using it because he knew that when he was done with it he could discard it and go on to the real thing meanwhile he didn't have to wait for the fun of making his own music of course different people have different styles and different ways of learning but whatever the style or whatever the way there was a sound of fun and pleasure on toliver street so [Music] there was something else growing on tolliver street besides skill too you see a home organ has a way of doing something else besides making music [Music] it can build a bridge between the young and the old between a husband and his wife [Music] between a boy and his friends [Music] and the fun and the pleasure that it gives have a way of reaching out to include others music is a little like all the good things in life i guess it blesseth those who give as much as those who receive well that's it that's the story of the day they came to tolliver street and by the way don't you think it'd be pretty nice if they came to yours [Music] peace [Music] you