Saturday, August 22, 2015

NOT THE REAL THING

A few times each year Jim is invited to preach in a church in Rocky Mountain House.  They always ask that I play organ for the service, and I'm happy to oblige.  They have a fairly decent organ, and it's a group that really loves to sing.

We used to go three weeks at a time and do two services each of the three weeks.  It's a two hour drive from here, and services are at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m.  Last year we found that that was a bit too much for us to handle, so now we limit it to one service a Sunday. Tomorrow is one of those Sundays.

I don't have, and have never had, an organ in the house, so I go to a local church to practice the week before we go there.  A friend of mine, an organist in a church here, loans me her church key and I go three or four times in that week to get the music ready. Since I play only once or twice a year, I need to work on it pretty seriously to have new music ready and secure.

This past week I was "under the weather" due to not enough sleep, and feeling listless, so I never got out there to practice until Thursday.  Went again on Friday, but the church is busy today, so I can't practice there.  Practicing on my piano helps, but doesn't do much for practicing the pedals.  So I pretend I'm playing pedals, which helps a little bit.

Today I had a "bright" (maybe) idea: I would put together a pretend pedalboard.  I used a yardstick and children's building blocks to approximate the black pedals.  That should give a bit more of a "pedalboard" feeling to it.  It did, sort of:

Makes me think it might be worthwhile to construct a facsimile of a pedalboard.  Could be done!

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