OKC packed full with all that`s best in the wonderful - V3

OCT 2013
PRICE £2.90
ISSUE No. 316
Sceptre Promotions Ltd, 97 Elton Road, Stibbington, Peterborough PE8 6JX. Tel: (01780) 782093, ISSN 1365-1986
Email: [email protected] Website:www.keyboard-cavalcade.co.uk
This month
Michael reviews a
Wurlitzer in a box,
with the Tower
Organ V3 sound
expander.
O.K.C packed full with all that’s best in the wonderful world of organs & keyboards…..
Coming soon .. We look at new organs
from Bohm and Lowrey,
plus a very exciting new mega-keyboard!
INSIDE THIS MONTH: READERS' REVIEW 5
NEWSLINE 7
WURLITZER IN A BOX REVIEW 9
JANET DOWSETT 12
BILL IRWIN 14
PENNY WEEDON 17 PETER HAYWARD 20
LEN RAWLE 22 LILLIAN BOUCHER 25
BRIAN HAZELBY 28 CD REVIEWS 30
CLASSIFIEDS 32
SOCIETY SOAPBOX 34
CONCERTS 35
ORGAN & KEYBOARD CAVALCADE The Sounds of the Blackpool Tower and More, for your Home!
by MICHAEL WOOLDRIDGE
This month our review takes us both to Blackpool and to
Switzerland, all courtesy of some most wonderful samples of
the legendary Wurlitzer at the Blackpool Tower Ballroom, now
available in a new unit, the Tower Organ V3 sound expander,
some sounds from which are also available in other formats
we'll come to in a moment!
Made famous by organist Reginald Dixon, the Tower
Wurlitzer, whilst not the largest, is most certainly one of the
most famous theatre organs in the whole world. Whether I'm
in America, Holland or Australia, they all seem to know of it!
The ballroom itself has the most magical atmosphere and it
is wonderful that a whole new generation have become aware
of it through seeing Strictly Come Dancing on the television.
We can only hope that some of those make a visit to see the
ballroom for themselves and then find they are hooked by
the Wurlitzer in the same way that so many millions have
been over many decades.
Years ago, Dixon used to play
for dancing at the Tower
when there
were literally
thousands
of people in
the ballroom
and the organ
only being of
medium size, it
was not really
loud enough. To
overcome this, he
devised some playing
techniques to make the
organ create more sound,
to appear louder, and it is
these clever ideas that form the
basis of what we now think of as
the Blackpool style, things like the
very rhythmic left hand, the extra bass notes being blipped to
sound double the number of pipes, the use of the Quint and
Tierce couplers to again make more sound by playing more
pipes. He was a genius as he made the organ work well in
the busy room in a way that was incredibly entertaining and
people thronged to hear him.
The excellent work Dixon did is carried on to this day, with
current Principal Resident Organist, Phil Kelsall, who has
now been working at the Tower for an incredible 38 years!
Employed initially to play in the band for the Tower Circus,
just a couple of years later Phil took over from Dixon's
successor, the marvellous Ernest Broadbent, and the rest,
his many radio and TV appearances; gold discs; the coveted
Gold Badge Award of the British Academy of Songwriters,
Composers and Authors for his service to the British music
industry (with other recipients including Shirley Bassey and
Jools Holland) and, in 2010, very much following in the steps
of Reg Dixon, being awarded the MBE for services to music;
is all remarkable proof both of Phil's huge talents and the high
regard in which the Tower Resident is still held.
It was a few years ago I first became aware of a product
OCTOBER 2013
PAGE 9
developed by accordionist Reg Rawlings under his brand
Total Transformation Technology (TTT), which became
known as TOIAB, which stands for Theatre Organ In A Box.
For this, Reg had recorded digital samples of the historic
Tower Wurlitzer and then made them available to us through
a Roland Phantom expander, which was a brilliant piece of
equipment but isn't the most user friendly thing around. The
samples themselves were staggeringly good though, really
making the sound exactly as if you were at the Tower.
As time has moved on, Reg has made these samples, plus
others, available for installation to Yamaha Tyros keyboards
(so long as you have upgraded the memory in it), although
there is the slight issue that Tyros doesn't have the ability to
layer so many sounds together at the same time as some
others, most especially as you can only have one lower sound
at a time. Because the sounds are complete combinations,
this isn't as much of a problem as it perhaps appears, since
some of the individual voices are complete lower manual
settings.
The actual samples themselves, like most these days,
live on a tiny little soundboard. I have recently returned
from my regular mid-August visit to play for Swiss organ
enthusiast, Joe Bechter and his friends at
his home on the banks of Lake Zurich
in Lachen. When I was there last
year I helped design a bespoke
3 manual console for Joe to
play his superb Paramount
50 rank Virtual Wurlitzer
Theatre Pipe Organ and
then I went back over
there this spring to
attend to the final
settings for him.
Joe has been
bringing groups
from Switzerland
to our Cavalcade
Festivals for many years
so, knowing he had been to our
Blackpool event this year, I asked if he
had seen the new V3 Tower Organ expander. He
smiled and explained that yes he had heard it, how he
very much liked it and that he had now had the
TTT sample chip installed in his Böhm
Overture Expander, which is
also connected to his three
manual.
This led us into a few
hours revelling in the sound of
the Tower Wurlitzer. Whilst of course
Joe's Hauptwerk/Paramount set-up gives a fabulous Wurlitzer
sound, these Tower samples are exactly that, not a general
Wurlitzer sound but exactly the sound of the Tower and, better
still, they have sampled all of the most popular combinations
used by the organists there, the actual presets they use when
playing for dancing and in concert.
My visits to see Joe are always a joy, partly because he
has a wonderfully infectious enthusiasm for theatre organ,
partly because he gathers together a really friendly group
of people who really love what I play for them (which rather
than my standard repertoire is tailored very much to what I
know they enjoy, mainly very American style playing), and
partly because his wife, Pia, looks after us all so very well
with oodles and oodles of home cooked delights.
Joe's situation is a great example of why the new V3 Tower
PAGE 10 OCTOBER 2013 Expander is so brilliant compared with other options for these
voices. When I arrived Joe had installed the Tower sounds
into his Böhm expander and, individually, they sounded
great, but he wasn't really sure how to get them all in the
correct octaves, which ones to put together on each manual
and how to make
presets that used
them on all three
manuals and bass.
Of course, I have
now set all of this
up into presets for
him and the result
is everything you
could ever want it
to be.
ORGAN & KEYBOARD CAVALCADE This base option gives you the full range of Tower sounds
and a whole wide range of presets, which recreate the pistons
settings (presets) on the Tower Wurlitzer. The presets come
up in groups of four at a time and all you have to do to move
between them is push one of four buttons, so it really couldn’t
be easier.
If you buy a
n e w V 3 To w e r
Organ Expander,
all of this work
has already been
done for you. If
you tell them which
instrument you are
using it with, they
may well supply it
ready to work so
that all you do is
connect the MIDI
Out from your
keyboard or organ
to the MIDI In on
the V3, the Audio
Out from the V3 to your amplifier (or keyboard Audio In) and
that's it, you'll be ready to play. That said, they do offer a U.K.
wide home installation service, for which they only charge
their travel expenses, so that’s a brilliant offer.
When you swap
from one set of
four presets
to the another
se t, th e s ound
instantly changes
to a sound in
the new group,
which makes it
impractical to
move between
groups in a
piece for fear of
suddenly having
an inappropriate
registration.
Fortunately
TTT are always
striving to update
and improve their
products and
when I made this
observation to
them, they said
they will seek to
change it so that
when you change
to the new bank of presets you won’t hear a new sound until
you actually select one of the four available, which I think is
far more useful, so I hope they can achieve this, which I am
confident they will.
The V3 is a very small compact little unit, measuring just
27.3cm x 18cm x 6.8cm. The sounds being on the little circuit
boards I’ve already
mentioned, you
can opt to buy
it with various
options. In its most
basic form, the
Desktop Tower V3
comes with only
the Tower samples
in it, and I think this
is the way many
people will buy it.
This option costs
£1,400 and gives
you everything
you could want
t o b e a To w e r
organist! Indeed,
some of the
Tower Resident
Organist team are
now using them,
most notably the
wonderful John
Bowdler, who is
using it on his Technics GA3 in concerts, and Chris Hopkins
who actually uses it when he plays for dancing on the Roland
AT900 in the Tower Ballroom.
This little niggle aside, the presets are marvellous. If you
have a three keyboard and pedal set up, they give you all of
the sounds for the
entire instrument,
just as you would
use at the Tower.
If, as when I
tried it out on my
Yamaha EL-700,
you only have two
keyboards, then
TTT will help you
set it so that one
key or button will
change the upper
setting from the
Great (middle)
keyboard at the
Tower to the Solo
(top) keyboard.
This works really
well. If you are
controlling it from
a single keyboard,
you would use
the left end of
the keyboard to
control the lower sounds and the right hand end for the upper.
The sampled sounds cover everything you hear in the
building and include that wonderful big acoustic that makes it
ORGAN & KEYBOARD CAVALCADE
such a special sound. Some of the preset combinations give
the classic nasal Blackpool sounds using the Quint and Tierce
couplers, then others include shimmering Tibia based sounds
for the Waltzes, Re-iterating Xylophone and Glockenspiel for
the foot-tappers, the Piano, Tibias and Voxes, Krumet, just all
the Tower sounds there are
in daily use, ready for you
to play at home. It really is
incredible.
The downside to the
voices being in these
marvellous presets is that
you don’t have as much
freedom to make your own
sounds as you would with
the various Virtual Theatre
Pipe Organs available, like
Miditzer and Paramount, but
that flexibility isn’t really the
point of this expander, as
the aim here is to sound like
you are playing at the Tower,
and it works!
It comes with a listing so
you know which sounds
a r e w h e r e a n d , wh il st
the presets provided are
probably what you are
going to use, you can make
your own combinations by
creating different groupings
of the various samples (up
to 16 layers available at
a time) and you can also
adjust the volume levels
between all of the sections.
Whilst I have not yet had
the pleasure of hearing her
with it, I understand that
Elizabeth Harrison is now
using the V3 in many of her
concerts and she apparently
tends to use it live and
mix and match the sounds
rather than sticking to the
preset combinations.
If you want more than ‘just’
the sounds of one of the
most famous organs in the
world, for just £300 extra, so
£1,700 (which I understand
is about £350 less than the
standard asking price) you
can also have installed a
sound-board which gives
you a full rhythm unit
with style backings and
autobass plus a huge range
of orchestral sounds, brass,
strings, percussion etc etc.
Again, these have been put into presets in groups of four
for ease of use and again you are able to mix and match
up to 16 voices of your choice at any one time. This makes
it a very useful piece of equipment indeed and there are
some very useful presets, including some that combine the
Wurlitzer sounds with the orchestral sounds.
As with most keyboards, the Styles have 4 Variations of
OCTOBER 2013 PAGE 11
pattern for each Style and they have 3 Fill-Ins for each. Being
here associated to the Tower organ, they include Quicksteps,
Waltzes, Tangos and Sambas, as well as more modern styles.
All Styles can be edited should you wish to.
The sounds are of a
generally high standard but
TTT are determined they will
be the very, very best they can
be, so are working to make
all possible improvements
to them. Some of the very
latest extras include a really
good Celtic section, with
Bodhrans (drums), Fiddles,
Accordions and Pipes.
We are now becoming
used to keyboards having
sounds which change to fit
the way we use them and
give more natural, realistic
sounds. The V3 has many,
many of these artist sounds:
it’s well worth seeing how
many interesting variations
you get as you play your
Trumpet Solo!
I must mention that it will
also play MIDI files and MP3
audio files.
There are a great many
functions and features
available but to me, the
bottom line here is that if
you love the sound of the
legendary Wurlitzer Organ
of the Tower Ballroom,
Blackpool, this expander is
a must have item. If that
particular instrument isn’t to
your liking then, despite the
fabulous array of voices and
backings available in the
orchestral upgrade, you aren’t
likely to buy one, though it is
one of the most compact
sound expanders I have
come across for rhythms and
orchestral sounds, so you
might still go for it.
For more information,
call Total Transformation
Technology on 01704 537
690 or visit their website www.ttt-sounds.com - where
you can see more about them
and also follow the links to
see clips of Tower organists
David Lobban and John
Bowdler using the Tower V3.
I must say that whilst I enjoyed the clips and they give a
good idea of the possibilities with this great expander, I don’t
think the sound quality on the videos truly does it justice, as
whilst they sound nice, in the flesh, as I’ve used it both at
home and in Switzerland, the sound is much richer, fuller and
is really just like being at the Tower.