Metalworking in the Purest Form

[TomG]

(02-08-2016, 02:37 AM)Roadracer_Al Wrote: While I am totally not discounting the skills and experience of the builders of the pipe organs, it makes sense to me: it's sheet metal work at it's core.  The thing that really blows me away are the people who can play pipe organs to their full capacity: I utterly lack the mental parallel-processing required to play one.

Oakland has a lovely old theater with a pipe organ in the orchestra pit (on a hydraulic lift, no less!) and there is a retired gentleman who can play it quite well -- it's a thing to behold.  There are what seem like 100 switches, and 3 layers of keyboards, and a keyboard on the floor that he plays with his feet.  His brain and my brain are fundamentally wired differently, I can't imagine any amount of training which would have me playing like that.  The funny thing is that I play guitar, so it's not the musical part.

Don't know many sheet metal workers who cast their own sheet metal.

The fact the the brain can be trained to do all that stuff at once has always amazed me as well. I actually took organ lessons when I was young and although there were only the pedals and one stop, there were fleeting moments when both feet and both hands were working in unison. Now I can't walk and chew gum at the same time.

Tom