Most people that know me well have asked me if I have any recordings of myself, playing either piano or organ, and the answer is...“no”. This is mostly because, having been an accompanist, and church pianist, most stuff isn’t recorded, and even when it is, it’s about the performer, and not me. But, I do have several recordings of a pipe organ, on which I and a very good friend of mine did a lot of work and several days of performances on. During some of the pieces, while one can’t really call two organists a “duet”, they came pretty close. In this case, this performance is of the Navy Hymn, “Eternal Father, Strong to Save”.

Why did I pick this piece? Being a Navy man, I have always enjoyed this piece. I have sung this piece solo and as a member of a quartet, at more than one Navy function, retirements, changes of Command, and Memorial Services. In this case, it’s a performance of a very broad and majestic arrangement for organ and trumpet. In this case, I’m the “trumpet”, which is really me, taking over the “bombard” division of the instrument, while the other guy plays the accompaniment.

This piece is a very technically difficult one, with 4 hands and 2 feet going non-stop from beginning to end. If you’re timid-of-heart, then this piece is not for you. It goes from a moderate registration, to absolutely full-organ at the end. If you don’t have a good stereo to play this on, then you’ll not get the full effects of everything. The 32’ pedal stop of an organ resonate at 16hz at the lowest notes, which most stereos don’t deal with very well. The high’s for this instrument go well into the 8000hz range. In other words, just crank this right up, close your eyes, and let yourself BE there, listening to this live.

Dr Robert Vreeland is one of the finest organists I have ever had the privilege of working with. He and I have done some remarkable music together, from countless church services and multiple denominations, him on the organ and I on piano, to memorial services. Music is something truly in the here-and-now, and I think this performance illustrates.

I did all the sound engineering and mixing for the entire performance, which started out as a comedy of errors. I did everything by the total “math” and “geometry” of the room, pacing the mic’s at where they should have been mathematically the more sound-receptive. After about two hours of having Bob play a bit, recording a bit, and playing back, trying to adjust the various sound levels of the mic’s for optimal balance and clarity, things just weren’t going by the proverbial numbers. In fact, for sake of better description, the recordings were sounding like we’d taken the entire instrument, dropped it into the bottom of a well, and then had someone play while some else held a cheap, $20 microphone over the top, with bucket and all. It was just horrible. After another hour of messing with levels, I finally got frustrated, and threw the proverbial math book out the window. What better “sound sensor” do you have than your own ears? So, that’s what I used.

I started moving all 10 mic’s around, placing each one where it was best suited, and where those particular divisions could best be heard. The most humorous was trying to place the mic’s for the pedal divisions. Given that 32’ stops - those are those /really/ big ones, that go from floor to ceiling, that you can stick your whole face into and look around - can resonate down into the 16hz range (for the low, low “C”). That being the case, conventional microphones are simply out-the-door when it comes to trying to record a pipe organ. That’s where PZM’s come in. They don’t record sound /waves/ like most mic’s. They record sound “pressure”, which means that there are no “frequency” limitations that exist with most mic’s.

I had Bob continue to play, especially in the pedal registers, and he had a really hard time playing, mostly because after I’d thrown out the proverbial book, I had resorted to rather unconventional methods to fine where bets to place the mic’s. Let me illustrate things for you.

The stage was slate, which is wonderful for acoustic resonance. So as Bob would be playing, I’d be roaming around on the stage in circles of ever-decreasing diameters, looking for the highest clarity in the pedal notes. Eventually, once I’d narrowed down the area a little, I’d start getting lower, and lower, until eventually, I was on hands and knees, still going in little circles, with my ear about a foot off the stage floor, listening for the absolutely most perfect “sweet spot” to put the PZM’s. The pedal division is diatonic - meaning split into two sides of alternating notes - which means I had to repeat the entire humorous process for the other side as well.

In the end, after about five- or six-hours of set-up time, I had managed to pull the instrument back out of the well, and gotten the recordings to sound about 1000% better, so finally, we were ready for launch.

So, this is Dr Bob and Dr Mick, performing together, him playing the accompaniment, I on the solo stops and doing my evil, loud, obnoxious registration thing (that I’m totally known for), for the Vreeland/Manoram arrangement of the Navy Hymn, “Eternal Father”.

This performance was recorded on 03-Oct-99, at Hillcrest Seventh-Day Adventist Church, in Bakersfield California, United States. The pipe organ was built by Wesley Pipe Organ Company, and is approximately 104 ranks, and 87 stops, and almost 6000 pipes.

The recording was created using 4 Crown PZM microphones, 2 super-heterodyne Sennheiser microphones, 2 heterodyne cardioid Sennheiser microphones, and 2 cardioid ElectroVoice microphones, mixed down on a Peavey 16-2 mixer, and recorded onto a hard-drive recorder in stereo, 44.1kHz, 16-bit sampled audio, originally into .wav format, for ADD quality.

Disclaimer: I hate to have to put this on here, but the performance is copyright myself and Dr Robert Vreeland. Please do not distribute, copy, alter, etc, without my permission. Having said all that, feel free to download and use it for your own inspiration.