breaking the organ and songza

Weird. The last couple of days Google Analytics shows that I have had record numbers of hits: Wednesday I had 75 hits, Thursday, 85. Oh the heady winds of popularity!

Yesterday after practicing with my cellist for a while (the violinist begged off), I began practicing organ. When I reached for a low A flat on the pedal board, it clicked in a funny way and refused to come back up. The note also continued to sound. Uh ho.

I phoned the repairman. He told me he was out of town until next Tuesday. He could contact someone else to come fix it, but suggested I disable it until he could come.

He said if I had a screw driver, I could remove the note. I did have a screw driver and following his instructions took the note off the pedal board. As you can see above, the metal spring had snapped.

Below you can clearly see where the spring was attached.

I put these pics up on the Grace Music Ministry page on Facebooger. I felt pretty proud of myself for disabling this note and felt like that was enough organ stuff for Thursday. Today I will go through all the organ music for Sunday and see if I need to adapt anything to make it work. Fortunately, I am improvising on themes on the piano from the Jenkins Jazz Mass as my prelude in order to remind people of the melodies, since we begin using it this Sunday.

Eileen seemed to be in a bit better mood yesterday. For the past couple of days I have been making sure to include music that might cheer her up in my listening. I like it when she hums along.

Elizabeth put a Songza playlist on during Alex’s Michigan birthday celebration. I was intrigued and installed the app on my tablet and tried it out.

Songza – Listen to Music Curated by Music Experts

The doo wop list under Decades/1950 seemed to have a lot of songs I would normally put on a playlist considering Eileen’s tastes as well as mine.

The “Music for a small room” under Classical is a list that includes chamber music. I enjoyed their selections which began with a late Beethoven String Quartet.

I mentioned Songza and specifically this list to my cellist yesterday.

I think it’s better than Pandora because you don’t have to keep fiddling with it. It can be easier than Spotify to just put on and listen.

I found the “Today’s R&B Hits” under “Today’s Biggest Hits” played most of the tunes I culled from Spotify’s top 50 lists. Maybe I’m a fan today’s R&B, eh?

On vital reserves : the energies of men ; the gospel of relaxation; by William James … – Full View

I was reading through the first few pages of Harold Bloom’s The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime this morning. He has chosen 12 American writers as typifying NOT a canon but examples of a specific American reaching beyond the human to something higher.

In the course of his discussion he mentions that William James has defined “daemon” in his essay, “On Vital Reserves.” I pulled it offline and read several pages of it. No “daemon” yet.