Mechanical Music

My "Monkey Organ"



I play a John Smith design "Senior 20" hand cranked organ and frequently attend COAA (Carousel Organ Association of America) rallies. You can see it in more detail here.  You can hear a sample of the music for Here Comes the Organ Man (a van Oost arrangement) This is stored as a 1.6 meg .MP3 file.

I also have a small poster. Click Here, or on the image below, to display a larger version, or Right Click the image to download and save the 8 1/2 by 11 inch version.


Organ Building

I finished construction of my John Smith design "Senior 20" hand cranked organ in March 2006. Some of my personal modifications to the Smith design can be seen on Mel Wright's web pages at www.buskerorgan.com  Plans for the John Smith organs available from a new John Smith website, and are no longer available through www.rollcutter.com.

Making Music Rolls for Small Organs

Punching Paper 20er Rolls

I have begun punching my own 20 note paper rolls for the organ. I am using a home-built traditionally styled one-hole foot operated punch, guiding the paper by hand. I am arranging my source materials on a computer using MIDI programs, then printing strips using the MIDIBoek program. You can download the Midiboek for Windows software and the editor Noteur from http://huizen.daxis.nl/~Ppaardekam/

I wrote an article "Hand Punching My Own Rolls from Midiboek Templates" for the COAA magazine The Carousel Organ. which describes the punch and my use of it in some detail. The artical, as it appeared in the magazine, is posted as a .PDF file.

I will be happy to exchange information, and possibly MIDI files, with other 20er organ owners but I am not punching rolls for sale.

Some of my tunes are available for download at My 20 Note MIDI Files .

My "Gamma" file for John Smith 20 note rolls can be downloaded here.

My "Gamma" file for Raffin 20 note rolls can be downloaded here.

Cutting Paper Rolls for the 14 Note Common and Clariona Organette Formats

Bob R... in Olcott, NY asked for some help in getting started in producing some rolls for his Clariona Organette. Later Edwin M. read the page and asked about rolls in the 14-Note Common format. I have placed a number of useful files and some explanation here.

Making El-Cheapo Spools for Homebuilt Grind Organs

Spools can be a major expense if you start punching your own rolls. Here is a description of how I make my El-Cheapo spools.

Other Mechanical Music Items

I wrote an article on an the 2005 Organ Rally at Widnes, England which appeared in the January 2006 issue of The Carousel Organ.

I also wrote a article on adding a foot switch and tin cup to a cymbal playing monkey for The Carousel Organ.

The Carousel Organ, is The Journal of the Carousel Organ Association of America (COAA). You can get a collection of all the back issues of the magazine on CD for under $30. The CD has color pictures, and you can enlarge most of them, so in some ways it's better than the magazines themselves. Order detatils are on the COAA web site at www.COAA.us

COAA rallies are good fun, a a great way to learn about outdoor mechanical musicin all its aspects..

 

OSI Strasse Orgel Owners' Group

My wife has an OSI Strasse Orgel. I'm her technician, so I have started web pages for a users group here. OSI Strasse Orgel Users' Group