Article by: Lee Jones
Breakfast and Morning Workshops
I could not get the temperature in the room down to my liking, even with the fan on full blast all night, but I still managed to have a good nights sleep, I usually only need 6-7 hours, so waking up at 6:30am gave me about 45 minutes to have a shower and go down to breakfast.
I had also planned on a visit to the pool sometime over the weekend which opened each morning at 6:00am, it’s not massive by any stretch of the imagination, but is suitable for a casual early morning swim, or a dip in the jacuzzi
As I said earlier, Breakfast was anything and everything you can imagine a breakfast to be, and lots of it ! – I sat at the same table as the evening before, but apparently you just sit where ever is nearest and I was soon joined by different people. I guess a lot of people are not quite so talkative in the mornings, and just the normal good morning pleasantries were exchanged, but still the food was great and set me up for the day.
The first of the workshops I chose to go to was in workshop room 2 at 9:30am, and the topic I was interested in was Exploring Lowrey Possibilities – With Rosemary Bailey.
Here is the full timetable of events for Saturday – CLICK HERE
Rosemary is a great organist and can play many different types and styles of music, from traditional church music right through to Jazz, so I was very interested in what she had to say.
Unfortunately for rosemary the Lowrey Organ that was provided was not one she was familiar with, and as many of you know, Lowrey do tend to keep all the various voices of previous models but change the layout totally on later models, so if your not familiar with the layout it can be somewhat frustrating trying to find the settings your after. If your not familier with whom rosemary is, I have set up a page entitled – Who is Rosemary Bailey
I did record the whole of Rosemary’s Workshop in full, and the video can be found in the video sections of this Music Extravaganza contents page, these videos are only accessible to Full or Life members, so if this is something of interest to you, please do subscribe to either membership level
The next workshop I was interested in was to start at 11:00am which gave me enough time to return to my room and offload all the footage onto a hard drive, so i would have an empty memory card ready for the next workshop.
At 11:00am, Jim Weida presented Understanding Virtual Orchestra Features and this was in the main concert hall. Jim has a way of explaining things that make the whole process easier to understand, while at a distance you could see him performing and demonstrating certain things, you also had the added advantage of a large video screen that was focused directly on the organs touch screen, which made the whole process of following along that much easier. again the full video is available to members. I also have a page dedicated to Jim entitled Who is Jim Weida
At 12:00 midday, lunch was served in the hall again, a help yourself fare of delightful and tasty goodies.