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I’ve wanted to create a ‘Symphonic Medley’ for a long time, but I never got around to it until earlier this year. I chose ‘West Side Story’ as it’s the first musical I ever heard. I didn’t see the movie or watch the stage show but my sister bought the LP and it got played – a lot! So for one of my concert appearances for Topnote Events in April I decided to go for it!
I obviously needed a ‘symphonic organ’ for this and the Roland AT900 Platinum is more than capable! It has every sound of the traditional symphony orchestra and I think I’ve used them all – even the Triangle gets a note (it’s in a very short pause in ‘Maria’).
Rather than produce a video of my sitting in my lounge playing the organ, I decided instead to show images of the Roland’s main voicing screen, so you can see what sounds I used. My students who have the AT900 Platinum can try them out and even if you don’t have a Roland, you can experiment with similar sounds and settings.
The screenshots can’t show everything. They don’t show the percussion sounds used at times and they can’t show which Solo Division sounds are being played on the lower manual. And I use the Octave Harmony feature several times for divisi strings and tutti ensembles.
The dynamic range in the video is wide from pp to ff, so please crank up your volume and I hope you enjoy listening as much as I did arranging, orchestrating and performing the medley.
I obviously needed a ‘symphonic organ’ for this and the Roland AT900 Platinum is more than capable! It has every sound of the traditional symphony orchestra and I think I’ve used them all – even the Triangle gets a note (it’s in a very short pause in ‘Maria’).
Rather than produce a video of my sitting in my lounge playing the organ, I decided instead to show images of the Roland’s main voicing screen, so you can see what sounds I used. My students who have the AT900 Platinum can try them out and even if you don’t have a Roland, you can experiment with similar sounds and settings.
The screenshots can’t show everything. They don’t show the percussion sounds used at times and they can’t show which Solo Division sounds are being played on the lower manual. And I use the Octave Harmony feature several times for divisi strings and tutti ensembles.
The dynamic range in the video is wide from pp to ff, so please crank up your volume and I hope you enjoy listening as much as I did arranging, orchestrating and performing the medley.
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