Organ Stop Pizza Description

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Our family loves vacations, and usually complete one every year. One year it was a Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada road trip, which altogether took two weeks to complete. As the van rumbled through Phoenix our eyes were looking for somewhere to eat, and someone saw a sign for “Organ Stop Pizza.”

Now first, I have been playing the organ for about a year now, so the sign “Organ Stop Pizza” attracted my attention. Second, the word “Stop” actually has a double meaning, first of all it’s a pizza stop, a stop to eat. The other meaning is more hidden, however the different sounds of an organ are called stops, for instance on the organ I play I have about forty stops, and they each represent a different sound. Some of them are actually …show more content…

To my surprise fifteen minutes later all of the sudden I start hearing sounds coming from all around - organ sounds. I look up and become aware of the ranks of pipes lining various walls.

Ranks each corresponds to a different sound, or stops, so the Diapason stop will have a rank of pipes which correspond the each of the notes on the keyboard, so if I pull that stop on the organ, every time I play a note it will play that note on that rank of pipes. If I pull multiple stops at once, it will play all of the notes on the corresponding stops at once.

Suddenly in the center a manual (the place where the organist sits) comes out of the floor and rises to create the centerpiece I had been missing. This is a Wurlitzer, which generally means a Theatre organ. These are the rather unconventional organs, as they have to have the ability to imitate multiple styles so they can recreate other music, it’s for entertainment. For instance, here, they allowed you to put in song requests. And the organist played everything from Bach’s Toccata in D Moll (pipe organ, the kind in churches) to Rhapsody in Blue (orchestra) to anything in the Great American Songbook, and other genres. The other types of organs include the Electric organ, the Hammond, the Allen, or the Reed

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