The new school of organ studies is a registered charity that provides scholarships for students learning the organ. This helps them with some of the payment of organ lessons and the hire of suitable church pipe organs to have lessons on and to practice on.
The NSOS has its head office based in St Albans. There are four different branches, which organise themselves and run their own programmes. The nearest branch is a Hemel Hempstead Branch provides most of the impetus for the website development. This branch organises concerts, such as the one on 19th April 2008 at John's Church, Boxmoor, Hemel Hempstead. Mostly the people who do the work for the school in the running of the concerts and organising other events do so by giving up their free time. Only the NSOS tutors take money for the subsidised lessons. Many of the volunteers spend much of their time fund raising and are keen organists. As a charity the NSOS is bound by the laws of the charities commission.
Head Office Address: The New School of Organ Studies at Marlborough Road Methodist Church, St Albans
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Their current web site is at http://www.nsos.org.uk/ is over two years old and needs a complete makeover. The existing site uses tables rather than css of layout and is not DDA compliant. A typical event on another website linking to the NSOS is an Advert on St Mary's Web Site produced by the New School of organ studies.
What does the NSOS require in a website.
A minimum of 10 pages.
The aim of the website is to attract new members by telling them what the NSOS does, to inform the current members about the organs used, concerts and fund raising events and to become the place for people to come to find out about pipe and electronic organs. It is presumed that the members of the NSOS will be able to administer their own website. They do not want a framed web site. They would like buttons on the website to link to other pages. These buttons need to be organ related. They would like a background image that reflects the function of the New school of Organ studies. Appropriate colours should be used for the site reflecting the corporate colours. The fonts selected should be as similar as possible to the Corporate fonts. The website needs to use CSS and be DDA compliant.
Ideas for the new web site includes the information on the current website plus;
The organ stops down the side of the web page ( the buttons) are used on much of the literature and display boards that are put up at each of the exhibitions.
About organs.
Electronic organs are computers that try to simulate the sound of a pipe organ. They either have sampled sounds from each pipe or the sounds are generated. organ manufacturers - Ahlborn - Eminent - Makin - Viscount - Wyvern . In contrast, every pipe organ is a unique, custom-designed instrument made to order for a particular sanctuary or other listening space. Organ builders Copeman-Hart - Harrison-Organs - Willis-Organs - Mander
Electronic organs work by using a few loudspeakers to produce sound waves that simulate those made by windblown pipes. In some models, digital recordings of a few real pipes are used as a basis for electrically producing the waveforms. When many notes are played simultaneously, the organ's speakers produce sounds that are the electrically combined mixture of multiple notes. The listeners hear something significantly different than they would hear if each note originated from its own organ pipe. The electronic organ's electrical mixing of tones creates a sound that can be perceived even by those lacking a trained ear as somehow unnatural and lacking the fullness and beauty of individual, separate sounds blended in the ear.
A pipe organ consists of a vast array of real pipes which each make their own sound from their unique position in the room. Your ear hears a chorus of sounds originating from as many different locations as there are pipes playing. The chorus is further enriched by the reflected sounds that are unique to each pipe's physical location in the room. In fact, a pipe organ is usually custom designed, and each of its pipes "voiced", to maximize its performance within the acoustical environment of the room where it is located. Even untrained, casual listeners will be uplifted by the complexity of sounds from a real pipe organ just as one would prefer a live concert to a recording.
Of course, the visual difference between electronic organs and pipe organs makes an impact too. Electronic organs have little to offer aesthetically. In many churches, the physical majesty of the pipe organ is the cornerstone of sanctuary architecture.
More information on the NSOS.
They have a newsletter, and in word format, brochure, recital list, about concerts info Most off this information is very old. At present no one is willing to spend time on this. The only effort is made occasionally on the website.
Key Text for Pages Text for Home Page Recitals Branch Info Links to Photos on Session 13 Links to Photos Session 18 Useful Music Other Music Video resources
A few more resources can be found at
Philips 3 manual organ or Mark and Pauls Web Site and take a look at the Walker organ Restoration Although it is hard to find resources on pipe organs, sometimes looking at church websites can be more fruitful, since they have details about their organs and this information is not usually in a serach engine. One other useful place to look is the National Pipe organ Register.
Some very good articles on how does a a pipe organ work, organ music can be found at www.lawrencephelps.com
