Activity

I’m thinking about writing a book titled “101 Ways to Really Mess with your Organist”. I’ve made a good start:
(1) Change the combinations, and if they’re soft to loud, or loud to soft, reverse the order;
(2) Better yet: change the combinations without any order at all;
(3) If you have access to the pipe rooms, shift neighboring pipes from one hole to another on the wind chest. For example, remove the G pipe, and put it in the G# hole, and vice versa. But only do this on a few notes and on his or her favorite stops. Overkill here is not effective. It’s much better to have just two or three glaringly wrong notes, so that they stand out more.
(3a) A particularly USEFUL adaptation of this hole-switching strategy is to do this on mutation stops. The resulting cacophony is truly awful.
(3b) Another very useful adaptation of the pipe-in-hole-switching strategy is not only to change the NOTE pitches, but stop quality. For example, if your organist’s instrument has particularly lovely soft string reeds, placing a bassoon or trumpet or two in the string ranks (if you are able to do so) works wonders for creating a flurry of frenetic “what’s the offending stop?” activity at the console. The sudden sounding not only of a wrong note, but a glaringly and obnoxiously loud wrong note against a background of soft fluid timidity will help wake everyone back up and is particularly effective if your organist is a nervous type.
(4) Put little wooden stoppers behind any toe pistons to prevent them from being depressed. This requires careful measurement and a little craftsmanship, but is very rewarding, because now the combinations, which are already screwed up to begin with (see points 1 and 2 above) and in no order at all, cannot be accessed with the feet.
(5) (Here’s one of my favorites) If your organ has visible pipes(and particularly if they’re at the front of the building where everyone can see), put a little paper confetti in the larger pipes.
(6) Combining these methods creatively, especially on important public occasions, is especially rewarding…
…er… not because I’ve tried them and know from experience or anything…