The Press Releases

August 18, 2003

Stroke Survivor plays Bach again and creates innovative learning system for Bach Organ Scholars using computer and digital organ.

A disabled musician creates a learning system for the organs work of Bach for organists using a computer.

August, 2003 -- Californian James Pressler's stroke nine years ago ended his career as a church organist and recitalist. During his rehabilitation he regained the use of one hand, enough to be able to return to the computer keyboard.

Then a chance encounter on the internet resulted in the creation of a new system for the study and learning of the masive library of Bach Organ Works.

Prior to the stroke he had learned to use MIDI, a musical interface system and language, to create practice files for his choir singers to play on their computers at home to learn their parts. MIDI was originally developed by a partnership of digital musical instrument manufacturers to provide a simple way to interface keyboards, sequencers and other musical devices. Now it has spread into use in the theater to control lighting and even into Belgian clock towers where MIDI systems run the clock, play the bells on time and even illuminates the tower when the bells play during the hours of darkness.

Gradually Pressler began investigating other ways to use MIDI and developed a web site that featured and sold CD's and mp3's of Baroque Organ Works playing on MIDI instruments, instruments that many already have in the operating systems of their computers. Eventually sampled pipe organs joined his library of sounds.

"My first pipe organ SoundFont was actually shareware, but its capabilities changed my creative life forever," says Pressler. "It wasn't long before I was experimenting with MIDI control of a pipe organ. Hearing the Dorian Fugue on this instrument was an epiphany. But I began to see that much more was needed in the way of rhythmic and acoustic sensitivity. The better the results, the more ideas emerged for improving it, making it more spontaneous sounding and real. I am still learning."

Noel Jones cofounder, with LifeWay composer Lauren Gadd, of Frog Music Press, a web-based publisher of MIDI Music including a library of works and guides to the Rodgers® Organ, discovered Pressler's web site and began e-mailing Pressler from Tennessee, encouraging him to work with Frog Music in a new venture, the Complete Organ Works of Johann Sebastian Bach performed in MIDI.

"That's the way it started out", Noel Jones says,"But put creative people together and almost anything can happen." Happen it did as James Pressler encoded the entire Organ Works of Bach into MIDI Files. "The files, that was nothing, Jones says, "it's what Jim did with them that is so amazing."

Entering notes into a MIDI files is a simple thing to do but musicians never play the notes the way they are written on the page. A performance of a plain MIDI file can be quite boring as everything occurs with clock-like regularity. The spark of performance, the gradual fluctuations of tempo, the phrasing and articulation of notes goes way beyond that is written on the page. "Jim's done that, he's put his life an soul into the music. The organ is a very mechanical instrument in the first place, so organists are used to working hard to make it sing," says Jones, an organist for more than 40 years who has performed in churches and theaters in the United States, Italy and Germany. At the age of 17 he was the Organist for the Church Center of the United Nations.

Pressler has done more than create the Organ Works of Bach in MIDI format. He has also encoded the registrations, the sounds that organists choose, registrations for an organ with a very comprehensive MIDI system built in, the Rodgers® Organ, built in Oregon and found in churches and concerts halls around the world.

In addition Pressler created Bach By Immersion. Bach By Immersion is the complete Organ Works of Bach in MIDI performance files and accompanying MIDI files that leave out left hand, right hand and pedals. When an organist finds he has problems with one part, the MIDI disk is inserted and the Rodgers® Organ or the church or home MIDI keyboard with disk drive plays the other parts as the player plays the missing part live. "Too many music teaching systems have the musician play along with their part...that's self-defeating as the player learns by ear instead of reading the music and creating their part. That doesn't happen with Bach By Immersion as James has created it," says Jones. The ability to surround oneself with the music while playing the missing parts tremendously speeds up the learning process as one is immersed in the complex harmonies and melodic lines of Bach.

Jones goes on to say, "There is no computer today that could write the music that Bach did, but with the modern computer we can better analyze and understand the brilliance of Bach as a composer and musician."

The Frog Music Press web site at www.frogmusic.com has more information about Bach By Immersion. Sample files are available for downloading including mp3 performances created by Pressler.

Also visit Pressler's original web site found at www.virtualbaroque.com to hear and see his current projects, and to read about all the people and products that have inspired him along the way.

For Additional Information, Please Contact:
Noel Jones
Frog Music Press
www.frogmusic.com
423 887-7594
noeljones@frogmusic.com

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Lauren Gadd, Editor

Noel Jones, AAGO - Exec. Dir
gedeckt@usit.net

Frog Music Press

Rodgers® Organ Users Group