h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oh dear it's half past 11 at night and I'm revising for an exam in the morning. The one thing I never learnt at school was how to revise. The only A level I revised for was English Literature and that consisted of sitting up in bed, again nearly at midnight, trying to decipher some notes I'd made some time during the previous 2 years.

For this exam I have been typing up notes made on a five-day course a couple of years ago which I hadn't got up to typing up yet. This was the same course as I've just taken again, or similar, but I couldn't take the exam then because I was ill on the last day and didn't get to the last couple of lessons.

So I've spent the week typing up two sets of similar notes and now I need to hammer some of the specialised jargon into my head. It'll be interesting to see if I remember any of it.

The subject is organ construction. (The musical kind) The teachers are so incredibly keen on their subject but nothing at all can inspire me. Fortunately it's all basic physics and there's nothing uninteresting or mysterious about the workings. It's just that I'll never need to know any of this, and we are continuously and frustratingly being told that it's an endless subject .. quote "I've been climbing around on them for 40 years and am still seeing new things". If I keep getting told that there is no end of stuff to learn, sometimes I think I don't really want to start to learn.

There are only three of us left in the course now. One is a boy of about 17 whose grandfather makes the things, and he has been climbing around the organ pipes since he was a toddler. Total anorak. The other chap is only a few years younger than me and has played the organ for ages, and I've no idea how much he has taken in during the lessons because he hasn't made many comments.

I suppose it's rather like computers or cars. Some play really well, but don't bother much about what happens when you pull a stop, others are fascinated by the workings, but can only just pick out chopsticks on the manual. There is probably no one who fits into one extreme or the other, but most people are somewhere along the spectrum - either players or geeks, or a good balance of both.

Oh well, whatever. Back to the diagrams and jargon. And Gnomon's entry A47526771, just to keep up with the lingo in English as well.

Some of the words are similar between the German and the English, but the proper language of the instrument and the repertoire is French, and many registers have French names. I don't need to know any of the English words for things, but having two words for each concept might imprint it on my mind better. I still haven't worked out if I have English on one side of my brain and German on the other.

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Language is one function that is entirely on one side of the brain, so your English and German will both be on the same side.

Glad if my Entry can help.

Good Luck, TC.
And if you ever find out how to revise please let me know, because I'm struggling with it too.

Hope it went well!

I was surprised to find out that 'viola da gamba' is regarded as a Romantic organ stop. Introduced just as the instrument of that name was going out of fashion. Made me think the organ was a repository of nostalgia.

There's also the Schalmei/Pommer/Shawn (at least on some German registers) and the Crumhorn/Cromorne/Krummhorn. Further "blasts from the past".

Yes though the shawm really is a blaster; don't suppose it is counted Romantic. Cromorne could, it's really rather sweet.

As to the revising, Sho - listen to this week's "Just a Minute" on the iplayer. "Revising for exams" was one of the topics given to talk on!

Are there past exams/tests you can look at? - these are the best way of preparing for future exams in my (pretty vast he says modestly) experience.

Particularly these days since the modus operandi in current education is to make them as easy to pass as possible partly by making new questions extremely similar to old ones...

Oh too late - Hope it went OK.