Ive seen something like this at a steam fair, but I thought that there was a man inside the organ playing the music on a keyboard. How can the organ play by itself?
Q) Yes there is a man inside, but if you go round the back of the organ you will see that he usually has a pint of beer in one hand, and another pint of beer and a fag* in the other. You will also see a long length of moving cardboard, with a lot of holes punched in it. The cardboard is drawn through a mangle at the back of the organ called a ‘Key Frame’. As the holes pass through the key frame, they operate the notes on the organ, thereby producing a musical performance. The lengths of cardboard can be up to 100 metres long, so they are usually folded up into a zig-zag fashion to enable them to fit through the door. The block of card thus formed is called a ‘Music Book’. Not all of the holes in the music book will operate musical notes, some will operate the various drums and percussion effects on the organ. All that the man inside the organ is actually doing is to feed another music book into the key frame every 10 minutes or so; and to shout at the kids as they try and remove the pi
