My Chromelodeon Replica -
Background:
Summer of 2021 i was lucky enough to sit at John Schneider’s chromelodeon replica which sat in his living room in LA. it seemed so deeply odd to me that i found myself there to begin with, had i known five years ago running a small microtonal music workshop in Greenfield Mass that one day id find myself in John Schneider’s home playing his own modified Chromelodeon (due to the tinder match of my good friend Jasper with john’s daughter Erin) i wouldve deeply doubted such a conincidence were within the realm of possibility! playing it had me green with envy hearing those o tonal hexads (especially the 7’s) and the tonality flux from one set of seven numerators to seven denomenators had me reeling, i knew i had to possess one of my own but at the time lacked the confiedence to go about deconstructing my own Estey i had sitting at Looky Here for the past Five years.
( John Schneider’s Chromelodeon II used in the Partch Ensemble )
My friend Chris Carmondy was the one who initially inspired me to go about retuning the organ and feeling it was possible, he was the one who had first retuned the 5 limit Just Intonation organ used by the Microtonal Study Group at Looky Here. watching his gentile scratching gave me the confidence that i too could scratch gently.
Made over the course of Two months at my home in Marlboro Vt, building this chromelodeon was only really possible through reed donations by the Estey Organ Museam in Brattleboro Vt. they were gracious enough to donate me junk organs so i could salvage the remaining reeds (that is if i took the rest of the junk organ to the dump). It took almost four sets of organ reeds to make one octave which meant hauling off four broken organs and mining there precious reed supplies.
the first chromelodean i built was the standard chromelodean which appoximates the general range of the g below middle c to the g above
My “Standard Chromelodean”
The Folding Chromelodeon Tuned One Octave up from its predecessor (the g above middle c) using the remaining Reeds
Rebuilding the Bellows for the Folding Chromelodeon
Figaro enjoying the organ : )
My Chromelodeon in the Estey Organ Museam Newsletter
The original Catalog for the Estey Organ
