Artists like Jimmy Buffett,  Billy Joel, Meatloaf, Harry Chapin and others are just a few of my favorite.  Many of their songs seem to combine the best of both music and movies into the same medium.  Another nice thing about movies today is watching them online.  I watched a few good ones the other day.  You can watch Sex and the City 2 movie online or choose from several others.   One great television show from my younger years,  has been made into a movie.  I can watch the A-Team movie online or even watch killers (2010) movie online if I wanted to.  It’s a great time to be both a music and a movie fan.

When silent films first started they would typically be accompanied by a pianist or by a small orchestra. Most of the music played was improvised or taken from the classical repertoire, but eventually cue sheets were distributed that would give the musicians cues as to what would happen during the film. Between 1910 and 1920 the theater organ was created and at first was used to play along with the orchestra or to let the orchestra rest for certain segments of the film, but it eventually replaced the orchestra in most theaters. Wurlitzer became the most prolific manufacturer of and synonymous with these instruments.

Theater organs grew to become complex instruments, and distinct from traditional pipe organs in several ways, including the design of the console and the use of percussion instruments. They featured ranks of pipes that produced a traditional pipe organ sound and grew to include percussion instruments such as drums, wood blocks, marimbas, sleigh bells, and cymbals. Because of the many instruments that were available to the organist, the theater organ was designed with a “horseshoe” shape that allowed the organist to more easily reach all the stops (via tabs) during performance.

For silent comedies and other silent films of the era, the theater organ was a great enhancement. For any physical humor where a character slips, falls, or gets hit by something, the built-in percussion section in the theater organ increases the humorous impact of these events. The music itself actually becomes funny under the hands of a competent keyboard player. The music and the comedy went together hand-in-hand, even today but more so back then.

After sound was introduced to film in the 1930s, the use of the theater organ declined. Only a few theaters have their original theater organ installed. Some newer digital consoles are being created and restorations being done on original consoles. High quality sound samples of theater organs, particularly their pipe ranks, are being used on portable electronic music keyboards to be played anywhere. It is one of the most versatile music keyboard instruments every created and still admired by keyboard players today.

So, when shortly after high school age, you could start renting videos and watching them at home, you can just imagine how thrilled I was.  For a period of time, I even worked in a video rental store, that was owned by a friend of the family.  It was a cool gig, and I was even able to take home movies that hadn’t rented to watch at home.  I owned a video player, which was of course a Beta movie player as opposed to VHS.  It was one of the first things I bought, when I had a bit of money.  Which was of course that start of another hobby of mine, buying electronic gadgets.

Now, to anyone who is under the age of 15, this stuff probably sounds like ancient history.  With computers, the internet, blu-ray, and the ability to watch movies online, it’s hard to imagine what it must have felt like to only see movies in the theater, or when the major networks decided to play one on television.   That was usually quite an event, watching movies on television.  The networks really had a strangle hold on the business back then.  You would actually mark the day and time of your upcoming favorite movies in your schedule calendar, so you didn’t miss them.  There was no renting, buying, or watching the movies on your computer any time you felt like it.  As well, there were no PVRs, or Tivo machines back in those days.  Not like you could just go down to BlockBuster, and grab a copy of Percy Jackson & the Olympians The Lightning Thief off the shelf.  That looks like a pretty cool movie by the way.

So, pardon my digression into ancient history, but it’s interesting to see how far we’ve come when it comes to technology, and how it makes our lives better.