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Comment by RupertSalt | Hacker News Reader

Our SATB chorus was about 75 strong, with about 2 women who could sing tenor. They were highly valued, especially in the limited membership of a women’s barbershop ensemble.

If you’re male and you can sing anything or play a pipe organ, you are worth your weight in gold to the right church.

Some of my favorite vocalists are female contraltos, because I can sing in their range.

Choral work is the most demanding volunteer job I ever had. It’s also exhilarating, highly social, and rewarding. No regrets!

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I’d love to play organ with a choir group. But I am not religious, so it feels wrong.

My french horn teacher was a new-age "recovering Catholic"[1] and a paid singer for a couple Protestant churches. A job is a job. Personally, I am an atheist but I find a lot of devotional music to be well written and fun to sing, and I enjoy singing it in choir, even if I don't literally believe the words I'm singing.

In any event, you can play organ with a community choir, especially if you can also play piano. We pay our accompanists.

1. i.e. no longer Christian

I understand completely — doctrinal disagreement keeps me out of men’s choirs, musical theatre, and men‘s gyms, too!

Many organists are not religious but appreciate the creativity and beauty of the music, buildings, and the mad range of incredibly different instruments that are all collectively called organs. Heck, in England, I've often wondered how really religious some of the clergy are...

You may find a good fit at a UU church.

An acquaintance made some money as cantor to a synagogue around here. He was not Jewish, but I gather that the combination of singing and getting paid felt just fine.

Why are male organists particularly valuable?

I wouldn't say that the women are less valuable! Anyone who can play a pipe organ and has the other skills to put in hours on weekly performances and rehearsals, they are rare and indispensable to the place that has the organ.

If someone plays the guitar they can purchase their own guitar, maintain it and carry it wherever they play. Same for a violin or flute or any typical instrument. Piano skills are also fungible because anyone can buy a synth keyboard or an upright and practice at home just fine. While large, even a grand piano can be wheeled in and out of a building if necessary.

But a pipe organ is part of the building. More properly, the building is an inseperable part of the pipe organ. When an organ company builds a pipe organ, they put an Opus number on it because they're going to be unique to fit the space and needs of the community. They're going to last for decades or hundreds of years and they are not going anywhere. The community has come together to install it and commit to its maintenance.

I attended a church with a modestly-sized electronic (non-pipe) organ built in 1980. There was a praise band with drums, guitar, bass, and a very shiny grand piano. The organ had fallen into disuse and it was unclear whether it could be played. We limped along with that lovely piano for a long time, but the organ was finally rescued. Another church had installed a very lovely "theater" style pipe organ, that was also modestly small, and had chronic problems due to the climate environment in the loft. So eventually, it was retired, and a very impressive MIDI organ was also placed in the loft, while they were not really able to remove the previous one. Unfortunately, the leadership and the music ministers cycled rapidly, and they appear to have abandoned the loft entirely...

So, with an investment like that, a church cannot afford to be without an organist. Some are happy just to have someone who knows how to play. Often, an organist may have other roles, such as directing, singing, composing, or administrative. But the organ is the primary and lead instrument. They are always going to be the focal point of the music program. Male and female alike.

>I attended a church with a modestly-sized electronic (non-pipe) organ built in 1980. There was a praise band with drums, guitar, bass, and a very shiny grand piano. The organ had fallen into disuse and it was unclear whether it could be played. We limped along with that lovely piano for a long time, but the organ was finally rescued.

I once got roped into trying to fix an electronic organ that was about the same age, in a church. Some of the notes had stopped playing, or were the wrong pitch, so the organist had to work around them. It was a really interesting piece of analog electronics, with a bunch of separate circuit boards for each note, with an analog circuit on each one to generate the tone. IIRC, I found that some capacitors' values had drifted due to age, so I replaced a bunch of them with new ones; the organist was so happy she could now use those notes again.

Probably reaaaallly depends on the organ.

Some of the very old very large ones have some strength+endurance requirements.

Much newer ones with electronic actions and whatnot don't have any such problems.

Majority of organists are men (in the US at least).

My wife plays the organ; it looks like dark voodoo magic, with two hands and two feet flying at the same time and so many different types of sounds coming out. She sticks entirely to electric organs.

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