Today we had the privilege of interviewing Sam Battle, who has two very popular YouTube channels, “Look Mum No Computer” and “This Museum is Not Obsolete“. Sam participated in a remote interview conducted in his museum in Ramsgate, Kent, UK, which he describes as “the museum home for experimental and obsolete scientific and musical technology.”
(This is the first of several planned Remote Shoots, as the pieces of the Organ Grinder’s story are present all over the globe!)
Over the past two years, Sam has been restoring a pipe organ which he obtained from a residence that was for sale, and the organ had to go. It’s been an amazing journey, from learning on-the-go how everything fit together, to developing custom control electronics and creating interactive features, such as LEDs that light up under each pipe as it is played, so that the organ could become a feature at his museum. Lately, he’s moved on to restoring tuned percussions and other components made by Compton, including a unique early electro-mechanical instrument.
We asked Sam for his thoughts on how young people today are discovering the pipe organ and coming to appreciate it in their own way. By sharing his restoration project with his 650,000+ YouTube subscribers, he may have single-handedly made more people aware of how you can build your own pipe organ as a hobby, as well as portraying how organ technology works, than any other information source, which is hopeful for the future of the instrument!
You can watch the first video in his “Joan’s Organ” series below. You can also find Sam on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Patreon.
You can help support the project by purchasing from the Crowdfunding Shop.
