How to make best use of this FORUMBefore you start exploring this website, it’s probably best to outline a few things so you know a bit about this FORUM and the thinking behind it.
The AR Group is basically an 'Online Club', and our aim is to provide a ‘resource centre’ for the Yamaha AR Series Organs. None of us are ‘professionals’, and none of us have any connection with Yamaha, nor the design of the AR organ. So what you will find as you read through the various postings are the ‘hands on experiences’ of our Members. When new, the organ was provided with a ‘handbook’, and there were two videos made explaining a few of the salient points of the AR’s operation, but it is not always easy to follow these explanations as more often than not a certain amount of background knowledge is ‘assumed’ and the explanations are not always clear.
When you first visit the FORUM you will discover that ‘unread’ Boards (the headings you see when you go to the homepage of the FORUM are called
Boards ) have a dark blue indicator 'shadow' on the ‘square’ to the left of each Board, and postings
within that board that you haven’t yet read are marked ‘new’ with a small orange rectangular marker by the subject line. Once accessing a ‘board’, the square marker subsequently loses it's 'unread' indicator, but the unread postings
within that board remain orange until you have read them. This is how to keep track of what you have read and what you haven’t. If there is a particular posting that interests you, you can click on the tab MARK UNREAD (at the top) and this posting will then keep the orange rectangular marker indicating that it is a posting still to be read.
Now you
may think that the postings you see are put up by the ‘team’.
There is no ‘team’. Anyone can start a ‘New Topic’. And if you need a new ‘Board’ for what you want to put up then just ask and I’ll create one for you. Eg. Peter Anderson’s
Starting from scratch with the AR Organ and
Peter’s Pearls; Peter Slack’s
Fun Challenge; Ed Wootton’s
"AR Tickles" - Hints and tips on playing for fun; George Nichols’
Sheet Music Library and so on.
Perhaps at this point it would be a good idea to outline what the AR FORUM is
not. It is
not a ‘blog’ or a ‘facebook’, so please don’t fill the FORUM with personal messages to other Members. None of us want to trawl through hundreds of postings that are completely irrelevant to our 'hobby'. But you
can contact any member by email if you so wish. To find an email address, look for the little ‘envelope’ symbol by the member’s name .. either on the left of a posting done by the member you wish to contact, or go to the
Members list which is one of the 'click on' options at the top of any FORUM page. This is why it is important that you do not ‘hide’ your email address in your Profile page.
For information on how this all works, and how to contact other members via the internal mailing system please see the posting regarding this, below. You will also see a Board entitled
Members’ Section which is where you can put up anything you wish other Members to know about you .. and we can upload some photographs if you have some. And once you have joined, please
at the very least visit the site from time to time, as if there is a long period of inactivity a Membership ‘lapses’ and all information about that member is no longer held by the system.
Another useful aspect of an ‘online’ club is that one is able to download music or PDF files that illustrate, explain, or expand some of the things that are mentioned in a posting. This is an extra dimension to just reading things in a magazine. And to go a step further, you can actually record a complete track, send the floppy files to Peter Anderson and have your 'performance' added to the
Just One Tune section. An opportunity here to ‘play’ to an audience without having to do it ‘live’. And if you listen to some of the tracks other Members have done you will no doubt get some ideas for your own playing. Not least, you will have the Registrations other Members have used, as this is how the system works. First, the floppy loads the Registrations into the Registration Memories, and then the piece ‘plays’ using them. So the Registrations are set up in your AR and are there for
you to use (but you’ll have to make a note of which buttons light up as the music is playing).
Who does this website belong to? Well, the
owner of the site is John Bridgett (his company is LINCIT
www.lincit.com), and he hosts it for us too. John is a
Club Member, and has an AR 100 organ. If you asked John, he would say it is “Hugh’s Site”. The Administrators (the people who actively run the site) are myself (Hugh Wallington) and Peter Anderson. So if there is anything you need to know, or anything you want to do, please contact one of the Administrators whose details can be found in the Board
Contact Details for AR Group.
Oh, and by the way, if you do a
Search (box at the top) make sure you are on the ‘Homepage’ of the FORUM or the search will only look in the Board you are currently viewing.
Hugh