I started this site mainly to keep a record of hymns played each week, based on the Excel sheet I keep on my laptop.

Then along came the Covid-19 crisis in March 2020, which messed up a lot of musicians and church services in general. I then started using the site for another purpose – recording hymns for parishioners to listen to. From April to end of June 2020 was the oddest 12 weeks. I recorded hymns so people could sing along (and often put the lyrics with them) and learn them as we couldn’t practice as a choir, but I actually played these live from home for the hymns during Mass. We had 2 methods for parishioners to hear Mass; a phone conference call, and Zoom.  So I had 2 microphones (for myself and my wife) and the electronic organ routed through a mixer. I sent the output to a soundblaster usb DAC plugged into an android phone for the conference call, and a Behringer UCA222 DAC plugged into the laptop for Zoom.  All worked very well, though it was extremely odd – I could vaguely hear parishioners joining in with the hymns, but due to latency I had to turn the volume down as I daren’t listen fully – I’d never have kept time otherwise!

From 5th July 2020 to date, there are no recorded hymns, but I’ve kept up the hymn list page. Through November 2020 we were using Zoom again during the 2nd 4 week lockdown, but from the 2nd Sunday in Advent 2020 we were able to get back to Church for Mass, and recommences singing with the choir from 17th October 2021.

The Bishops’ Conference instructions up to full lifting of restrictions was that Mass was to be kept short, so the entrance hymn was only a verse or two (no procession), no offertory, the communion hymn was fairly short as we generally have between 30 and 40 communicants (church capacity with social distancing is 48) and continues (or I play a post-communion Taizé or something similar) until Fr Mark has has cleaned the challice and ciborium. Then Recessional while everyone’s leaving – I couldn’t go on for too long because the church has to be cleaned up and sanitised for the 12pm Mass. I was sanitising the organ before and after playing, taking care not to allow liquid to get into the works – I don’t think the stop buttons or the keys have ever been as clean, the first week back I needed 3 wipes as it hadn’t been cleaned for years!.

Thankfully we’re now pretty well back to normal, with full choir, altar servers, offertory procession, etc, and numbers are getting more back to normal.  For Easter 2022 we must have had over 70 people in the church for the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services.