Please note: Only m4a format files of the on-hour podcasts and half-hour broadcasts are now available for listening and/or download. All are play-listed. The m4a format is current and offers a better compression algorithm, whereas mp3 is technically legacy as further development has ceased. (But yes, it will be around for a long time to come!)
Shows currently produced
A bi-weekly one-hour podcast, with no music restrictions, with researched and informative commentary. This show features many rare and exclusive tracks, some from private recording sessions and public concerts. The researched and informative commentary is a little more in-depth than the half-hour shows. In 2025, new programmes will be posted around 7th and 21st of each month, starting in February.
A weekly half-hour The Angel Radio editions were discontinued at the end of 2021. All 352 shows are available now directly on this site. Serenade Radio requested a new half-hour series of 13 weeks: broadcasts are on Thursdays at 9:30pm UK Summer Time, usually in two series per year. The shows are posted on the half-hour page complete with playlist the day after broadcast.
Studio work
The Hot Pipes music library currently (as of February 2025) is approaching 93,000 tracks of at least CD-quality (16-bit, 44.1 kHz) files, of which over 65,000 are of theatre pipes; they are held on hard disk and organised in iTunes. These are from various digital and analogue sources, requiring varying degrees of processing:
a) All CDs are copied into the database, the metadata (track details) checked and corrected as required. While track names are usually available by lookup in iTunes, they are frequently inaccurate and rarely contain composer information, which must be entered separately, requiring research on the web etc.
b) LPs, reel-to-reel tapes and cassettes (when an LP is not available) must be digitised, de-clicked (sometimes persistent clicks must be removed manually) and de-noised, and then split into tracks. All of the details of those must then be manually added into the iTunes database.
I already had some 200 LPs and an unknown number of cassettes to process when, a few years ago, a huge donated collection of digital and analogue commercial recordings arrived. These, along with some very rare and unusual recordings in my possession, have helped to keep the material on the programmes fresh and interesting.
c) My library holds hundreds of taped concerts, many of which have the artists’ permissions to broadcast. The work to transfer, digitise, process and split concerts continues.
Please note that my library of recordings will eventually be donated to ‘suitable’ entities – currently planned are the American Theatre Organ Society and the Cinema Organ Society – so that the generous donations of recordings by many listeners and countless man-years of work expended on processing and cataloging will not be wasted. The library is incrementally backed up nightly to two locations so there is little possibility of loss of any data.
Website hosting
The website and sound files in m4a formats are held on a reliable server which has proven to provide a good speed of streaming and download delivery. If anyone experiences any difficulty with accessing Hot Pipes, please do contact me immediately, using the contact form on this website or directly by email. NOTE: All show files are now available directly from this site: the Dropbox archive has been discontinued.