June 28, 2025: Setting Your Tuner Up for Success: Methods to Prepare For and Communicate with Organ Tuners
**THIS IS A FREE EVENT**
To make best use of maintenance and tuning funds you can help the tuner by accurately documenting both chronic and emerging issues with the instrument you play. You can point out issues that are of particular importance to your use of the instrument. You are in a position to transmit to the church leaders information about the condition of the organ and its' medium and long term needs. In this final lecture of our pilot Virtual Organ Academy Season, Steve Miller and Chellan Hoffman share their tips and tricks to help you make the most out of your organ tunings.
As a teenager, Steve Miller was asked to fix a problem in the organ at his family's church. He succeeded, and began studying all the tuning books he could find in the U of Calgary library. For a teenager who loved the science of sound, electronics and mechanics, this was a perfect calling, but other paths beckoned first.
Steve studied music at the University of Calgary, jazz at Humber College in Toronto, and earned an Electronics Technologist diploma from DeVry College, Toronto. While going to school in Toronto, Steve worked at the Alan T. Jackson & Company Ltd – from 1981–86, gaining knowledge about tuning, voicing, and organ mechanics. His work ranged from fixing and rebuilding reservoirs and chests, to doing hundreds of service calls, to ultimately taking on the task of renovating and rebuilding organs. His knowledge of electronics proved to be a big help in the changing times.
In 1986, Steve returned to Alberta to become western-Canadian representative for the organ building firm of Casavant Frères and to specifically maintain the new Carthy organ (1987) at Jack Singer Concert Hall. Thus, began a life-long learning adventure working with voicers, installers, designers and builders in the organ business.
In addition to his busy tuning schedule, Steve has been a designer of control systems for pipe organs since 1999, designing the hardware and software for the CapLite and Multisystem II control systems for Solid State Organ Systems. His designs are in use in the organs of St. Paul's Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral, and Sydney Opera House, as well as in most large organs throughout North America. In the last decade, Steve has continued software development and installation under the name 'Hoffler Systems' with systems installed from Toronto to Vancouver the emphasis being reliability, cost-effectiveness, small physical size and minimal parts count.
These days, when not traveling for work, Steve is to helping the 'cause' by patiently solving long-distance emergencies over the phone to help organists troubleshoot and fix their own problems so that churches and institutions can save time and money. Lately this has begun to include helping local technicians establish their businesses in the West.
Chellan Hoffman has been a tuning/technician assistant to Steve Miller since 1989. Over the years she has held notes, cleaned and dusted consoles, tuned pipes, climbed ladders, carried organ parts up and down stairs, vacuumed chests, washed pipes, participated in a few organ removals and re-assemblies in several provinces, and has helped load and unload quite a few U-Haul trucks.
