A Musical Pipe Dream Come True

Think of Ed Burnside’s Venice home as a three-bedroom music box.

From the outside, it looks like an ordinary house. But Burnside, a technician for GTE for 23 years, has filled it with a mammoth pipe organ more typical of a cathedral or an old-time movie palace than a Westside residence.

Unlike people who rebuild their homes around a great ocean view or some other conventional focal point, Burnside renovated the house eight years ago with the massive organ as its soul.

“We built the house around the organ,” Burnside, 52, said. “We also used soundproof windows and built a chamber room.”

The organ’s one-of-a-kind console, handcrafted of mahogany, sits in a corner of the living room. It is here that Burnside plays hymns, classical pieces, even jazz. The organ’s 1,200 pipes are housed upstairs in the specially designed chamber room, a space 16 by 18 feet, with a 19-foot ceiling.

Each of the pipes in the organ produces a distinctive sound. The lowest notes are made by the longest pipes (which can be 20 or more feet long and a foot in diameter). The highest notes come from the smallest pipes, some only a few inches long and less than a quarter of an inch in diameter.

Each pipe must be tuned by hand.

According to Burnside, the pipes in his chamber room weigh nearly a ton. To accommodate the weight and to make the house earthquake-safe, the floor had to be reinforced.

Although the sound of organ music often leaks from his house into his Venice neighborhood, Burnside has found neighbors remarkably sanguine about unexpected evening concerts.

“The neighbors don’t object to the music, and some of them seem to rather enjoy it,” the longtime Venice resident said .

Burnside makes music by pushing the keys and pedals on the downstairs console. Electric cables carry the musical messages to a relay station in the chamber room. Two turbine fan blowers generate wind pressure that passes through individual pipes and produces the organ’s impressive sound.

Eighteen years ago, Burnside found himself captivated by a friend’s pipe organ. That brief introduction was all it took to send him out, searching for a pipe organ of his own. A buyer can’t go to the local mall and simply order a pipe organ on the scale Burnside dreamed about, so Burnside began collecting discarded pipes from Southern California churches and even a funeral parlor.

His first organ had five rows, or ranks, of pipes. He set it up in his garage. But there was one problem: He didn’t know how to play it.

“I tried to teach myself but I decided to take lessons from a church organist,” he said. “Now I try and play every day.”

Shortly after mastering the keyboard, Burnside joined the American Theatre Organs Society, an international organization of 6,000 amateur and professional musicians who want to preserve the endangered theater organ and its music.

Aided by tips from other members, he has acquired such treasures as an assemblage of pipes once used in the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City and a bar harp from Los Angeles Trade-Technical College. And a trip to the basement of a mausoleum at the Sunnyside Mortuary and Memorial Park in Long Beach produced a piece of organ history: a Link Player, a relative of the player piano that was used in the 1920s to play continuous organ music during funerals and other events.

Burnside has wired the player into the console and pipe chamber so he can have live organ music during dinner and other times when he is otherwise engaged. It has four rolls that play up to 30 minutes of music each. Selections include dances, marches and classical music.

Friends are always welcome to play a few sets on the organ at Burnside’s home.

“It’s not just for me to play,” he said. “We have people who stop by to play and we like to kick back on the couch and listen.”