Keyboardist - knows 3,000 songs from memory That's a wow !

Definitely organ related, don't know if directly Hauptwerk.

http://www.bobralston.com/bio.htm

Rgds,
Ed

3000 - That's amazing.

I had a friend who used to play the organ in a local pub. His idea of a score was to have the titles of 300 popular songs written on sheets of paper. He would put the sheets on the music stand and play 200 songs in a typical evening.

I used to think that was impressive.

My Friend used to do that mostly from memory,
But he had a stack of file drawers next to him with over 20,000 Songs,
on "Tune Dex" 3x5 cards, some of them like the Poet and Peasant Overture had up to six 3x5 cards attached together that waterfall-ed down the music rack ! He loved to play the scores of many shows, and operettas, and would attach the cards in order across his music rack, he had a row of brass clips across the top of the music rack to hold them there.
He passed about ten years ago and took all his skills with him, as usual.

By the By, he always wanted to assemble a 5 man.Theater Pipe organ, and he built a Studio for it,
but never managed to install it.
He would definitely have Loved Hauptwerk,
but alas did not live long enough for that to be released !

Not to take anything away from such accomplishments, but I often wonder how much of it is really from memory and how much of it is by ear. People with a really good ear can appear to be playing from memory but are really just able to translate the memory they hear in their head into notes. I guess that would mean in way they still had the song memorized but it would the hearing of the song that was memorized and not necessarily the memorization of all the notes.
I went to school with a guy we used to call "Mr. Ears". He would go to a NY philharmonic concert and go back to his apartment with friends and proceed to play the first 20 or 30 r 40 minutes of the concert until his aural memory failed him.
I envy people with really good ears like that. My ears are just OK, but the words "take a dictation" (in a musical sense) still strikes fear in my heart.
John

John,
I think you are right. I used to sing in Welsh in a Welsh Male Voice Choir (I do not normally speak Welsh). As soon as the music started I instinctively knew how to sing my part, and did that without music over a 2 to 3 hour concert.
Afterwards if I was asked to quote any of the words (without the music playing) I could not.
I needed the music prompt, together with 70 other men singing, for it all to come out of the subconscious.
All deep down in the mind, but certainly not from memory.
Keith

There is a case of a brain damaged man who does not know his wife. He has no memory making ability now and so each day he sees her it is as if he has never met her, or anyone else, from the day before. A terrible way to live surely.
But.
He was a choral director and can sing all the pieces he knew before the accident.
Memory is quite multifaceted and not simple at all.