Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> 
> http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Z-mokvpoo
> 

Not bad. A couple encoding errors toward the end, though.

I have tons of questions about the organ. You mentioned stops, once ... 
how do stops relate to the keys on the keyboard?

I know the consoles to the left and right of the keyboards have to do 
with selecting timbre of the organ, but what do the knobs below the 
keyboards do?

-- 
~Mike

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Well done!  BTW, that was quite the maniacal laugh at the end!  Classic.  :)

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Kyle wrote:
> Well done!  BTW, that was quite the maniacal laugh at the end!  
> Classic.  :)

Thanks!

The laugh was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I didn't plan it at all. But I 
think it really adds something to the performance! :-D

If nothing else, I can tell who watching all the way through... >:-D

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Kyle wrote:
> Well done!  BTW, that was quite the maniacal laugh at the end!  
> Classic.  :)

Oh yes.. I quite liked the maniacal laugh at the end :)

-- 
~Mike

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Mike Raiford wrote:

> Not bad. A couple encoding errors toward the end, though.

Those encoding errors don't exist in the file I have on my harddrive. I 
watched it end-to-end to check. I can only imagine that either a few 
packets got lost during uploading (how??), or YouTube itself did 
something wrong when transcoding the video. (I uploaded it as an H.264 
AVI. I have no idea what YouTube transcodes it to.)

> I have tons of questions about the organ. You mentioned stops, once ... 
> how do stops relate to the keys on the keyboard?
> 
> I know the consoles to the left and right of the keyboards have to do 
> with selecting timbre of the organ, but what do the knobs below the 
> keyboards do?

Well now...

The organ contains several different kinds of pipes - long thin ones, 
short fat ones, metal ones, wooden ones, some with reeds, some with 
fipples. That all sound different.

The pipes are grouped into "ranks". Each rank (usually) contains a pipe 
for each key on the keyboard. (On the organ *I* played, a few of the 
ranks are incomplete, so some keys actually don't produce a note.)

The "stops" are what connects the keyboards to the ranks. With all the 
stops closed, the keys make no sound at all. If you open a particular 
stop (by pulling the "drawknobs" to the left and right of the 
keyboards), then pressing a key causes the corresponding pipe in that 
rank to speak. It's like selecting a sound preset on an electronic keyboard.

However, you can open *several* stops at once. This causes several pipes 
to play the same note when you press any given key. (Actually, this 
organ also has a "mixture" stop which causes several pipes tuned to 
different pitches to speak when you press a single note. Personally, I 
don't care for the effect too much.)

Now then, the ranks are grouped together into "divisions". And each 
keyboard controls a different division. The organ I played is about the 
smallest kind you can get: two manuals and a peddleboard. (I.e., a set 
of keys that you're ment to play with your feet.)

This particular organ is so small that the peddle division has only 1 
rank ("Bordon"). And half the notes don't work properly. And the peddle 
action is pretty busted.

The two manuals control the "Great division" ( = lower keyboard) and the 
"Swell division" ( = upper keyboard). Each of these divisions has a 
seperate set of ranks/stops.

Modern organs have the keys connected to the pipes electronically. 
However, the 151 year-old organ I'm playing uses metal connecting rods. 
This results in the keys being seriously heavy to play! But if you look 
closely, you can see the keys of the Swell manual actually move when I 
play the keys of the Great manual. (BUT NOT THE OTHER WAY ROUND!) This 
is because I have engaged a special drawknob called a "coupler". And the 
next effect, obviously, is that now even more pipes play when I hit a key.

In this recording, I have the organ configured almost to "full organ". 
(Full organ = every rank plays when you hit a key. Actually I don't have 
*all* the stops open, so not quite. But nearly!)

The *other* thing the coupler does is make the keys even heavier - since 
  am now providing mechanical force through my fingers to oeprate two 
sets of rods! (The action probably needs cleaning and oiling.)

I can also connect the peddles to the Great manual with another coupler. 
However, when I did this, I discovered that some of the keys start to 
jam in the on-position. This organ really needs some serious TLC! But 
you can see that by this method, I could actually use the peddles to 
play pipes from a rank not in the peddle division.

On really large organs, you can swap the connections between keyboards 
and divisions around, transpose up/down an octave, and do all kinds of 
other crazy stuff. It's a really complicated machine! But this is only a 
small organ in a local village church, so its capabilities are far more 
limited.

The "knobs below the keyboards" (which this particular organ doesn't 
have) are called "thumb pistons". (You also get "toe pistons", which you 
push with your feet. See the Widor Toccata at the Newark Basilica for 
this and some generally good close-ups of a large organ being operated.) 
These select predefined combinations of settings.

On mechanical organs, these are predefined by the organ designer. On 
modern electric organs, they are computer-programmable. If you find a 
close-up shot of the Grand Organ at the Royal Albert Hall for example, 
there's a *disk drive* slot on the console to load/save stop settings! o_O

Does that answer your questions?

(Heee... I sound like an expert! Wikipedia FTW!!)

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Mike Raiford wrote:
> Kyle wrote:
>> Well done!  BTW, that was quite the maniacal laugh at the end!  
>> Classic.  :)
> 
> Oh yes.. I quite liked the maniacal laugh at the end :)

I'm really quite glad I put that part in! ^_^

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4912b9a8$1@news.povray.org...

Nice  play and all by memory wow!


> Organ lessons seem like an appealing concept... Not sure where to get 
> those from though.

I know there is an organ school  for children as well as adults in my small 
town (I recorded and burnt a CD of their annual concert)
I guess there is one not so far from MK

Marc

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m_a_r_c wrote:

> Nice  play and all by memory wow!

Heh. Well... I mean... you play each chord several times, with the same 
rhythem. Just gotta remember what chords those are, is all. ;-)

> I know there is an organ school  for children as well as adults in my small 
> town (I recorded and burnt a CD of their annual concert)
> I guess there is one not so far from MK

Mmm, I'll Google it...

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Invisible wrote:

> Does that answer your questions?

I think ... It's a rather complicated machine, then? :)

OK, so the divisions then are the labeled items in each of the sections:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boardwalk_Hall_Auditorium_Organ

eg. Pedal Left, Unenclosed Chior, Great, etc ...

 From a different organ:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:String-Division-Middle-Sect.jpg

Each row of pipes would be a rank, then?

So, the string division on this organ has dozens of stops?

OK. When you mentioned stops, you mentioned a 32' (or was it 16'?) stop. 
Obviously from the sheer size a very low note. How does that relate to 
the organ.

FWIW, you really can't appreciate a pipe organ unless you hear it live.

The church my inlaws go to has a pipe organ that they actually use. It's 
pretty much brand new. The lowest notes were simply incredible to 
experience. (It is a legitimate pipe organ, you can see the display 
pipes, I have no idea where the rest of the instrument is. I've not 
actually looked at the console.)


> (Heee... I sound like an expert! Wikipedia FTW!!)


-- 
~Mike

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Mike Raiford wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
> 
>> Does that answer your questions?
> 
> I think ... It's a rather complicated machine, then? :)

Yep. Learning to play a large pipe organ is like learning to drive a 
car. You need both hands and your feet, and they need to work in a 
coordinated fashion, but after a while you can do it with effortless 
grace. (Depending on exactly what you're trying to do... F1 drivers make 
taking corners at 160 MPH look pretty effortless, but *you* try it 
sometime!)

> OK, so the divisions then are the labeled items in each of the sections:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boardwalk_Hall_Auditorium_Organ
> 
> eg. Pedal Left, Unenclosed Chior, Great, etc ...

Not entirely...

The divisions are a conceptual entity. Typical division names are 
"peddle", "great", "swell", "choir" and "echo". Usually there is one 
keyboard to each division. (But there can occasionally be "floating 
divisions" that are only accessed by couplers.) Where the pipes 
physically *are* in the building is an entirely different matter.

Pipes can be "enclosed", meaning they're inside a box with movable 
shutters. A peddle on the console opens and closes the shutters, thus 
altering the apparent loudness of the pipes. Apparently this organ has a 
choir division where only some of the ranks are enclosed. (This is not 
uncommon.)

The organ I played has *all* the pipes of the Swell enclosed, and *all* 
the pipes of the Great and Peddle divisions unenclosed. (A completely 
standard design for such a small organ.) At the end of the video you can 
just about see me operating the Swell peddle, which opens and closes the 
shutters.

>  From a different organ:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:String-Division-Middle-Sect.jpg
> 
> Each row of pipes would be a rank, then?

Probably - but not necessarily. The organ builder can arrange the pipes 
any way they damned well fancy. It *looks* like you're right, but it 
might be that, say, each *pair* of rows is a complete rank, with the 
pipes in one row being the next note up, or something.

> So, the string division on this organ has dozens of stops?

This is from the famous Wanamaker, the largest playable pipe organ in 
the entire world. And yes, it is famed for its *vast* string division. 
(The organ I played doesn't even have a single string stop. But then, 
it's a *church* organ rather than a *theatre* organ.)

> OK. When you mentioned stops, you mentioned a 32' (or was it 16'?) stop. 
> Obviously from the sheer size a very low note. How does that relate to 
> the organ.

A "normal" pipe rank is called an 8' rank. Because the lowest note has a 
pipe roughly 8' long - assuming it's an open pipe. Stopped pipes are 
half the length. And actually there are end corrections too depending on 
the width of the pipe and other parameters... But notionally, 8' long.

Thus, any stop marked "8'" will cause the keys to sound at the same 
pitch as a piano. (The organ I played just happens to have a piano sat 
right next to it. Currently the church doesn't have an organist!)

A 4' rank sounds one octave higher, and a 2' rank sounds an octave 
higher again. You can play such a rank on its own, or you can mix it 
with a 8' to add more "brightness" to the sound.

In my recording, I have (from the looks of it) two 8' stops, a 4' stop 
and the 2' pulled (in the Great division), and also a 16' in the Swell.

> FWIW, you really can't appreciate a pipe organ unless you hear it live.

No. My cheap camera mic doesn't do it justice. Why, you can hardly 
*hear* the bass notes I'm playing! And they aren't even that low...

> The church my inlaws go to has a pipe organ that they actually use. It's 
> pretty much brand new. The lowest notes were simply incredible to 
> experience. (It is a legitimate pipe organ, you can see the display 
> pipes, I have no idea where the rest of the instrument is. I've not 
> actually looked at the console.)

The peddle division on this organ makes the flower arrangements audibly 
rattle.

Unfortunately, as I say, only some of the notes work. One of the peddles 
just makes a hissing noise at you! o_O

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