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Earlier quoted context omitted.
This being Hacker News, you could consider Knuth's approach: have one built for your home. https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/organ.html
Or the similar approach of the guy from This Museum is Not Obsolete, buy an entire Church organ secondhand and retrofit it into your home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVGr3J_LZaE
Mostly unrelated to wind instruments: I always thought motorcycles and musical instruments came from the same Yamaha, but apparently they split back in 1955. Interesting that after almost 70 years both companies are still using the same logo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_Motor_Company#Beginning...
> The Master Trust Bank of Japan (11.82%) > Yamaha Corporation (9.91%) > Toyota (3.58%)
I guess that ownership stake smooths some things out.
The pipe organ is surely one of the most majestic & grand instruments, and I long for the day its most frequent use won't be drab church hymns. It's capable of so much more. It's also difficult to get exposure to. You've basically got make friends with a church music director to let you play theirs. That's not easy, especially as a queer self-taught musician—no religion, no music degree won't get you too far. It's a…
If you're in the US, you may want to try to find an episcopal church. They seem to be liturgically conservative enough to still have organs but are generally socially liberal enough to be more accepting. Ymmv, obviously. But I will say that personally in years of playing the organ and asking random churches (including conservative ones) if I could borrow their organs on a quiet weekday, my bisexuality has never come…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're in the US, you may want to try to find an episcopal church. They seem to be liturgically conservative enough to still have organs but are generally socially liberal enough to be more accepting. Ymmv, obviously. But I will say that personally in years of playing the organ and asking random churches (including conservative ones) if I could borrow their organs on a quiet weekday, my bisexuality has never come…
I once asked a church choir director: how many people in a typical choir do really believe in god. His answer was: zero. As for the priest - he said - it's more like a coin flip: some of them are still religious.
Anna Lapwood demonstrating the features of a pipe organ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzK-tYFGQx4 Edit: Although she didn't explain how they "programme" the buttons. Presumably by adjusting something in the guts of the organ.
On many instruments, the combination action features multiple "memory levels" (possibly hundreds!). Each memory level is an independent copy of the settings for all the user-programmable pistons, so e.g. the "general 1" piston can be programmed to recall one registration on memory level 1 and a different registration on memory level 2. There's usually an LED display or screen that shows the active memory level (they're named numerically), with accompanying buttons to increase and decrease it. Generally, on a shared instrument (e.g. at a music school or large church), an organist will be assigned a range of memory levels for their own use. Some combination actions even have a "lock" feature that makes a memory level read-only until it's explicitly unlocked, which helps prevent one organist from clobbering another's registrations if they accidentally punch in the wrong memory level.
Some older instruments (built before electronics) also have combination actions with varying designs and degrees of flexibility. I don't know much about them, but the Wikipedia link overviews some of them. Indeed, older systems often need to be set in the "guts of the organ." They might even require an organ builder to come configure them.
Some organs (e.g. small instruments, Baroque-era instruments, and modern instruments built in certain historical styles) don't have combination actions at all. In that case, all stops must be moved manually, either by the organist or by a helper ("registrant") or two. It can take time to get used to playing while a helper on either side of you manipulates the stops. It can also be nerve-wracking to be a registrant, knowing that if you lose your place in the music, you might mess up your colleague's performance!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registration_(organ)#Combinati...
Although most organ music played for liturgical or academic reasons is terrifyingly boring, there is a decent contingent of symphonic and "theatre" (yes -re) organ people who want something that moves us and maybe erodes some of the concrete work elsewhere in building. Misc tracks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzpQHz2dGX8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VN5DGw3OvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm_vvBuH2ts Also,…
The pipe organ is surely one of the most majestic & grand instruments, and I long for the day its most frequent use won't be drab church hymns. It's capable of so much more. It's also difficult to get exposure to. You've basically got make friends with a church music director to let you play theirs. That's not easy, especially as a queer self-taught musician—no religion, no music degree won't get you too far. It's a…
I don't want to be "that guy" but a mate of mine is the music director is in his local church here in the UK, plays the organ and piano, is mostly self taught and is also gay... he's even going to be teaching me to play the organ later on this year (and I'm joining his choir for a bit of fun... he also knows I'm not religious at all and in his own words "faith is not a requirement") All I'm saying is you just need to…
The pipe organ is surely one of the most majestic & grand instruments, and I long for the day its most frequent use won't be drab church hymns. It's capable of so much more. It's also difficult to get exposure to. You've basically got make friends with a church music director to let you play theirs. That's not easy, especially as a queer self-taught musician—no religion, no music degree won't get you too far. It's a…
There is a small group of people who have built their own console with "multiple manuals, pedalboard, couplers". I've been meaning to do that myself, but time is lacking. With software and good speakers you can probably get the reverberant room as well, though to my knowledge this hasn't been done yet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are quite a few high-quality sampled pipe organs out there, most of which run in Native Instruments' Kontakt sampler software. My personal favorites are the RAH ( https://www.royalalberthallorgan.com/ ) and the Rugby and Union Chapel organs from Spitfire Audio ( https://www.spitfireaudio.com/symphonic-organ )
Hauptwerk beats Kontakt in this department, I'm afraid. Certainly the latter two can't compare to the full-featured models that are on offer for Hauptwerk, which include wind models for tremulants and all. If you're not after trying out all registrations, but just want the sound, Kontakt is good enough.
Anna Lapwood demonstrating the features of a pipe organ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzK-tYFGQx4 Edit: Although she didn't explain how they "programme" the buttons. Presumably by adjusting something in the guts of the organ.
The system for storing and recalling stop combinations ("registrations") is called a combination action [0]. On a modern instrument, it's generally built with electronics, including a solid-state memory. It's also user-programmable. Usually, this is done through a "set" button: the organist holds down the set button and then simultaneously presses the button ("piston") that they want to program. The current state of…