Supercomputer organ versus old school pipes

[KB7DQH]

http://www.newsleader.com/article/20130301/NEWS01/303020002/Supercomputer-organ-versus-old-school-pipes?nclick_check=1

VERONA — It's the battle between old and new.

Organists are calling it the "David and Goliath" event, or the "Tale of Two Organs."

The matchup on March 11 pits Verona United Methodist Church's Viscount organ against the pipe organ at the historic Church of the Epiphany in Washington, D.C. It's a showdown that's been designed for entertainment by some world-class organists and that involves Verona due to the type of instrument they have.

The concert is meant to match the old-world technology of Epiphany's 64-rank Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ versus new-world technology from Viscount Organ Company, know as Physis.

It's a real wind instrument on one side, and a software-driven algorithmic machine on the other.

Aeolian-Skinner versus Viscount. The 3,467 finely crafted real windblown pipes compared to the 4,000 watts of the digital organ on the other.

Bring it on.

"This (kind of competition) used to be a very big thing when the organ was an instrument that people would come to see," said Josh Dove, owner of Whitesel Music in Harrisonburg. "They would do these big concerts like this and make a big show out of it."

Dove's music company is the one who supplied Verona's UMC with the new Viscount Organ — and the only organ provider in the area to have the new technology, Dove said.

Last year, Verona UMC replaced an aging instrument with a state-of-the-art, custom three-manual Viscount Organ with Physis technology — making it the first electronic organ to apply physical modeling to pipe organ sound.

Bob Weeks, the pastor at Verona UMC, said it's an honor to have the church's organ used, not only for him but also the congregation.

"The clash of technology — old and new. It doesn't just replicate the old sounds, but it brings something new to it," Weeks said of the church's Viscount.

It's not so much pride or the attention, Weeks said, it's more of an affirmation of choosing the new technological instrument.

"This electronic organ, which makes this one different from all the rest, uses nothing but software. It uses a technology called physical modeling. It recreates the sound through computer code," Dove explained. "There's no real wind-blown pipes, the sound comes out of speakers."

"What's incredible about it is every last aspect of the pipe organ comes through the speakers. You can literally hear the valves opening and closing as you push down the key on the organ," he added. "You can hear the wind blowing through the pipes as you're playing. You can feel changes in air pressure happening. All of these things are happening but there is not a single pipe on the whole thing."

A pipe organ uses real pipes. With just a push of a key, it releases a valve and allows air to pass through the pipe producing sound.

According to Dove, the thing that makes Verona's church's organ so different is up until now, all of the electronic organs have worked on a technology that's 20 years old called sample sound technology. "In the electronic organ, when you push down a key it's like hitting play on a tape player. It's just copying the sound," Dove said.

With Verona's organ, the computer creates the sound from scratch at a speed so fast that that the human mind doesn't even know there has been a delay at all, Dove explained.

"This series of organ processes at a speed of up to 21 billion pieces of information per second," he said.

The idea of the battle brewed up between Dove and Jeremy Filsell — the artist-in-residence of the Washington National Cathedral and music director of the Historic Church of the Epiphany in downtown Washington, D.C.

Filsell personally requested Verona UMC's organ and will be playing it March 11, while Neil Weston, an international organist, will be performing the pipe organ.

But why a battle?

"What we intend to show is that this technology is that this technology from Viscount is something that is a legitimate alternative to a church that can't afford a real pipe organ," Dove said. The Viscount can cost much less than a real pipe organ — which can range in the seven figures, Dove said.

Verona paid about $65,000 for their Viscount, after a donation from the company. It retails for about $100,000, Weeks said.

By no means does Dove mean this to become a fight over replacing pipe organs with the new Physis technology.

One upside with the Viscount, Dove said, is it can be updated with just a push of the button.

Updates can be made on this new organ like one would update software on an iPhone — it's free, too. The older types of electronic organ would stay the way they came. If an update was needed, somebody from the organ's company would have to come out and install updates.

Filsell and Weston, along with Dove, are presenting a "Battle of the Organs" Concert starting at 7 p.m. March 11 at The Church of the Epiphany at 1317 G St.in Washington, D.C.

Eric
KB7DQH