Feasibility of Hauptwerk on £10k-£20k budget for a school

[David Pinnegar]

Hi!

I heard recently of a school wanting to buy an electronic organ as a practice resource . . . and instead suggested a pipe instrument. But for one reason or another I can see why for teaching purposes the resources of an electronic could be justifiable.

So I suggested Hauptwerk as a teaching resource, with the ability to have a variety of different historic instruments available from throughout Europe.

The idea has been well received and, as an interdepartmental project, it's able to garner enthusiasm from across the school, from DT to physics and IT. So the next step is a feasibility exploration into costs.

I have a stack of 4 manuals which could be donated. Conversion to midi - £500? A pedalboard . . . What sort of computer is best? Cost? Solid state disc drive? Soundcard . . . Amplifier stack - an off the shelf surround sound amp or two?

What's also exciting is possibly having a whole library of public domain scores on screen.

Whilst I would normally abhorr the thought of anything other than a pipe organ, for an educational resource like this such a computer facility can be raise the status of a music department out of a fusty organ-loft image.

Best wishes

David P

In a school situation

[Contrabombarde]

This could be a very worthwhile educational project for a school, involving as you say music, IT, physics and woodworking departments.

There is plenty of info both on the Hauptwerk website and on pcorgan.com about requirements but in a nutshell, you can never have enough memory and if you are running four manuals you should aim for at least 24GB, preferably a minimum 32 GB. You will need a fast processor (four or six core i7 or whatever they are called now) to allow all the polyphony especially if playing wet echoey sample sets (less critical if the organ is playing in a reverberant building, since in that case you will be playing dry sets and polyphony in echos is less relevant). All that memory takes a long time to load from hard drive unless you get an SSD, kerching! (You could instead go for two hard drives in RAID0 but greater risk of failure and not quite as fast as a single SSD though much faster than a single platter drive. I believe RAID0-ing SSDs doesn't gain much performance over a single SSD however). You really don't want to be waiting much more than a minute or so for sample sets to load versus several minutes for conventional hard disk.

You probably want an external MIDI and audio interface rather than built-in sound card, again lots of recommendations but I'd advise going for a more "pro" model in a school. I have an internal M-audio delta 1010LT soundcard but have a feeling they are no longer available. The number of channels is important: minimum four ie two stereo pairs in a dry practice room plus subwoofer (for surround sound); I can't advise on setup in a reverberant room other than that you will want to play through as many channels as possible, potentially in multiples of six to avoid sending too many different notes through the same speakers. With six channels for each manual your speaker budget quickly mounts up. David is better placed than me to comment on the cost of such systems! The ECHO audiofire 12 has 12 analogue outputs and a MIDI input for around £470 and is often recommended for "larger" systems.

Worth investing in proper thumb and toe pistons from Kimber Allen - cheap Ebay switches are less robust and thumb pistons are a nightmare to repair. Last time I checked K-A thumb pistons were around £7 each engraved, so let-s say 60 = £400. Toe pistons typically £20 each, also available second hand from organ builders sometimes. Expression pedals can be bought for around £50 (Fatar or Kimber Allen) or made if you have a lump of oak and a potentiometer.

Rough computing cost estimates - for your PC you should allow £1000, you have to search for companies that will sell you so much RAM within the budget but there are a few around.
23 inch touchscreens (perfect size for a three or four manual stopjamb) - £300 each, aim for two.
27 inch monitor (perfect size for displaying two pages of A4 sized music) - £200. You really need a screen to control Hauptwerk (there are "headless" consoles with stop knobs and no visible screen, but it's just simpler to have a console screen especially if adjusting the organ e.g. with changes to tuning, and a 27 inch is perfect for displaying open source music as pdf documents. Page turns can be accomplished by sending MIDI signals via a suitable piston to Bome's MIDI convertor program, which triggers Autohotkey to turn my pages.)
software MIDIfication of an existing keyboard stack and pedals - there are several hardware vendors on the Hauptwerk forum. MIDI Boutique bundle their HWCE-MAX plus six scanrow to matrix convertors for £350 - it has five potentiometers for expression pedals and can accomodate six keyboards of 64 notes (good for pedals and pistons). They also sell reed switches and magnets for MIDIfying pedals or manuals.
Hauptwerk software - fora public installation you will need the advanced public licence, £830
Sample sets - four or large three manual organs like Salisbury Cathedral are around £400 upwards. Allow for several different organ styles e.g. St Maximin (French baroque) Caen (French romantic), Zwolle (Germanic baroque), Doesburg (German romantic), Salisbury (English romantic), Palace of Arts (modern). Not all organ vendors allow public installations as they are understandably perceived to be a threat to real pipe organs so choose carefully.

So within a budget of £5000 excluding speakers and assuming the keyboards and pedals were already available you could probably build a pretty impressive 12 channel system and still afford Hauptwerk and a couple of large sample sets.