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Started by KB7DQH, April 16, 2010, 02:03:41 PM

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KB7DQH

This:
http://organforum.com/

Will have to trawl around and see if there is anything particularly useful there...

Eric
KB7DQH
The objective is to reach human immortality—that is, to create things which are necessary to mankind, necessary to the purpose of the existence of mankind, and which have become the fruit that drives the creation of a higher state of mankind than ever existed before."

organforumadmin

#1
Quote from: KB7DQH on April 16, 2010, 02:03:41 PM
This:
http://organforum.com/

Will have to trawl around and see if there is anything particularly useful there...

Hi!

Yes - it's very US orientated and has a lot of people arguing about whether Allens are better than Rogers.

I hope that in providing some fairly focussed topics here we're engendering a slightly more academic and reasoned direction with the intention specifically of raising awareness and enthusiasm for the pipe organ and the aural heritage that it represents.

In this way, this forum will become more than a mere chat-place, although chat is always welcome and can spawn ideas, and result in enthusiasms developing for the best of pipe organs. Tools to do this can include electronics but electronics should never be regarded as more than tools to the purpose of encouraging interest in pipe instruments . . .

In recent days I have been working with a pop group who are somewhat different to the norm. They've used a real harpsichord in their work and they sampled a foot-blown one manual 4 rank pipe organ. This was extraordinary as cutting the initial pipe-speech artifacts and with odd pipes out of tune, it sounded like a surreally interesting Hammond and, with the starting transients and roughly put into samples without exactitude of normalising the speech transients and delays before coming fully on speech, it sounded like a fair organ. So they are discovering that incorporating real instruments into their work sounds ever so much more interesting than the commercial electronic substitutes.

Best wishes

Forum Admin

KB7DQH

#2
I certainly agree that the "electronic noise" on that forum is way too high for my tastes and finding
anything there of usefulness to our growing group of wind-driven keyboard instrument enthusiasts will be difficult, especially due to the sheer size of the information being exchanged there :-[

Occasionally someone will throw up a note about a pipe instrument looking for a new home and that thought  loaded into Google landed me there...

I did spot a thread describing the difficulty of finding a home for what amounts to a monster of an analog electronic organ, which had been made redundant by a Real Pipe Organ 8) 8) 8)

Some stuff in the thread about "not being able to get parts", etc... ;D ;D ;D 
The description of the console alone meant that would completely fill my living room!  The rest of the house would be occupied by the tone generators, amplifiers and speakers... Hmmm...  Sounds like a Wurlitzer in Australia rescued from a redundant movie theater, and installed in a house literally "built around the organ"...  That's on Youtube someplace I think...  But I digress...

After filtering out some of the "noise" over there...
methinks the "church world" is finding out the expensive way that where there is space for the "real thing" in the long run it will end up being less expensive and more enjoyable than something that "sounds like"...  What the gizmo sellers aren't telling church congregations is the service life of the electronic can never approach that of a pipe organ >:(   

A link to an article about a local church that found that out the hard way... and why this forum can be an important resource to others in a similar situation 8)  http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20100206/NEWS01/702069955


QuotePipe organ music fills Trinity Episcopal Church again
By Amy Daybert, Herald Writer
advertisement | your ad here
EVERETT — Parishioners at Trinity Episcopal Church have wanted a pipe organ in their church for almost 40 years.

The Balcom and Vaughan pipe organ now in the sanctuary is the fulfillment of their longstanding dream, according to music director David Spring.

Trinity's original pipe organ was installed in the late 1940s and could not be repaired when it broke down in the early 1970s. That organ was replaced by a Baldwin electronic organ that lasted another 25 years before it stopped working during a Christmas Eve service.

Shortly after, a church committee was formed to find a new mechanical action pipe organ. At the time, costs from a building renovation project kept the church from being able to fund a custom-built organ.

The search fizzled. Trinity borrowed a portable organ from another church.

A digital organ was purchased in 1999 when the loaned organ had to be returned.

As the new music director in 2001, Spring started to revive the effort to find a pipe organ.

"There's a strong sense if you're going to have an organ that the pipe organ is what it's supposed to sound like," he said. "Just like a real hollandaise sauce tastes better than the kind you make out of a package and add water."

He started looking at pipe organs for sale by churches that were consolidating or taking their music programs in different directions and no longer had a use for their pipe organ.

In January 2005, organ builder Frans Bosman convinced Spring to look at a 1971 pipe organ used by Covenant Christian Church in Spokane.

After seeing the instrument, Spring was impressed. He told church parishioners the chance to buy the organ was a rare opportunity that he believed shouldn't be ignored. They listened and for $40,000 they finally had their instrument.

The used organ cost about 10 percent of what new ones were going for, Spring said.

Bosman went to work refurbishing the instrument, to use as much of the original pipe work as possible.

About $110,000 was spent on the organ's framework and swell boxes where pipes are located. A custom loft was constructed to hold the swell boxes before Trinity's new organ could be played.

"The overall project, by the time it was all said and done, was probably what the church would have spent on just a new organ alone," Spring said. "A lot of people got behind this thing."

The fundraising took three years and was two-fold, senior warden Evie Beard said. People from the parish raised $650,000 with the help of a consulting firm. The goal was to use the money to purchase a pipe organ and install an elevator in the church. Beard expects the elevator will be installed sometime within the next three to five years.

The pipe organ, she said, looks like it has always been in the church.

"I love it. It's beautiful in any register," she said.

Trinity's pipe organ comprises 28 ranks, or sets, of pipes and includes recycled parts from 1915, Spring said. It's also listed in the Organ Historical Society's database.

A dedication service of the organ was held on Jan. 9 at the church. Organist David DiFiore played during a dedication recital on Jan. 29. There will be one more dedication event at 8 p.m. on March 26 at Trinity Episcopal Church, 2301 Hoyt Ave.

The program is planned to bring the season of Lent to a close and will feature DiFiore with a chamber orchestra and the church chorus conducted by Spring.

   Yes, a pipe instrument has its own "care and feeding" requirements...  but then again the human race has been building and repairing these for nearly a thousand years...


One of the few places a "large" electronic has an advantage over "pipe" is, depending on how its configured, is transportability... for now.    I have a few engineering ideas which may make possible the transport and "instant installation" of "concert-size-instruments" in venues which do not already have such an instrument on hand, venues typically employed by traveling musical acts
such as rock bands that want to do "something completely different".

But for now they will have to suffer along with looped samples playing into stacks of speakers ;)

Eric
The objective is to reach human immortality—that is, to create things which are necessary to mankind, necessary to the purpose of the existence of mankind, and which have become the fruit that drives the creation of a higher state of mankind than ever existed before."

revtonynewnham

Hi

There have been transportable pipe organs of various sizes - Reginald Foort's Moller (later BBC Theatre organ no.2 and now in the USA via Hilversum) springs to mind, as does Conel Bathurst's efforts of a few decades earlier.  In both cases, I suspect transport logistics put paid to  the viability of the project.

Rick Wakeman had a small (2 rank 2 manual extension) organ built by a major UK firm and toured for a while as part of his keyboard rig.  these days he uses samples for ease of transport and tuning.

Every Blessing

Tony

KB7DQH

Read somewhere, likely a Youtube comment, about a group who offered for hire a complete Wurlitzer
Theatre instrument,  the comment mentioning that keeping it tuned and regulated was a serious PITA,
but it enjoyed a certain amount of popularity in the Pacific Northwest corner of the USA in the 1970's...

My thoughts are along those lines but designing everything to be as quick to unload/assemble/test/play/disassemble/load/transport, step-and-repeat... as the rest of the gear a typical touring musical group would drag around with them...

Material choices here become a tad more exotic I would think, as one would want the instrument to be considerably more durable than something installed at a fixed location... I'm thinking carbon-fiber windchests for a start...

This could become an interesting "dream exercise" for the organ building area I would think...
The objective is to reach human immortality—that is, to create things which are necessary to mankind, necessary to the purpose of the existence of mankind, and which have become the fruit that drives the creation of a higher state of mankind than ever existed before."

David Pinnegar

Quote from: KB7DQH on April 18, 2010, 12:37:30 AM
I did spot a thread describing the difficulty of finding a home for what amounts to a monster of an analog electronic organ, which had been made redundant by a Real Pipe Organ 8) 8) 8)

Dear Eric

This is one of the real reasons behind this forum. "Proper" use of electronics is that of temporary installations for particular purposes and also potentially tonal research, in addition of course to home practice. And as such I consider that some degree of electronic discussion can be valid and useful . . . and threads such as this which can draw attention to the follies of those who mistakenly think that electronics can provide a permanent solution, I regard as very valuable to the survival of pipe organs. However, elsewhere, electronic discussion is wholly prohibited and I was censored in rather a surprising place for having castigated the decision to replace the pipe organ at Holy Trinity Wall Street by a digital. I said that "digital stops are cheap" and this upset a number of people. But it's true! Computer sampling the noise of a rank of pipes must be cheaper than making a set of pipes . . . unless of course it's a case of the Emperor's New Clothes . . . I think that many gizmo manufacturers rely on a certain mystique to really push their prices up. In my collection of vinyl LPs, I've got one which was clearly a marketing gimmic by a well known firm about organ voicing . . . It's nothing to do with voicing except in pointing out the difference perhaps between a Bourdon and a Flute, and perhaps for fun auditioning it should be on the agenda of the EOCS http://www.eocs.org.uk

QuoteSome stuff in the thread about "not being able to get parts", etc... ;D ;D ;D

Even some nice low noise basic op-amps are now getting hard to find and as software driven computers take over, hard wired chips have long been fried.

QuoteAfter filtering out some of the "noise" over there...
methinks the "church world" is finding out the expensive way that where there is space for the "real thing" in the long run it will end up being less expensive and more enjoyable than something that "sounds like"...  What the gizmo sellers aren't telling church congregations is the service life of the electronic can never approach that of a pipe organ >:(   

My leviathan that I use at Hammerwood Park, for the purpose of putting the King of Instruments on the concert platform specifically to demonstrate the King of Instruments in a way that a nice 11 rank instrument really can't for the purposes of that sort of concert, is great fun, requires the intellect of a 747 pilot to fly and challenges even the best of organists not to crash, has so many wires which can easily become disconnected, buttons pressed inadvertantly, memories to set that it really does require a flight-check procedure before every trip up the runway. Sometimes for no apparent reason a stop on the Choir goes on holiday, although as it is near duplicated by one of 170 or so more stops it's not a great worry, and reed switches on the pedals are not as permanently reliable as the proponents of modern technology would like you to think they are . . .

But it's exciting and versatile, and hopefully inspirational
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9usBggyS5Nk although  :-[  :'( it will never match
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPGDiA3fidA or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSf7-4t_SWc


QuoteOne of the few places a "large" electronic has an advantage over "pipe" is, depending on how its configured, is transportability...
;D You must be joking! 30 channels of amps and speakers . . . All those wires to connect up at a new venue!? No way! When I first bought the ex LondonDerry Cathedral instrument, I thought it would be transportable so that I could hire it out - but even lumping a dozen channels of speakers from one end of the house to the other and getting the wiring right was a marathon.

Quotesuch an instrument on hand, venues typically employed by traveling musical acts
such as rock bands that want to do "something completely different". But for now they will have to suffer along with looped samples playing into stacks of speakers ;)
;D And unless they are top notch physicist designed speakers, it will still sound like an organ through a hi-fi system. I heard Carlo Curley playing a state of the art  commercial instrument (not his usual brand) at a church near Eastbourne in Sussex. Terrible speakers, poor installation, and I would have rather stayed at home and listened to my hi-fi system playing one of my live recordings . . . and the single manual pipe organ at the church knocked the digital electronic sideways.

Best wishes

David P

KB7DQH

Ever see the semitrailer loads of stuff a typical "rock band" sets up in a stadium?  Takes a crew of a couple dozen grunts and technicians a day or more  to get it all going (hence the term "roadies" ;D
and then take it all apart and pack into the trailers to be hauled to the next venue.  A sound check takes as long as the "concert" :o  And then there's the lighting and "stage effects" ;D ;D ;D

The objective is to reach human immortality—that is, to create things which are necessary to mankind, necessary to the purpose of the existence of mankind, and which have become the fruit that drives the creation of a higher state of mankind than ever existed before."

KB7DQH

The objective is to reach human immortality—that is, to create things which are necessary to mankind, necessary to the purpose of the existence of mankind, and which have become the fruit that drives the creation of a higher state of mankind than ever existed before."

KB7DQH

The objective is to reach human immortality—that is, to create things which are necessary to mankind, necessary to the purpose of the existence of mankind, and which have become the fruit that drives the creation of a higher state of mankind than ever existed before."

David Pinnegar

#9
Hi Eric!

You know, I'm not sure that I ought not to ask Forum Admin to delete that post - apart from anything else on account of the colour of the stop tabs making me queasy . . .:-\

QuoteAs a traveling performer, I'm unable to have the relationship with site–specific organs that most musicians have with their personal instrument, and from which they and their audiences benefit night after night.

Well actually it's just this that gives me the greatest respect for the greatest of organists. The fact that an organist can arrive at one of the most complex instruments in the world (so says an organist that has played the third largest pipe organ in the world) and achieve a performance of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9usBggyS5Nk
in just a few hours really tests the metal of a performer and demonstrates his world-scale prowess.

The performer you have linked to here would not dare to do that. In seeking to avoid the challenge of adaptation to strange instruments he demeans his rank in player status. Furthermore, the instrument that he's planning on putting on bandwagon would enable the performer to simply mass produce concerts and I'm not sure that this is particularly in the interests of the musical art. Doing so reduces him to being a circus performer. Part of the art of playing is to come to terms with a strange instrument and work with the musicality of that instrument. Audiences often think "What would performer X do with this instrument" and expect the performer to crank up that instrument to roar with joy, often in churches to Praise of God. In the KUSC.org interviews he prides himself as coming from a GodFree background. I postulate that without God in one's life the false God of Mammon can take over.

In making comments upon turning organ performance into a circus act putting display of technique before musicality and calling a spade a spade with regard to the fortune that someone is making by selling a computer as an organ to the value of $1M instead of in any way contributing to the pipe organ building art, I have unashamedly upset members of a forum elsewhere. I have also upset them by pointing out that the repertoire is largely in praise of god and needs to be understood by a performer in that context if the composer's composition is to be in any way authentically performed. I'm sure that I have heard this performer pouring disrespect to such a concept but believe it to be spiritually and musically sound.

I hope that I won't upset anyone here to whom the Organ matters.

The proof of the pudding is in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSf7-4t_SWc which knocks spots off
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha3A1JmfBNQ and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEPUY4yOT0s at 3:53
The orchestration of the first grand chord is imaginative, but it's starting to lead merely into synthesiser playing, perhaps like a Wersi electronic, and the grandeur of the real instrument at St Maximin speaks with the authority of its player.

Best wishes

David P

PS The sound of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E46VhBTi5_g epitomises why I have also been known to rail against electric pianos!

KB7DQH

#10
I wholeheartedly agree.    There are VERY FEW duplicate pipe organs... The only examples I know of are the Artiste series built by Moller, and the last two instruments built by John Brambaugh prior to his retirement. (His son now works for Martin Pasi BTW :) 

I may have posted a link to it elsewhere on this forum, but there was an essay published in one of the
organ-related publications by an organist who also runs the Organ Clearinghouse, and I believe one can link to the essay from their website...  Having read that, and CC's statement, blog, or whatever on his website, I can understand (I think?) his desire for an instrument he knows "inside and out"... unlike what most organists do when they are on tour, which is practice the music they know on an instrument they don't... and somehow make it all work!  I think part of the adventure of being a really good organist is the chance to experience the instruments the world has to offer...

  There is always the organist who shows up to do a concert on a poorly maintained instrument that truly "isn't up to the job" and faces having to work around the deficiencies of the instrument as it sits or refuse to play the concert?   That kind of "stress" would be avoided by having your own instrument I suppose...

A legitimate reason for having a touring organ built is to be able to play those venues not otherwise equipped... and short of sports stadiums or 30,000 people camped in the middle of a desert miles from anything...  http://www.bobrichardson.com/desert_organ_1.html
Well, there are way too may fine instruments that are well-kept that could play to large audiences,
and not all in churches...





The objective is to reach human immortality—that is, to create things which are necessary to mankind, necessary to the purpose of the existence of mankind, and which have become the fruit that drives the creation of a higher state of mankind than ever existed before."

KB7DQH

Had a look at the fire  started on "a forum elsewhere"... Maybe I was thinking in "Chinese" USD :o
Or, being the scrounge that I am, considered using good quality used stuff?  Did see a single USB keydesk for around $100 or so USD, but without the pistons... But then illuminated pushbutton switches  can be had for not much money...  But still, a million $$$ for a toaster?  Moreover the funding
is being done through a 501(c)3, meaning the "donations" are fully tax-deductible by the donors...
No doubt you have heard the saying... "Follow the Money" :o
The objective is to reach human immortality—that is, to create things which are necessary to mankind, necessary to the purpose of the existence of mankind, and which have become the fruit that drives the creation of a higher state of mankind than ever existed before."

dragonser

Quote from: David Pinnegar on June 30, 2010, 02:00:57 AM
Hi Eric!

You know, I'm not sure that I ought not to ask Forum Admin to delete that post - apart from anything else on account of the colour of the stop tabs making me queasy . . .:-\




well I think it looks like the Colour scheme was designed during the 1960's ! and the layout during the 1970's.
I think that voicing any instrument ( whether Pipe or Electronic ) may not be an easy thing to do if it is going to be in different venues ( or even played in one location ). are they going to use a computer program to allow for an auto setup ? or have preset settings ?
from the article "  It turns the computer into a musical instrument"  I always thought it was the player that did this !

regards Peter B

KB7DQH

#13
A rather "musical" politically oriented letter to the editor of a newspaper ;D.

Here in the US it's "midterm" election ramp-up... but the media insanity will end after the first week of November, sort-of... ;)

http://www.azdailysun.com/news/opinion/mailbag/article_48bb3dfe-7848-5bb7-980b-acf863e5fa88.html

Quote
Home / News / Opinion / Letters To The Editor
Voters get noise but deserve symphonies

    * Story
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Voters get noise but deserve symphonies

Posted: Wednesday, October 20, 2010 5:00 am | (2) Comments

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To the editor:

A vibrating gut is characterized by a fundamental tone. However, the difference between a clarinet and violin is undeniably marked by differences in overtones. Fundamentals make harmony possible, but overtones provide the thrills and chills.

Politics is an exercise in fundamentals, independent of harmony or skill; voters are considered only bothersome overtones. If politicians had their ways, Election Day would sound as dry as a synthesized middle C colliding with a banjo in a trash bin. Voters, however, deserve Zulu dances or, perhaps, Chopin performed at Heritage Square.

Imagine Bach on a kazoo, then on a traditional pipe organ. Our culture deserves Zarathustra, and we are given Turkey In the Straw. Milli Vanilli was a pop group in the '80s who faked music. "I Want Candy" was a tune that made unskilled musicians millions. Blue Man Group earned a billion beating on sewer pipe. Behind the scenes, and tying this together, is a simple musical progression amounting to all the sophistication of "Hey Soul Sister!"

Eric
KB7DQH
The objective is to reach human immortality—that is, to create things which are necessary to mankind, necessary to the purpose of the existence of mankind, and which have become the fruit that drives the creation of a higher state of mankind than ever existed before."