Hello all,
This is not an illusion, nor is it a recording artefact. In the summer I visited Tewkesbury Abbey and, both sitting 1/3 of the way down the north side of the nave and also listening to the voluntary from the crossing, in front of the Milton Organ case, there was a pronounced flattening of pitch during the decay.
At Tewkesbury I could not hear the sound bouncing off the west wall and coming back, so I don't think it's due to that; in fact at York Minster, where I've both sung and played many times, the organ, particularly the 32' Sackbut, is very audible as it rebounds from the back of the nave, but there is no frequency droop.
I've noted this effect in numerous acoustics and it seems to me that it is most pronounced when the width and height of the nave are similar. York is wide but nowhere near as wide as the 92' of the vault. Tewkesbury, being Romanesque, is very squat. My local church, although not very reverberant, also exhibits this phenomenon and is roughly square in cross-section of the nave.
Warm Regards
Neil
This is not an illusion, nor is it a recording artefact. In the summer I visited Tewkesbury Abbey and, both sitting 1/3 of the way down the north side of the nave and also listening to the voluntary from the crossing, in front of the Milton Organ case, there was a pronounced flattening of pitch during the decay.
At Tewkesbury I could not hear the sound bouncing off the west wall and coming back, so I don't think it's due to that; in fact at York Minster, where I've both sung and played many times, the organ, particularly the 32' Sackbut, is very audible as it rebounds from the back of the nave, but there is no frequency droop.
I've noted this effect in numerous acoustics and it seems to me that it is most pronounced when the width and height of the nave are similar. York is wide but nowhere near as wide as the 92' of the vault. Tewkesbury, being Romanesque, is very squat. My local church, although not very reverberant, also exhibits this phenomenon and is roughly square in cross-section of the nave.
Warm Regards
Neil