A Virtual Theatre Pipe Organ Experience
A theatre pipe organ such as the ones pictured above may have individual pipe sounds recorded so that, note for note and rank for rank, an emulation of the sound may by reproduced. In order for these pipe sounds to be playable, there must exist keyboards and a virtual control panel so that an organization of these sounds may be accomplished.They use either samples of real organs or a synthesized method of sound generation. The keyboards trigger the sounds using MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), and are part of the console. The control panels are called relays. The relay (console) is also controlled using MIDI as designed by a computer program. The keyboards used in playing the following organ tunes are made by Yamaha and the relay is developed as the Miditzer relay.These virtual organs are an attempt, as a do it yourself facility, to build a playable facsimile of a real organ.
The following songs were recorded by me on a virtual theatre pipe organ (VTPO) which I built in my basement. It utilizes most of the basement. Speakers and amplifier combinations are called audio channels and there are twenty audio channels plus three sub-woofers which are located in two large chambers and two smaller chambers. A third chamber contains the third sub-woofer and is used for flute and tibia deep pedal sounds. Along the chamber rear wall exists a 32 ft 12" wide PVC pipe which matures the bottom octave of the flute, tibia and diapason ranks. A tuned box and 12" sub-channel amplifier generate and terminate one end. The large chambers occupy most of the length of our forty five ft. long basement. These are named, as they are in a real theater, left (Main Chamber) and right (Solo Chamber). Certain groups of the audio channels, relate to ranks, in these chambers, and produce a stereo effect. Ranks, in a real pipe organ, are groups of pipes, each group making up a single instrumental sound i.e. an oboe.The smaller chambers are on either side of the console. The audio channels therein represent the sounds of the percussive instruments i.e. the marimba, plus the traps (drums, castanets and other such toys). You may easily build one of these wonderful organs by downloading the rank samples and relay from the following sites.
jOrgan download
Comments are appreciated:
Edonmusic@juno.com
“EORF”
Much information has been written concerning the problems of creating and reproducing music, using amplifier/speaker combinations. Electronic systems for producing organ music, as opposed to pipe generated systems, contain all of these problems. They include, 'heterodyne', 'inter modulation', 'harmonic distortion', and others. One problem which has eluded the minds of the virtual organ people of late, is what I call the " electronic organ resonant factor". or "EORF".
In organ pipe generated systems, an entire set of problems are created by enclosing the ranks in rooms or chambers. Some of the above problems may be experienced in theatre pipe organ chambers, with the exception of "EORF". Simply put, "EORF" would best be explained using the common "blivet", as an example, or 10lbs in a 5 lb bag.
Every loudspeaker has a resonant frequency. Even the best of boxed
speaker systems exhibit certain resonant characteristics, whereas organ
pipes are each tuned to their individual frequencies. The recent
virtual organ producers are currently attempting to sway users of these
systems to use as many amp/spkr systems as affordable. To
reproduce the virtual sound of a 20 rank pipe organ would require using
as much as 1400 amp/spkrs, in order to represent each pipe,
electronically, without any "EORF". In addition, each speaker would
need to be designed so that it's resonant frequency is exactly at the
resonant value, as the pipe, which it replicates.
The benefits of the virtual theatre pipe organ are vast. Few, if any cyphers, (stuck notes). The absence of continuous tuning. The ability to easily maneuver speakers to achieve the "real TPO" reality, and if extra large pipe (pedal sounds) are desired, add a sub-woofer.
Virtual Theatre Pipe Organs have exhibited a more accurate
replication of the pipe sound using sampling, than previous electronic
attempts.
In my opinion, however, it would be foolish to expect the sound of any
virtual theatre organ to replace the sound of a real theatre pipe
organ, in a properly designed theatre.
Merry Christmas 20152010