The organ as a wind instrument
yamaha.com
yamaha.com
It's also difficult to get exposure to. You've basically got make friends with a church music director to let you play theirs. That's not easy, especially as a queer self-taught musician—no religion, no music degree won't get you too far. It's a self-reinforcing negative feedback loop that gatekeeps its wider use.
(Yes, sample libraries work, but they're just intermediate representations of a full console with multiple manuals, pedalboard, couplers, reverberant room, etc.)
All I'm saying is you just need to find the right church and person... most people will happily share their passions with equally passionate beginners, and churches are crying out for organ players, they are a dying breed.
But I will say that personally in years of playing the organ and asking random churches (including conservative ones) if I could borrow their organs on a quiet weekday, my bisexuality has never come up. And I didn't have to be friends with the choir director either. Once, I attended one Mass and just went up to him afterwards to thank him for playing (it was beautiful) and ask if I could ever practice with it.
I know it's different from many places as I'm in a big city, but at least four organists whom I've known personally are gay. Many churches don't even require you to be religious even to be employed to play the organ there. Randomly on an airplane, I spoke with an atheist music professor who was choir director/organist at a congregationalist church. They didn't seem to care. So I doubt it'd be a big deal if you just want to practice. The choir director at my current (liberal) parish never takes Communion--I don't know if he is personally religious one way or the other, but it seems to be little more than a job to him.
Also, you should try to find some churches where there is more than just "drab church hymns." 20th and even 21st century voluntaries, anthems, and choral preludes are alive and well in certain segments of Christendom. See for instance the churches that Bálint Karosi plays in. I doubt you'd describe his music as "drab." My parish runs the gamut from Palestrina to something from the 20th century at least every Sunday. Just my 2 cents.
I'd assume not being a member of the said church is the biggest obstacle you can reasonably have here, and it can be non-issue too, especially if you are not hoping to instantly gain regular access. Don't be an ass about your lack of religion and hope that they are not an ass about having a religion. I know a few music directors in churches and they are definitely not very religious and it's mostly just a job for them and they are always eager to talk about organs to everyone interested, of course things vary a lot. One must also understand that giving access to expensive instrument that isn't even their own like organs (especially unsupervised) requires high trust and sometimes it's just too much to ask even if you are a lifelong member of the said church. But asking is cheap, don't hesitate to contact your local church music director(s) if you are seriously interested.
> You've basically got make friends with a church music director to let you play theirs
No one is stopping you or any other secular organization from building your own organs. It seems weird to complain that churches were the only organizations willing to spend the money to build and maintain organs. If anything, you should be grateful they invested the resources in the first place. Without these churches, is it not possible the organ would be virtually extinct at this point?
There are some crazy good organists out there, and they definitely make them come to life in a way that people that don't have the organ as their main instrument would struggle with. I've been to some organ performances that were indeed boring and some that were out of this world, same organ!
I think its reasonable to be both happy these things exist at all, and are available to some for free rather than in extremely expensive private collections, while also lamenting the long history of exclusionary practices of the places these things exist.
We can easily take this to an extreme as an analogy where it would seem more reasonable to you to hear the complaint.
The world isn't perfect, and as strong as the desire is to reduce things to a "good" or a "bad" the real world comes with confusing good and bad points that we don't have to average out into a final score.
Can you go into more detail as to these exclusionary practices? All organizations, all things really, are defined by both what they include and what they exclude. Nothing is fully inclusive, else that thing would have no meaning!
To be more concrete, How, were churches more exclusionary than other private or civic organizations of their times? When we judge the history of something, we really need to judge it in proper context, including by comparing to the society at large within the same time frame. On the whole, Christianity can be argued to be one of the most inclusive religions ever. It would have to be, else it couldn't have spread across the world like it did!
> The world isn't perfect, and as strong as the desire is to reduce things to a "good" or a "bad" the real world comes with confusing good and bad points that we don't have to average out into a final score.
I'm not sure what this sentence is supposed to be conveying, really. It's point is far too banal to be a nugget of wisdom. It's more like a clump of dirt of wisdom! The world isn't perfect? Thanks for the reminder! But we all have a choice as to how we interpret our world, and I'm suggesting that the primary emotion or feeling an organist should have towards churches is one of gratitude, at least while we're staying on topic and talking about organs.
> On the whole, Christianity can be argued to be one of the most inclusive religions ever. It would have to be, else it couldn't have spread across the world like it did!
Hmm. I'm not sure religion mostly spread by being as welcoming as possible to everyone. It's also not relevant.
> I'm not sure what this sentence is supposed to be conveying, really. It's point is far too banal to be a nugget of wisdom. It's more like a clump of dirt of wisdom! The world isn't perfect? Thanks for the reminder! But we all have a choice as to how we interpret our world, and I'm suggesting that the primary emotion or feeling an organist should have towards churches is one of gratitude, at least while we're staying on topic and talking about organs.
You call it an obvious thing yet ignore it in the following sentence. There does not have to be some primary emotion and weighing these things is at best a waste of time. Accepting a bad side of something does not have to come with ignoring any good sides. This was the mistake you were making and still are. It's not a shocking bit of wisdom, it's just a simple thing to keep in mind when you find yourself drawn into an "is complicated thing X good or bad?" argument.
Now I'm wondering if you read my previous comment. I already stated: all things are defined by what they include and exclude. Excluding and including is amoral. It only takes on a moral character when you consider what is being included or excluded and why. Being "less exclusionary" could be bad, depending on your perspective! I asked you to be more specific, and you chose not to do so, although I can probably guess what you mean, I will instead wait on you to be explicit.
> Hmm. I'm not sure religion mostly spread by being as welcoming as possible to everyone. It's also not relevant.
Inclusivity and welcomeness are not the same thing. Christianity is inclusive because it posits every human to be a child of an all-powerful God, having instrinsic worth, and the capacity to be saved and exalted by that God. While conquest definitely played a part in the religion's expansion, it certainly isn't the only factor or even the primary factor.
> You call it an obvious thing yet ignore it in the following sentence.
No. No, I didn't. And the rest of your final paragraph doesn't make any more sense to me. For instance, I never said there had to be a primary emotion. I did, however, suggest that there should be one, at least relative to the subject of organs, specifically organ production and access.
Yes I did, and at no point did I even assign a moral value to the exclusion because it's not relevant. Even the original poster didn't.
It can be necessary for the group, inherent in groups, whatever. You don't need to argue around the balance of good Vs bad and can leave it at simply "this part in isolation is a shame". That's it. It's not a big revelation, or shouldn't be, but it may help you with not reacting like such a simple statement is an attack on a larger part of your identity.
> No. No, I didn't. And the rest of your final paragraph doesn't make any more sense to me
You called it obvious yet didn't understand it.
This isn't Reddit and I don't want to contribute in turning it into that, if you don't want to read my banal points then don't - I have nothing to win or lose here. If you want to try and understand I think I've framed it as best as I can, so try reading it without assuming it's an attack, responding further after a few misunderstandings is futile because either I can't explain it to your further satisfaction.
Much like the balance of emotions, there does not need to be some winning think out of this.
In my experience, most groups that have Christian hymns in their repertoire are closet Christians at least on average. Even in the choirs that sing strictly secular songs, believers are overrepresented just from selection effects, since they sing a lot more.
But yes, there are choirs that stick strictly to secular repertoire. There was a "red" choral revival in the 70s, and of course worker and patriotic choirs go a long way back. They got to have something that unites them besides the singing, though. In my town the main secular choirs are the opera choir, which is united by their love of opera and classical music, and the chamber choir, which is 90% doctors and nurses from the local hospital.
Library.
Libraries are often community based, can hold events and talks, are an assumed "no cost" place too. I've lived in cities where you can go and play music on their instruments, use 3d printers, computers, access training, hold community groups, use their sewing machines, watch performances and more.
What you need is the funding.
I see what you are saying, but library isn't it. It needs to be an organization like a church, just non-religious. Libraries and churches have some similarities, but the many differences, and not just religious versus non-religious.
I want to see a purely voluntary organization. There is a head of the organization, but that person has a normal full time job, as does everyone else who "works" there. People need to pay dues to pay for the building, the utilities, the pipe organ, etc. but none of that money can go to a person's salary. No mega "churches".
I had the pleasure of hearing this guy[1] perform with the local symphony the other year and was impressed by his take on the instrument. He not only played classics like Saint-Saens Symphony No. 3, but also his own creations.
He also built his own electronic organ that he takes on tour. Hacker and a musician.
That being said, I don't think you can get a full picture of Bach's achievements without having some appreciation for his organ work, particularly the chorale preludes. Those are some of the most magnificent pieces he ever wrote, and I adore them despite my ambivalence towards the sound of the organs.
Find different organ music!
I can do without Buxtehude, say. But I would rather listen to Duruflé and Howells then basically anything else.
Unless someone finds a way of scaling up production and/or reducing the cost, you're not gonna see organs popping up everywhere, hence limited access.
As for getting access to an instrument, I second others who have replied to you: many of the organists I've encountered were queer in some way or other (though mostly gay men by far), and the rest of them were well aware and understanding that many of their peers and teachers were gay. I think if you reach out to a church organist they will likely be understanding and helpful.
On the cheap end: you can build your own, which is what I did, I converted a really old analogue organ that I bought for next to nothing into a sample based organ running Grand Orgue, it's not quite Hauptwerk but it is very good and sounds amazing, much more organ than I'm worthy of. Total cost: about 500 euros.
I sincerely doubt most folks could name other titles which prominently feature organ as a focal instrument in a work. There's more, of course, but Interstellar tends to be people's first example.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bpZqFa0Qiro
For a midcentury, modal, classical bent, I love the music of Rayner Brown, who was a church organist in Pasadena. Recordings are rare but worth it to track down. There are a few good examples on YouTube; here’s one:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xL8p-MuwzDY
In that same vein, Leo Sowerby: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9O55UTNhHk4
* A bit on that on IXION one by same author https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhTXyUERugQ althought more on synth side
Also kinda many tracks by organ's tiny brother, hammond/tonehweel organs seen plenty of use for the obvious reason of being portable.
Plenty of other stuff if you look for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKVJt39mFUA&list=OLAK5uy_mTE...
Not to mention the tons and tons of secular Classical music, particular from the Baroque era like Händel's organ concertos.
[1] Now renamed as the Christ Cathedral, I assume it's still amazingly hot and stuffy when the sun comes out, ugh, what a terrible venue. :P
The Abominable Dr. Phibes is an absolute classic.
[1] Yes, I know it is Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, but cptcobalt said "name" not "recognize", and while a vast majority have probably heard Toccata and Fugue in D Minor I'd guess most of them don't know that is its name. They will name it after somewhere they heard it used. Similar to Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra. Everyone has heard it but I bet most people would name it as the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Exception can only weaken the rule, although it might still statistically hold well enough to be called a rule.
But there is plenty more.
> they're just intermediate representations of a full console with multiple manuals, pedalboard, couplers, reverberant room
They're near perfect recordings with all the features, e.g. https://www.sonusparadisi.cz/en/organs/netherlands/rotterdam...
If you want to hear what people play on their home setup: https://www.contrebombarde.com/concerthall/home/front
The lower the cost of living, the lower the cost of auditorium space. The lower the cost of auditorium space, the easier it is to get access to organs (to a point).
I'm pretty sure there is no loop here, just "you need that much money to play". Not exactly something easy to fit in the house either
> (Yes, sample libraries work, but they're just intermediate representations of a full console with multiple manuals, pedalboard, couplers, reverberant room, etc.)
From what I heard simulated ones get pretty close
Misc tracks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzpQHz2dGX8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VN5DGw3OvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm_vvBuH2ts
Also, even some of the classical works from folks like Ravel, Liszt and particularly have some ball busters if played on a big machine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdrwazpZvAQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VC3cZ-7-IoI .
TLDR: the folks that want to hear organs sound good go find other people that want to hear organs sound good and we have conventions and listen to organs sounding good.
Huh?
More power to the folks who can stomach classical organ music though. You guys pay the bills for the rest of us who want to hear melodies we recognized.
However, the organ (particular symphonic organ and theatre variants) are frankly pretty adept at translations of music that is rhythmically and familiar to popular music trends of the last 60 years. In this case, the listener doesn't have to be nearly as intimately familiar with the trends of music between the 1700s and before the date their grandparents were born.
A lot of the musical interest in organ music comes from either its contrasting strengths compared to other western art music instruments, or nuanced harmonic relationships specific to the theory of the music tradition it's embedded in.
Organ music tends to be for organ nerds, basically. It's not that it's bad or boring, but what's exciting about it isn't something you can easily pick up just by listening to organ music.
Edit: Although she didn't explain how they "programme" the buttons. Presumably by adjusting something in the guts of the organ.
On many instruments, the combination action features multiple "memory levels" (possibly hundreds!). Each memory level is an independent copy of the settings for all the user-programmable pistons, so e.g. the "general 1" piston can be programmed to recall one registration on memory level 1 and a different registration on memory level 2. There's usually an LED display or screen that shows the active memory level (they're named numerically), with accompanying buttons to increase and decrease it. Generally, on a shared instrument (e.g. at a music school or large church), an organist will be assigned a range of memory levels for their own use. Some combination actions even have a "lock" feature that makes a memory level read-only until it's explicitly unlocked, which helps prevent one organist from clobbering another's registrations if they accidentally punch in the wrong memory level.
Some older instruments (built before electronics) also have combination actions with varying designs and degrees of flexibility. I don't know much about them, but the Wikipedia link overviews some of them. Indeed, older systems often need to be set in the "guts of the organ." They might even require an organ builder to come configure them.
Some organs (e.g. small instruments, Baroque-era instruments, and modern instruments built in certain historical styles) don't have combination actions at all. In that case, all stops must be moved manually, either by the organist or by a helper ("registrant") or two. It can take time to get used to playing while a helper on either side of you manipulates the stops. It can also be nerve-wracking to be a registrant, knowing that if you lose your place in the music, you might mess up your colleague's performance!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registration_(organ)#Combinati...
LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER - I BOUGHT A WHOLE CHURCH ORGAN - Part 1: The Organ Removal
Also, he builds his own midi interface for the pipe organ (iirc with arduino), which is quite a cool thing to watch. And realizing that the mechanics of it all are fundamentally simple, but complex due to being repeated on a physically massive scale
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_Motor_Company#Beginning...
> The Master Trust Bank of Japan (11.82%) > Yamaha Corporation (9.91%) > Toyota (3.58%)
I guess that ownership stake smooths some things out.
Here's Rob Scallon exploring the largest pipe organ in the midwest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeB3JnKp8To
Here's a more in depth look at all the sounds of that same organ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1S42E1BW9w - this channel has documented a number of organs over the years.
I got as far as building the pipe, buying a thrift-shop vacuum cleaner, hooking the hose out to the output end, scrounging the circuit board out of an extra USB keyboard and soldering a solid-state relay in place of the scroll lock LED (inspired by the bit in Cryptonomicon where the protagonist uses a keyboard LED as a Morse code output), and starting to hack some code together to turn the vacuum cleaner (via the keyboard/relay) on and off on a schedule before I decided that I wasn't going to become a teacher after all. I never did hook it all up.
All this to say: getting a single note instrument that makes some kind of noise and isn't tuned is ridiculously easy if you don't care about the noise you make creating the required airflow and don't involve a computer.
After the official program, he was just messing around playing popular music and shooting the shit with everyone for another hour or two. It turned out he was a biochem major, chemistry & liturgical organ minor. Pipe organs seem like such magical instruments, I'm always shocked when I meet someone who can play one.
- If you're looking for pipe organs and are in the US, check out https://pipeorgandatabase.org/ . It's very comprehensive, has stoplists for most organs, and has pictures for many of the larger ones.
- I see quite a few people calling organ music boring, particularly in association with church music, and I'd like to challenge that assumption. Off the top of my head, a handful of things that come to mind:
(1) Hymns are meant to be sung with, usually by people who are not trained singers. That leads to significant limitations for the accompaniment. That said, there is a lot more variation in preludes, postludes, etc.
(2) Organ is hard. Being able to play boring hymns well with a week or two of preparation can easily take 2-3 years of daily practice, even with previous background on piano.
(3) Many recordings fail to capture the full magnitude of organ music. To repeat something that I think is a bit oversaid, but is accurate nonetheless: the building is the instrument. The building is the instrument.
(4) One thing that it's hard for me to tell is how much of the difference of opinion is that I have unusual tastes in music, and how much is that a lot of people haven't had the opportunity to hear good organ music played by a good organist.
(5) Yes, you can be expressive on organ. Yes, it's hard. Depending on the song (and the composition itself plays a big role here - don't think that a composer can't be expressive) that may come across in rubato, opening/closing the swell box (and potentially others), articulation, manual changes, etc. (I've heard just a few pieces with people one foot on the swell pedal for most of the song. They were very impressive, although I suppose a lot of that comes from the perspective of an organist. It's also very hard. See point 2.) Also:
(6) Choosing registration in and of itself is kind of an art (and a lot of fun, especially on big organs). There are so many different timbres you can get on an organ that it's really beyond comparison to most other instruments; using this alone it's easy to express everything from mournful to bombastic fanfare.
That became more of a jumbled mess than I intended, but hopefully there's something of interest to some of you.
Oh, and then there are such exotic ones as the ones that speak through conduits on the other side of the church (and good luck managing that trying not to get confused when the sound reaches you...).
It felt like the whole building was shaking. Imagine that, meter thick walls being shook by sound. It was impossible to talk to anyone, even at centimeters away. It's not simply that organs are loud, which they are, They also simply fill the air with sound. To call the experience soul-shaking would be an understatement.
I can totally see why people would associate organs with god. When the organist stopped playing the silence was absolutely deafening.
They were originally used to provide music and sound effects for silent movies and plays.
There's one in Scottsdale, AZ that's a lot of fun to visit in person (there are YouTube videos of it too). Organ Stop Pizza
[0]: https://www.sarahdavachi.com [1]: https://www.whywebleep.com/whywebleep/
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At one point, a little software business/hustle of mine had run its course, and I needed some steady income while I figured out my next move, so I got a job as a retail computer salesperson.
The store was located in Toronto's financial district, and we got a lot of lawyers, bankers, accountants, &c. buying computers and software, which we sold in boxes. Those days are long gone, of course.
One day, some of my colleagues were snickering to each other, and when I asked "What's up," they giggled and told me there was a customer who was asking for me. I was the only employee who owned a Mac, and my colleagues took great delight in sending me Apple customers.
Well, to digress, if a customer was asking about a laser printer for their Mac, my colleagues would ask me for my help, but keep the sale and its commission for themselves. But f a customer wanted a box of 3.5" floppies for their Mac, my colleagues thought it was great fun referring the sale to me out of teh good ness of their hearts.
This was another "goodness of their hearts" referral, for as I approached the customer, I realized at once that there was a personal hygiene thing going on. The customer was also dressed in a very shabby attire relative to the business norms of the 90s, and had trouble making eye contact.
Once I realized this was a prank referral, I resolved not to let them get my goat, so I played it straight, treating them as I would any lawyer in a power suit shopping for a half dozen PCs to automate their office.
The customer was browsing development tools, and so I asked if they wrote software. I was told they did, but I hadn't heard of anything they wrote.
"Why ever not," I asked.
"Oh, I write software for pipe organs," was the reply, "It's a very small industry, and if you know who the major manufacturers are, you probably already know who I am."
The customer actually worked on contract for some European manufacturers, and personal habits aside, was the real deal. After answering a number of questions about text editors—Anybody else remember when it was commonplace to pay big money for an editor? We still do pay for some editors, but it doesn't seem to be a common thing any more, thanks to OSS—the customer spend maybe $700 on tools as they were upgrading their entire development setup.
I never saw them again, but I have also never forgotten that our industry has many, many "niches" that can support independent contractors or even entire businesses. It's not all FAANGs.
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And that's my pipe organ software story.