OpenPipes: Build your open-source virtual pipe organ system | Hacker News Reader

OpenPipes: Build your open-source virtual pipe organ system

openpipes.org

62 pointstemporal_12327 comments

In my ignorance, I didn’t know that virtual pipe organs even existed until a couple of months ago, when I happened to hear on BBC Radio 3 a recording of a Bach prelude and fugue that caught my attention. It sounded to me like a regular pipe organ, but the voices were clearer and more distinct than I am used to hearing in recordings. It turned out to have been recorded on a virtual organ.

The organist is Richard Irwin. I ordered his CD and have enjoyed listening to it:

https://www.richardirwinmusic.com/#Major_New_Release_-_Appre...

"Look mum no computer" on Youtube is wrapping up a series[0] where he bought an old church organ and rebuilt it. He cleaned it up and rewired it to interface via midi as well as the console.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PwwRR8deHk&list=PLluPQLh1xz...

Old chruch organs can often be had for 'free'. Many churches arw throwing them away. Free is in quotes because often you can't remove it yourself and so it will cost tens of thousands of dollars to remove it. If you can remove it yourself you will discover professional movers are not getting rich charging that much labor to remove them.

The biggest problem is they are designed for large rooms, so much as i'd love one I have to admit I don't have room (and I can't afford an addition big enough)

Professional organist here! Having a VPO at home is life changing. I'm lucky to live within a ten minute walk from my current employer, which has quite legitimately one of the best organs in the world, but even then, being able to practice at home occasionally is wonderful.

I bought a new home organ about two years ago and (long story) hoped to integrate a pedalboard I already had into it. I still haven't gotten that working, so I'll definitely be looking at this site's pedalboard controller to finally get that working.

(Also, feel free to ask me anything about organs, organ software, etc.)

I've been a user of PianoTeq for a bit now, and I'm curious if you have an opinion on it, relative to other organ VSTs out there...

PianoTeq is considered the best piano sound. some even argue it is better than a real grand piano (it never goes out of tune) - but only if you have a great keyboard (several thousand dollars!), and sound system (more $$$) They are not known for organ sounds though.

If you want organ sound, then the software to look at is: grandorgue, Hauptwerk ($$$, but reported to be great), Aeolus (simulates pipe via math, the rest work on samples of real organs). There are probably others, but the above is what I see come up most often when this is discussed.

Very good keyboards are under 1000$ as far as I learned. Active boxes can also be had relatively cheap. No need to fall into the audiophile trap.

I'm actually _not_ a pianist, which often surprises people! I did of course start on the piano, but all of my high level training has been on the organ, and the technique is different enough that I don't feel comfortable playing pianistic writing anymore. I can pretend to be a pianist when necessary and make it sound good enough, but a competent pianist would notice plenty of flaws.

I can't speak to PianoTeq, but I've used both GrandOrgue and Hauptwerk as mentioned in the sibling comment. As a mostly FOSS user, I'd like to be able to just use GrandOrgue, and the software itself would work well enough for that. However, the quality and diversity of sample sets (organs recorded, one pipe at a time, to simulate playing different organs around the world) is nowhere near that of Hauptwerk. I work in a very Anglican music program with an English leaning organ, so being able to simulate an English cathedral organ is important to me. The organs available for GrandOrgue tend to be more German Baroque leaning and much smaller. In an ideal world, you'd be able to buy the same Hauptwerk sets for GrandOrgue, but licensing prevents that.

I once worked on building a GrandOrgue file editor, but the specification is a nightmare. I'd like to finish that project someday though.

Sorry, I wasn't totally clear in my question... I was looking for your opinion on OrganTeq!

Story time: I briefly worked in a school that, incredibly, didn't have a working bell system. Since this is obviously idiotic, I decided to hack something together. I got a vacuum cleaner from the thrift shop, an old keyboard for free from the Geek Squad at Best Buy, and hooked a solid state relay up to one of the LEDs to drive the vacuum cleaner (credit to Cryptonomicon for the idea, just with a louder outcome). Copious duck tape connected the vacuum cleaner hose to the blow side of the vacuum.

For the other end of that hose I built a single organ pipe out of 1/4" plywood. It turns out it's pretty straightforward to make a single pipe that isn't tuned to any note, nevermind a whole set. Going down the Internet rabbit hole on organ pipes was a great relief from the general insanity of working in a school.

Unfortunately, I left that position before I finished the software. Probably because instead of using a cron job, I started with writing a lexer and parser for a custom config file.

TL;DR: if you just want to make some noise, it's not hard. Build one pipe, build a whole rank, and go wild from there! You needn't bother with the software simulation from TFA if you just want to hack and annoy your neighbors.

A source of compressed air and a rubber membrane, when used in the appropriate manner, will very quickly make you widely disliked, in an even more compact package!

It’s more of electronic organ than pipe organ… but in my ignorance, between the sound clips I wouldn’t know the difference.

Subtle difference: GrandOrgue uses samples of actual organs, pipe-by-pipe. It can direct its output to many different channels and has software mixers to map the outputs onto the number of channels you've got. An 'electronic organ' is a device that creates organ-like sounds, either using tonewheels (for instance: Hammond) or some electronic oscillator and then uses various methods to mix in or filter harmonics. This can create sounds that closely approximate a real organ but it isn't quite the same because you don't have that massive soundbox called a church to go with it (I see churches as very nice instrument casings).

Moddarts 'Organteq' comes very close with their virtual organ simulator, it uses a whole pile of math to recreate the sounds of a real organ. Using that + a multi manual setup gives you a close approximation to a real organ which you can configure to your hearts content. But the software used in this project, GrandOrgue which uses samples is also very good (and is the one I use).

Playing an organ is - in my opinion - a lot harder than to play a piano, the learning curve is very steep and the added footwork is a serious complication if all you've ever done is play the piano. I suck at both ;) But it is a lot of fun.

As an aside, I wish there was a way to get Modartt software in a low latency stand-alone enclosure. I wonder if someone has DIYed a thing

I'm using it on Ubuntu Studio with Jack and that's fast enough that I don't see lag. It'll never be as quick as an electronic piano but midi over USB is quite fast. I love their Linux support by the way, rock solid.

Well hot damn, learned something else today

Off topic but tangential with a stretch but not really: Donald Knuth is fanatic about pipe organs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBO613Q8hAw&t=36s

"... majestic ... remarkable ... empowering ... worldwide ... accessible ... innovative ... democratizing ... traditional ... like never before ..."

Turn the hype generator down from 11, please.

Don't forget Arduino - twice in two consecutive sentences! Someone really wanted to hit all the buzzwords and the result was definitely not pleasant to read.

After reading all that, I'm still confused whether this is a physical analog pipe organ, or a software pipe organ simulator.

In these times, I find myself asking "Is this LLM output?"

It's a simulator. Download here.[1] Runs on a Raspberry Pi. Playable from a MIDI keyboard, or keyboards. Additional button boxes and controls can be hooked on. Nothing wrong with that, but it's not earth-shaking.

The article also mentions someone who built a mini pipe organ from plastic pipe and laser-cut wood, but that's not what the project is about.

[1] https://openpipes.org/2021/08/20/pipebian-headless-pipe-orga...

[2] https://virtualpiano.net/?instr=organ

> Nothing wrong with that, but it's not earth-shaking.

Just turn the volume up!

You need a great speaker system to really make it sound good. Organs can put out a large range. Your typical sub and midrange speaker system can't produce good bass in that area too high for the subs and too low for the midrange. Note that subs is plural, you probably want more than one unless the room is tiny.

I had the privilege of playing on one of the largest mechanical pipe organs in the world and no sound system comes close to the kind of raw power that thing put out in the low register. Just unbelievable, to the point that you start wondering if it can damage the building itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_xrOKMr-7k for a quick tour

'backstage' it is even more impressive, the size of those pipes is just amazing.

The organ is all mechanical so the force on the keys is many times larger than on a piano. The regular organist said she loses significant weight when practicing a new piece (and that's with the 'pneumatic assist' the organ has, which is kind of like powersteering for Organs...).

Virtual, so pipe organ simulator, but this is the hardware side of it.

If you want to do something like this on the cheap: buy an old electronic organ and refurbish it, then run GrandOrgue (free) or the PianoTeq organ pack ($) once you have midi. Sounds great and it isn't nearly as much work as building a whole console from scratch.

I did this with an old Heyligers that I bought from a school here for a song, it came with two fantastic Laukhuff (unfortunately, out of business since June 2021) wooden keyboards. The whole conversion took about a week, it has a touchscreen for the stops. If I would do it again I would search a bit longer to find slightly wider keyboards, these are 61 keys, there is also a 66 version (much more rare), so the highest notes are a full octave rather than that it ends on 'g'.

It is a physical console and virtual sounds. The best of both worlds as it plays like a real organ (unlike most keyboards with an organ sound or 3), but doesn't need a massive room for pipes.

The 'organ' section for most keyboards is unusable for anything except for short effects. Usually the samples (if they use samples...) are extremely short and the presets are boring. On some models you can even hear the sample loop points. I have the same irritation with most wind instruments in keyboards, they sound terrible and aren't even close to what an actual instrument sounds like.

Yeah, I think it would be good to change the url to the project page and have done so now.

(The submitted article, which is generating these allergic reactions, was https://makezine.com/article/craft/music/openpipes-revolutio....)

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