Organ pipe physics
modartt.com
modartt.com
Speaking of virtual pipe organs, for Organteq to compete with the market leader, Hauptwerk (which is sample-based) there needs to be a good choice of expansions though. With Hauptwerk, you can download hundreds of different organs from all around the world [3]. Modartt has an expansions marketplace for Pianoteq [4], why is the same thing not available for Organteq?
[1] https://www.arturia.com/phi
[2] https://www.modartt.com/pianoteq_pro
That might also be the answer why this doesn't yet exists for Organteq. It just takes time.
But your reason why you need good selection of expansions might be valuable market insight for Modartt. I know they appreciate feedback, I've talked to them before, so I'd suggest you tell them your concerns.
Good point.
Disclaimer: I'm just a hobbyist but I know a few professional organists.
TL;DR: each organ is unique, pipe organs are not produced in series like pianos.
The main reason for people use something like Organteq or Hauptwerk, is usually to practice organ at home. Unlike what happens with other instruments, it is very rare for an average person to own their own pipe organ, so digital reproductions are the way to go for pretty much everyone.
But here's the problem: organs are very, very different one another. With piano, you could practice e.g. on a Kawai at home then perform a recital on a Yamaha; the two pianos don't have the same sound and the same action, but they are close enough that you can practice on one instrument then perforom on another. This is not the case with organs: a baroque organ and a romantic organ will be completely different in terms of registrations, pedalboard extension and shape, manuals etc. etc. - not only that but each pipe organ ever built, is a completely custom instrument.
For example, all Steinway D-274s ever built, despite some differences due to the year and place of construction, are still the same model (model D-274). But with organs, it's almost never the case that the same organ is built twice. Each single instrument is completely unique, and that's why we identify them by opus number, and we have catalogues of all the organs ever built, like for example this one https://ohta.org.au/organs-of-australia/
So, the main problem for someone setting up a practice organ is to have access to a digital model that is either that exact organ, or at least a very similar instrument to the one they will use to perform in public. For hobbyists like me who don't plan to perform, there is still a need to at least have a certain type of organ available, because of the great diversity of organs.
Pianos are more or less designed to sound 'the same' (with some obvious differences between major brands and some pianos that have been constructed very explicitly to sound different, such as the Klavins instruments).
https://klavins-pianos.com/products/
So within reason you can model a particular piano just by specifying make and model and look up a bunch of parameters in a table.
With an organ in a 'virtual' church you could specify the exact disposition (the number and kind of sets of various pipes and other complications) of the organ, and you could supply some basic parameters of the space (size, area, placements of the ranks and so on). But I suspect that if you did that you'd not get even close to what the real instrument in its actual setting sounds like. Organs are super temperamental, air pressure, humidity, temperature, intonation, various stuff that is broken (almost no mechanical organ is ever in perfect shape), mechanism sounds (which can appear very different even within the same make and model) and so on.
This is a stupendously hard problem and as a happy user of Pianoteq I'm impressed with Modartt even attempting this and I really hope they will succeed in being able to switch seamlessly between different venues and to place an organ of a different manufacturer into an existing church (just to give one example of what that would make possible). But I'm not going to hold my breath for it and sample based organs (including the free GrandOrgue) still hold a significant edge compared to Modartt's organ simulator. But for piano it is now so good I almost prefer it to the real thing for practice. Not that I'm such a discerning user, more that I've grown up with pianos and they're always (unless very recently tuned) a bit out of tune and that can be quite annoying. The software based one is always perfectly tuned and sounds as good or even better than the best sampled instruments (personal favorite from the sample side of the aisle: Yamaha P-515 Bosendorfer sample set is extremely good).
Anna Lapwood addressed this in a recent TikTok. She said that for every new organ, she takes a whole day before the concert to familiarize herself with the instrument, then a night of sleep and a good part of the day the of the concert. She is a professional organist who toured the word, so for almost everyone else it will certainly take longer.
Rare, but not completely unheard of. Donald Knuth has one in his home.
Impressive tininess. The Arch Linux package is 879.54 KiB. And yes, there’s dynamic linking with the contents of other packages like libx11, jack and alsa-lib, but I think the total most people will be adding will be 1.11 MiB. But then, I had to replace jack2 with pipewire-jack to get it to work, and that saved 1.18 MiB, so installing Aeolus literally saved me disk space!
(Yeah, I know I could have done jack2 → pipewire-jack independently, and yeah, I know I’ve added a few files to /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ so that I didn’t actually save disk space, but hey, I like the narrative.)
It took Modartt many years to get a decent piano model. For a long time, the more critical plugin users disliked Pianoteq. It had a sound best described as plastic (the material), synthetic. Since version 5, the sound has improved, and since Pianoteq can do things even the largest sample library can't (we're talking .5TB for some libraries!) at a fraction of the CPU and memory cost, it has become a lot more popular.
Organteq just isn't there: it sounds synthetic, and its reverb is really lacking. It's also not very CPU friendly. It also doesn't really compete on price, so I expect no change unless Modartt invests heavily, but since the market is smaller than for piano sounds, don't hold your breath.
I have a cousin who is a professional organ player, he gets to play on the big ones, he's a composer and conductor, he's recorded a few albums and the like. "Small fry" in the bigger music world, but he's one of the people keeping the tradition and craftsmanship alive. I had a look on his website (I don't really keep up with family much), he plays on 150, nearly 200 year old organs sometimes.
I still have this dream of making a small pipe organ one day.
That said, it shines on a real auditorium sized pipe organ.
> you have to wonder where we'd be today musically if not for him.
Err, probably using lute music[1] transposed for organ[2] and adapted[3] as film soundtracks[4] I guess.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM6hd8EPFl0
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Nf3eU-Y6Ew
I bought a guitar amp in 1982 via the local paper (Perth, Western Australia) and went out to pick it up - turned out to be in Kevin Peek's back woods recording studio and had an afternoon of noodling about.
I've had some fun restoring DX-7's and sometimes they (or the wreckage) come with stories and previous owners attached.
I'd say an electric guitar orchestra beats an organ on this piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqgQ7IYhvRg
My own limited attempts at organ playing have shown me that I’m not an organist. Among other things, the fact that the console and pipes are frequently separated by enough distance that the speed of sound plays a role in aural feedback while playing can make playing a pipe organ a challenge, and that’s before the role of stops, foot pedals and the lack of a sustain pedal² come into play
⸻
1. The piece that I’m remembering required frequent changes of the stops on the organ.
2. AKA, the sloppy keyboardists’ savior.
I’ve never had the opportunity to play a pipe organ, and other sorts don’t tend to lean into stop banks that you can rapidly swap between so much, and this drawbar organ doesn’t have that kind of thing at all—changing mid-piece is much more impractical, and so done much less. All up, I’m confident it’s an easier instrument to play than a pipe organ, but still with a lot of the same qualities. (But it’s not just an inferior pipe organ—it’s its own thing.)
I’ve found it fascinating what works and what doesn’t: I played a wide variety of things, my expectation of how well a piece will transfer has not always been correct, in one direction or the other.
Anyway, pianos and organs are definitely quite different instruments, but there’s also a lot of overlap in the techniques and skills, and playing one will improve significant aspects of your playing of the other.
(Nice three-em dash, BTW. I settled on —⁂— as a divider, but seriously contemplated two-em and three-em dash, which I do still use in other situations.)
There was a full-on national news article a year or two back about some suburban house somewhere with a pipe organ that was for sale but only for someone who’d appreciate and use it. Pipe organs are part of the house; but these organs, I dunno, I feel that they’re big enough most buyers wouldn’t want to let you leave ’em behind.
Oh look, another interesting one in the Melbourne area now, https://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/frankston/keyboards-pianos/c.... Uncommon indeed. Hmm, if it’s still on the market when I get back in March… even if I need to get rid of some furniture to fit it conveniently… drawbar organ, electric organ, upright piano and digital piano quartet? Sigh, really wish I had more space to conveniently fit all this and a grand piano or two. They’re all such different instruments despite seeming similar in some ways that I kinda want ’em all.
Yes, this can get quite extreme. And then there are churches where some of the organ sounds are purposefully piped to the other side of the building to be injected in different places. That can really add to the delay and the confusion.
Our prior bishop wrote a series of documents on sacred music, and two of the churches which have installed brand-new organs are the Cathedral and the Basilica.
I am not sure that Roman Catholics, much less the general public, understand the critical role played by a pipe organ in choral singing and leading the assembly. There is absolutely no comparison: not a percussive piano banging on metal strings, not a plectrum on a lute such as guitar, no synthesizer can come anywhere close. Electronic organs can approximate the sound, but not the feel, grandeur, and mighty power of a full-throated organ.
The reason that liturgical Christians have used pipe organs is because of the close approximation of the human voice from the very pipes. A pipe organ works (needless to say) by passing air through columns and making it vibrate at specific frequencies. This is very close to the mechanism used in the human voice. Therefore, it is effortless, even for an inexperienced singer, to summon up a passable tune when led by a competent organist. There are myriad cues which can be employed to wordlessly signal when singing will start and stop, and whether the upcoming strophe is proper to a soloist, the choir, or the whole assembly to come in at once.
In my days at a chorister, we did indeed rely on grand piano, acoustic guitars, eletronic 1980s-tech organ, and even drums/bass/violin, so unfortunately I did not enjoy much choral experience next to an authentic pipe organ. But now I worship from the pews with one of the best instruments in hundreds of miles, an experienced dedicated schola, and a skilled professional organist/director. Needless to say, it was a breathtaking and gorgeous Christmas as we added a brass ensemble and sang our hearts out.
Pipe organs never fail to disappoint the tech nerd in us. My own cathedral has a special camera which they use every week, during live streams, to display the manual as the organist plays it, and believe me, pipe organs are cutting-edge tech nowadays, using computer monitors, interfaces, MIDI and all the trappings, to produce good old-fashioned sound from real pipes. I feel it is truly a unique traditional instrument that can be the best of both worlds, and indeed our own church affirms its "pride of place" in liturgical worship at all times.
Compare the expression you can get out of a saxophone by varying embouchure and breathing. A saxophone can produce a range of timbres, and the player can dynamically vary the timbre over time. It's mechanically similar to a reed pipe, but the player has far more control over it. And a flute is similar to a flue pipe, again with the player having more control over the sound.
But a real pipe organ has some measurable advantages. First, the great multitude of independent sound sources. A real pipe organ has a spatial quality that's impossible to reproduce with stereo speakers. People say that the building is a part of the pipe organ, and that's IMO justified because all these sound sources interact with it produce an incredibly complex reverberation field. The sound you hear when you move your head sounds "big" in a way that would require a very complex speaker setup to reproduce. (Maybe high-order Ambisonics could do it.)
Second, the non-existent distortion. Big pipe organs have pedal sections that produce very deep and loud bass. On a real pipe organ, this is a pure harmonic sound (like all wind instruments, bowed strings, and voice). But deep and loud bass is difficult to reproduce with speakers, so there will be substantial non-linearity. If you're reproducing only a single harmonic note, this will only result in harmonic distortion. Harmonic distortion is no big deal, because it's effectively the same thing as changing the voicing of the pipe. You can filter the recorded/synthesized sound to compensate. But if you're trying to play multiple notes at once with the same speaker, you'll get intermodulation distortion, which adds a "muddy" inharmonic sound you never get from real pipes. The only solution here is adding more speakers, especially for bass notes, but again you're increasing cost and complexity.
I don't know how complex a sound system would need to be to reproduce a pipe organ such that a skilled listener couldn't distinguish it in an ABX test from the real thing. It would be very difficult to test, because the two would interact with each other acoustically if they were in the same building, and an ABX test requires rapid switching. But in any case, I think most people simulating pipe organs aren't even trying to pass this theoretical test.
All this means there is still a place for traditional pipe organs, and if you've never heard one in person I recommend trying it.
You can reproduce the 3D soundfield of a big organ using wavefield synthesis. I heard a phenomenal recording/reproduction of a performance of a Messaien piece recorded in the Koeln cathedral and played back at the TU Berlin with their 4k+ speaker wavefield synthesis system. You can walk around in the room and experience the actual "space" of the cathedral.
Do you happen to have any links to the documents that your previous bishop wrote?
https://www.catholicsun.org/2011/12/15/liturgical-music-as-p...
https://www.catholicsun.org/2012/01/19/a-short-history-of-li...
https://www.catholicsun.org/2012/02/16/sacred-musics-role-in...
https://www.catholicsun.org/2012/03/15/practical-points-for-...
The whole point of TFA, as well as the software it is really about, along with other excellent attempts to physically model pipe organs (e.g. Aeolus) is that actually a synthesizer can come very close indeed.
In principle, the Catholic Church doesn't object to a particular type of instrument being used for sacred music, as long as the text is sacred and the instrument is not overtly profane. BUT she still exhorts us to give "pride of place" to certain classical styles of sacred music, the Latin language, and the pipe organ itself. That's still non-negotiable, but really falls by the wayside when you consider restrictions on budget and talent. There are not that many professional-volunteer organists or Gregorian-chant schola directors to go around.
So the reality is that any church that did have a bona fide pipe organ, or even a good electronic one, these gathered dust while people slung their acoustic guitars and tambourines around while playing music that's indistinguishable from Simon & Garfunkel. I mean it didn't necessarily get that bad, but we did practically abandon those classical styles in favor of new vernacular experimentation.
In practice, Catholic parishes exhibit a wide disparity of musical style, and this will be tuned by the liturgists and pastors according to the needs and tastes of their faithful. Many pastors find it advantageous to mix Latin, classical, a cappella, and modern CCM all in the same liturgy, or some will segregate it out so that Traditionalists can enjoy a liturgy dedicated to traditional music, singing, and instrumentation.
What are the implications of constructing brand-new traditional pipe organs in our two "flagship" churches? What does it mean that our previous bishop wrote down a series of four documents on the form and function of sacred music? Regionally, they have set the tone and established a legacy for decades to come. Pastors may do what they like, but Cathedral worship is often the "Gold Standard" for a diocese to imitate and promote.
At the very least, constructing a permanent pipe organ in a church is a capital investment that can't be easily shoved aside. The pastors and parish councils will indeed be very reluctant to sideline something that cost 5-6 figures in favor of "easier" music.
I still don't really intuit the distinction between instruments and styles you're making but I believe you that it's there. I can't see how any instrument is inherently profane, but that is simplified by the tradition that all of them are inappropriate for liturgy. Once you've permitted any you need a criteria to exclude the rest. It seems like the catholic church is very much in the process of working out the contours of that.
Thanks for sharing!
edit: it appears to work well on Linux through WINE.
Mind = blown. Somehow this made it click for me how electrical DC/AC converters work.
Lots of wonderful music and related stories. Great for testing out PA systems! =)
If you want to hear bass, you should look for organs with a 32' register. Those pipes are indeed 32 foot tall, and the lowest note is barely audible.
I’m tempted to run an harmonic analysis of the fluid-structure system to figure this out…
Modelling detailed individual sound sources and mixing their contributions at a particular point in space would be doable though.
My point was more oriented toward the effect of the pipe on the sound, e.g. the big square wooden ones probably bring something different than the metallic circular pipes.
Or I guess you could just generate a sine wave.
https://www.aramis.admin.ch/Beteiligte/?ProjectID=34490&Spra...
There is also a real accordion made by Roland that produces sound electronically. It claims to use physical modeling.
The accordionists I know don't think the accordion sound of Roland digital accordions is all that good, though many still use them.