Can You Live Code a Church Organ? [video] | Hacker News Reader

Can You Live Code a Church Organ? [video]

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Love Sam and the channel. I saw a weird speaker (massive leslie-type thing) locally being given away and let him know about it, and a few months later, he'd picked it up and made a video on it [1]. Was nice to be able to add something to a museum that I'll eventually get to visit when I have the time!

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBTJAtiSbxw

Ah, thanks for enabling an excellent impromptu LMNC / Hainbach EP :) I loved that weird thing, and I'm so happy Sam and Hainbach "found each other" -- they jive so well together.

I love watching 'This is not a museum' grow... the pipe organ project has been fascinating, and I'd love to visit if I ever have a chance.

The YouTube channel this is on is also doing a whole series on a massive telephone exchange they've basically rebuilt inside the space, showing how all the phone circuits used to work pre-digital times.

Now you just have to write a playbook/role that sings to you as it executes through tasks... Audible feedback during execution would be cool for some things.

Or maybe the "Talking Head" from the book Neuromancer: https://williamgibson.fandom.com/wiki/Talking_head

"On the exterior it is an antique-looking bust, cloisonne over platinum, studded with seedpearls and lapis. In the interior it contains a beautiful arrangement of gears and miniature organ pipes that can produce voice, instead of ubiquitous synth-voice chips, the equivalent of a baroque clockwork automaton. Jacked into a computer, it can narrate in a melodious, inhuman voice."

This channel is wonderful. The museum’s curator primary channel, Look Mum No Computer[1], is just as good!

1: https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCafxR2HWJRmMfSdyZXvZMTw

I came across another similar video a while ago going down a YouTube rabbit hole 3am one morning.

Controlling a MASSIVE pipe organ with my computer, Rob Scallon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQHdFAm7g7E

The precursor to that video is just as if not more interesting, "Pipe Organ (An instrument the size of a building)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeB3JnKp8To . In the video they find a midi port on the control unit. Several months later after talking to the manufacturer they go back and figure out how to get midi working and play bohemian rhapsody. It would of been an experience to be there with the size of the organ.

This is actually a real thing in modern pipe organs since years (the programming part or electronic playback part, not sure about the live programming ;-) ). Check out e.g.: https://www.rieger-orgelbau.com/en/leistungen/rieger-electro...

I really liked the videos about dismantling, moving and reinstalling the organ at the museum. There's a playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLluPQLh1xzlI7EMB5qIxD...

me too although youtube thinks watching those meant I like watching ALL instrument repair videos so my suggestions are f'd full of instrument repair videos I care nothing about.

Related: a joint work between people in Brittany and Quebec allowed "MIDIfying" an organ in Guérande.

(video in French) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S941N39XheA

Using the musical live coding software TidalCycles to control a church organ via MIDI.

Anyone else reminded of Knuth's "Royalties, use of" in TAOCP?

if there are any tidal hackers in here I've found it difficult to figure out how to use pitch frequencies that aren't the standard MIDI notes or 12TET frequencies. Does anyone have a guide on that? Let's say I want to just use raw frequency values, or a non-12 EDO, how would I do that? Does that interfere with the patterning language in Tidal?

If you refer to the original Tidal, it communicates with SuperCollider, so you can just look at the source code to see if you can change something. I haven't used it for a long time so it's just my best guess.

Yes you can use supercollider's tuning model like this: https://github.com/musikinformatik/SuperDirt/blob/develop/ha...

Some hardware synths* allow the user to change the scale so if you hook those up tidal over midi, you can do non-standard scales without having to do it in tidal itself.

*The Korg Monologue & Korg Wavestate both have this feature

Here’s a reference: https://club.tidalcycles.org/t/custom-tuning-just-intonation...

I also wrote a post on the TidalCycles blog. It covers my microtonal tuning and composing process. https://tidalcycles.org/blog/blog_topic_relyt_r_xuixo

thank you!

you should try it at:

https://strudel.cc/

live coding songs isn't that hard. for example this simplified Kraftwerk's Das Model:

https://glicol.org/demo#themodel

A little bit of Close Encounters of the Third Kind's vibe. However, I'm pretty sure that this organ will not work for long if the notes are switched so fast, just because of mechanical parts wear out

>improvising music with code

All I can think about is TempleOS when I hear this phrase.

I shut this off halfway through. It was terrible.

I was rather nonplussed by the rundown environment, and crass attire of the host and guest, and the cacophony produced from this guy's code was not really music at all. I am sure he knows what he's doing in terms of code, but couldn't he actually carry a tune of some kind, rather than random MIDI pulses?

Bad take. The host is a self taught electronics hacker who has been making experimental electronic music for years. He's widely respected by people who you would certainly find less crass, and musical taste is much more subjective than most casual listeners would like to believe. Try to appreciate the goal and the passion, as well as the skill and lack of resources. This wasn't aimed at a generic audience, and you decrying it adds nothing of substance other than giving the impression that you may occasionally yell at clouds.

"Musical taste" only applies when actual music is involved.

Who decides what is and what isn't music? My mother always said it's not music what I listened to. I disagree

So if I appreciate Bach, Phillip Glass, Nils Frahm, Metallica and Wutang Clan, do I have musical taste?

I can say the programmer has good music taste. Look at his hoodie, that’s Misfits. One of the most greatest punk bands of all time.

This kind of music speaks to me in ways beyond what I feel from most "mainstream" music. Not liking it is fine, but please don't denigrate my enjoyment of it. It kills curious discussion. What is your definition of "actual music"?

I think chords and notes were chosen to create harmony. Or at least, the key was picked and the concepts used (mode, arpeggiation) will stay in it. Listening to it carefully, there is no random generation at all. It's all deterministic and periodic.

"Crass attire," really? We get it, you don't get it, but I don't know why you felt the need to report back on your lack of taste.

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