Discovering the joys of the virtual organ has been a wonderful experience for me during the mid part of 2008. I first became aware of the concept of the virtual organ from the usual trawling around on the internet. I don’t know what search I put in but eventually “MidiTzer” came out at me which I thought I’d have a look at as there was nothing else to do at that precise moment apart from the usual housework, cooking, gardening, bathing or my occupation and everything connected with it so as you see, I really was at a loose end at that particular time.
Of course, me being me, I wanted to do it straight away so after the downloading of the file I wired up my keyboard to my laptop and had a go. It wasn’t too successful as there were many glitches to start with but I ironed those out and was soon playing like a proficient theatre organist (which I’m not). Straight away I was missing a second manual and a pedalboard so set to work on locating some. My mother kindly offered to buy me a midi controller keyboard which was great. Instantly that gave me the second manual that I wanted and it opened up a whole new world of opportunity for me. Mind you, when it gets to Christmas and there’s nothing under the tree from my mother I’ll have to remember that I’ve already got it!
The next thing on the agenda was locating a pedalboard. This was a lot trickier. I knew that I’d really want a 32 note, radiating concave full classical pedalboard as that’s what I’m used to playing and like best. However, these proved to be harder to get hold of than rocking horse shit. What should I do? Should I look for a 13 note board or a 17 note one or even a 25 note one? No, only the full-sized one would do for me so back to Ebay I went and hoped… After about two months of close scrutiny, one came up that wasn’t in excess of £2000 which was the going rate for the full-sized ones. I paid £200 for it as it was converted from an old pedalboard to have midi usb compatibility. Exactly what I wanted… I was getting there. After a week or two the pedalboard arrived… At my mother’s as we don’t have anywhere near enough room for that type of thing to sit about until I need it. You see, the thing is, we’re in the process of selling our house and we’re hoping to move into something MUCH larger which will enable me (all being well) to have a music room all to myself.
After further mooching and experimentation I stumbled across another programme called “Hauptwerk” which basically has the sounds of major pipe organs that you, as the player, can utilise to make your own instrument sound stunningly realistic.
Hauptwerk did prove to be almost a miracle of modern technology when it came to samples of organs. It truly is amazing to hear. This really set my mind on building my own virtual pipe organ with not only “Theatre” registrations but also “Classical” capabilities too.
One of the problems that occurred to me very early on was how to change registrations successfully as most users seemed relatively happy to pre-programme piston registrations before each piece or use thumb-pistons or whatever. Most seemed happy to lean across, click the mouse on a particular stop and then lean back. That certainly wasn’t good enough for me so I hit eBay yet again. I wanted two touch screen monitors… one to act as the left stop jamb and the other for the right. I had a very nasty surprise when I saw how much they cost. They seemed prohibitively expensive costing in the region of £250+ each. I simply don’t have that type of budget for each item if I can help it. So, once again, patience and perseverance paid off and I managed to find two touchscreen monitors and managed to get change out of £100 for both of them including delivery! I’m really very lucky at times!
Well, guess what? Yup, I decided that two keyboards weren’t good enough for me. I wanted a proper keyblock with three manuals that are all in one unit so back to the internet I went. Nothing at all on eBay, looking high and low produced nothing until one day I stumbled across a small, incongruous website. He had exactly what I wanted. Now, I’m leading you up the garden path a little bit here as I could have got exactly what I wanted but again it would have been in the region of £3000 (which I’ve not got) had I gone to the specialist suppliers. This particular website that had what I wanted at a reasonable price wasn’t particularly local to me (it was located 300 miles away) but was a very friendly soul who told me that three manual units were uncommon and quite expensive when they did turn up and had I considered two manuals? After a bit of disappointed contemplation I came up with the idea of two, two manual units on top of each other thus giving me four manuals for the price of three! I asked Ron (the owner of the website) if it was viable and “He say “Yes!”” So, with that in mind I ordered what I wanted, sent off the deposit and started saving to pay for the rest which I’d be collecting from his house six weeks later while we were visiting my partner’s mother who lived in that sort of area (well, about 100 miles from him).
We went along to collect the two consoles and all of the necessary circuit boards to make the elderly keyboards into state-of-the-art virtual instruments and brought them all home. I got them out of the car after they sat in the boot for three days after we collected them as we had to finish the visit to the outlaws. I was more excited than you could ever imagine. Upon close inspection, I realised that the units could do with a good old-fashioned clean. So, screwdriver, bucket, washing-up liquid, toothbrush and towel in hand I set about taking the keys off the keybeds one by one, cleaning them in the solution, rinsing them, checking for any potential damage and then re-fitting them to the main unit ensuring that all dust was removed from all of the contacts and that everything was aligned. Believe it or not it took half a day just to clean the keys of two of the four manuals. It’s very slow going this organ building lark I can tell you!
After I’d been sitting cross-legged on the living room floor for upwards of four hours it was difficult to actually tell whether I had any limbs below my hips so I thought I’d stand up to try to find out. Not a good idea. Slowly but surely, the feeling came flooding back… accompanied by agonising pins and needles. However, I managed to recover (you’ll be pleased to hear) and put the two separate units together to see how they look. I was more than a little impressed. It almost looks like a proper instrument already (albeit being supported from behind by the radiator).
MidiTzer was an eye-opener. I investigated the site with great interest and, as the programme is free, I downloaded it straight away. I tried a search on Youtube and was amazed at the sounds the programme was capable of creating as well as being very impressed with the instruments that were cobbled together or made from scratch or simply converted, to make a convincing console to utilize this tremendous piece of kit.
Of course, me being me, I wanted to do it straight away so after the downloading of the file I wired up my keyboard to my laptop and had a go. It wasn’t too successful as there were many glitches to start with but I ironed those out and was soon playing like a proficient theatre organist (which I’m not). Straight away I was missing a second manual and a pedalboard so set to work on locating some. My mother kindly offered to buy me a midi controller keyboard which was great. Instantly that gave me the second manual that I wanted and it opened up a whole new world of opportunity for me. Mind you, when it gets to Christmas and there’s nothing under the tree from my mother I’ll have to remember that I’ve already got it!
The next thing on the agenda was locating a pedalboard. This was a lot trickier. I knew that I’d really want a 32 note, radiating concave full classical pedalboard as that’s what I’m used to playing and like best. However, these proved to be harder to get hold of than rocking horse shit. What should I do? Should I look for a 13 note board or a 17 note one or even a 25 note one? No, only the full-sized one would do for me so back to Ebay I went and hoped… After about two months of close scrutiny, one came up that wasn’t in excess of £2000 which was the going rate for the full-sized ones. I paid £200 for it as it was converted from an old pedalboard to have midi usb compatibility. Exactly what I wanted… I was getting there. After a week or two the pedalboard arrived… At my mother’s as we don’t have anywhere near enough room for that type of thing to sit about until I need it. You see, the thing is, we’re in the process of selling our house and we’re hoping to move into something MUCH larger which will enable me (all being well) to have a music room all to myself.
After further mooching and experimentation I stumbled across another programme called “Hauptwerk” which basically has the sounds of major pipe organs that you, as the player, can utilise to make your own instrument sound stunningly realistic.
Hauptwerk did prove to be almost a miracle of modern technology when it came to samples of organs. It truly is amazing to hear. This really set my mind on building my own virtual pipe organ with not only “Theatre” registrations but also “Classical” capabilities too.
One of the problems that occurred to me very early on was how to change registrations successfully as most users seemed relatively happy to pre-programme piston registrations before each piece or use thumb-pistons or whatever. Most seemed happy to lean across, click the mouse on a particular stop and then lean back. That certainly wasn’t good enough for me so I hit eBay yet again. I wanted two touch screen monitors… one to act as the left stop jamb and the other for the right. I had a very nasty surprise when I saw how much they cost. They seemed prohibitively expensive costing in the region of £250+ each. I simply don’t have that type of budget for each item if I can help it. So, once again, patience and perseverance paid off and I managed to find two touchscreen monitors and managed to get change out of £100 for both of them including delivery! I’m really very lucky at times!
Well, guess what? Yup, I decided that two keyboards weren’t good enough for me. I wanted a proper keyblock with three manuals that are all in one unit so back to the internet I went. Nothing at all on eBay, looking high and low produced nothing until one day I stumbled across a small, incongruous website. He had exactly what I wanted. Now, I’m leading you up the garden path a little bit here as I could have got exactly what I wanted but again it would have been in the region of £3000 (which I’ve not got) had I gone to the specialist suppliers. This particular website that had what I wanted at a reasonable price wasn’t particularly local to me (it was located 300 miles away) but was a very friendly soul who told me that three manual units were uncommon and quite expensive when they did turn up and had I considered two manuals? After a bit of disappointed contemplation I came up with the idea of two, two manual units on top of each other thus giving me four manuals for the price of three! I asked Ron (the owner of the website) if it was viable and “He say “Yes!”” So, with that in mind I ordered what I wanted, sent off the deposit and started saving to pay for the rest which I’d be collecting from his house six weeks later while we were visiting my partner’s mother who lived in that sort of area (well, about 100 miles from him).
We went along to collect the two consoles and all of the necessary circuit boards to make the elderly keyboards into state-of-the-art virtual instruments and brought them all home. I got them out of the car after they sat in the boot for three days after we collected them as we had to finish the visit to the outlaws. I was more excited than you could ever imagine. Upon close inspection, I realised that the units could do with a good old-fashioned clean. So, screwdriver, bucket, washing-up liquid, toothbrush and towel in hand I set about taking the keys off the keybeds one by one, cleaning them in the solution, rinsing them, checking for any potential damage and then re-fitting them to the main unit ensuring that all dust was removed from all of the contacts and that everything was aligned. Believe it or not it took half a day just to clean the keys of two of the four manuals. It’s very slow going this organ building lark I can tell you!
After I’d been sitting cross-legged on the living room floor for upwards of four hours it was difficult to actually tell whether I had any limbs below my hips so I thought I’d stand up to try to find out. Not a good idea. Slowly but surely, the feeling came flooding back… accompanied by agonising pins and needles. However, I managed to recover (you’ll be pleased to hear) and put the two separate units together to see how they look. I was more than a little impressed. It almost looks like a proper instrument already (albeit being supported from behind by the radiator).
MidiTzer was an eye-opener. I investigated the site with great interest and, as the programme is free, I downloaded it straight away. I tried a search on Youtube and was amazed at the sounds the programme was capable of creating as well as being very impressed with the instruments that were cobbled together or made from scratch or simply converted, to make a convincing console to utilize this tremendous piece of kit.
