Music

The Murray Harris organ was originally built in 1901. It has been rebuilt, restored, and expanded since then, and consists of upwards of 3,700 pipes. Some of these pipes are located in an “echo division” — they are at the opposite end of the church and can be used as an “echo”. This is an American Romantic style organ, and it lends itself beautifully to playing French Romantic music by some of my favorite composers such as Widor and Vierne. On an organ such as this, dynamics can be adjusted by using the swell shoes, which open and shut wooden shutters which make large boxes enclosing many of the organ’s pipes.

The Fisk-Nanney organ, meanwhile, is a tracker action instrument, and is one of my favorite organs of all those I’ve been able to play. It is a Baroque-type instrument, making it perfect for playing pieces from composers such as Bach and Buxtehude. It has a straight and flat pedalboard (which can take some getting used to!) and consists of 4,422 pipes. One of the most intriguing features of this instrument is its mechanical lever which allows switching three of its manuals between well-tempered and mean-tone tuning. This allows for playing historical music in the temperament in which it was originally written and heard. The difference in tuning methods is incredibly noticeable in some keys! The math behind different tuning methods is one of my favorite music subjects to geek out about :)

After graduating from college, I unfortunately went quite a while without playing the organ. It’s not an instrument that’s easy to practice unless you’re allowed to regularly visit one. After a while, feeling this musical void and wanting to fill it, I finally took the plunge to start assembling my own practice console at home. I found a company in Canada that sold various pieces of MIDI hardware, including the manuals (keyboards) with piston buttons for changing registrations, pedalboards, swell shoes (expression pedals), benches, etc. They also sold a console table, but it looked like it wouldn’t come apart easily once it was together. I wanted to keep my options open (and save some money), so I put together a model in SketchUp, bought some lumber and, with the help of a friend and his garage woodworking shop, built a console table that easily locks together and comes apart requiring only an Allen key.

I started with a simple console: two manuals, a pedalboard, and a bench. Over the course of the next year, I added toe pistons (buttons to control registration changes with my feet) and a third manual (the organs I’ve spent the most time with all had 3 or 4 manuals, so having the third is very nice, especially for certain pieces that benefit greatly from having the extra registration abilities). Key cheeks and a music stand then replaced the plastic supports for the manuals and the hastily-constructed music stand I’d been previously using, and really tied the look of the whole console together.

The MIDI hardware daisy-chains together and outputs the multiple channels all through a single cable, which I then route to my computer, where the sound is achieved using Hauptwerk, a piece of software with all sorts of capabilities for digitally producing organ sounds. Real organs from around the world have been meticulously sampled, and are available for purchase (or, sometimes, for free). I bought sample sets of a Cavaillé-Coll organ, great for French Romantic music, and a Hinsz organ from the Netherlands, which is great for baroque music from composers like Bach and Buxtehude. I think they sound great, and it’s fantastic to be able to practice so easily!