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This page is the gateway to many complete articles which describe completed studies and research. They cover both pipe and electronic organs, and the titles are listed in the following two tables.
The first table is the "classical" chronological listing of articles in the order in which they were posted on the site. This is the original version of the list as used on this page since the site was first founded. It is retained for those who prefer to continue using this format.
The second table is a newer subject index of articles where they are listed alphabetically by subject. This was added in 2008 in view of the large number of articles now available on the site.
Note on navigation : when you have linked to an article from this page, you will find a button marked Up on its navigation bar. Clicking on this will return you to this gateway page.
This is the original version of the listing as used on this page since the site was founded. In each of the columns the most recent article is the first entry. By clicking on the title you will be taken to a summary of that article lower down this page, whence you can then access the full version if desired. The same titles but classified alphabetically in various subject areas are in another table below.
In this table the articles are classified by subject. Note that an article will often appear in more than one subject area. By clicking on the title you will be taken to a summary of that article lower down this page, whence you can then access the full version if desired. The same titles but listed chronologically (i.e. in the date order in which they were posted on the site) are in another table above.
Either browse the table just by scrolling down the page, or click on a subject area in the list below to skip directly to it:
Action, Construction & Mechanism Electronic Organs (all articles) Organ Builders & Other Personalities Organ Building History, Trends & Styles Perception & Subjective Effects
This paper was originally published in the open literature in Wireless World as two articles in 1980. It is rather a technical museum piece nowadays, as it was an attempt to raise the standard of analogue electronic organs in an era when most were utterly dreadful. The paper is the only one known which showed how to design analogue tone-forming circuitry based on acoustic measurements of real organ pipes.
The articles proved rather difficult to post on this site for reprographic reasons so they were only available on request until March 2008. However in view of the obvious amount of interest, they are now available as a PDF file (about 450 kB) - click on the paragraph heading above to download.
Gottfried Silbermann's organs have always been famed for their “silvery sounds”. This article reports the results of research which focused on some characteristics of his fluework in an attempt to see what this might mean and how his results were achieved. Using acoustic measurements made on a surviving Silbermann organ, details of how his Principals and Flutes were probably regulated are presented. They demonstrate how the acoustic power output of individual Principal and Flute stops varied across the compass, and how it compared with the other ranks comprising these two varieties of chorus work. These data are original, detailed and made available in the public domain for the first time. Suggestions are made as to how the results might be used in practice when voicing organs which are intended to have Silbermann-like tonal characteristics.
This article is a transcript of an invited address given to the Salisbury and District Organists' Association at its Annual General Meeting on 12 February 2000. The title indicated two of its principal themes, namely the desirability of having a holistic organ in the sense of one which has a unity and integrity of design, and whether or not we are moving towards that goal today. It was pointed out that a holistic instrument is not necessarily one which would always meet with favour. For example those by Robert Hope-Jones had far more of a unified sense of style than many, yet they would scarcely be the sort of organs we would wish to build now. So if a holistic approach is not always sufficient in itself, we need to ask what sort of styles should we be aiming for, and are we actually progressing in these directions? Among the conclusions of the address were some unpalatable facts relating to some of the largest, most expensive and decidedly un-holistic organs built in this country in recent years, facts which in some cases seem to have been swept under the carpet.
Voicing and, particularly, regulating a pipe organ is fraught with difficulty. Not infrequently the instrument is unsatisfactory in terms of the way its registers blend with each other, its mixtures might scream in the treble or its mutations might be bass-heavy. Some recent organs are widely regarded as total failures because of such problems, which is scandalous in view of their cost.
This article suggests ways in which digital techniques might be used to guide the voicing and regulating processes so that the probability of getting it right first time with pipes is increased. It combines the use of modern digital music technology with the regulation procedure used by the well-known voicer Anton Gottfried, adopted by Ralph Downes for the organs for which he was the consultant in the mid-twentieth century. The most famous of these instruments was that at the Royal Festival Hall in London.
This paper first appeared in Organists' Review, November 1996. In addressing the physical basis underlying the musical effects which can be obtained from a sensitive mechanical action, it showed that certain phenomena which occur at the beginning and end of pipe speech can be modulated by the rate at which the note is keyed and released. It therefore confirmed the reality of such articulation effects, which are of course only realisable with a properly designed mechanical action. In particular, the behaviour of flue pipes as they come onto speech was illustrated by means of a series of frequency spectra closely spaced in time, showing how the amplitudes of the fundamental frequency and its harmonics are sensitive to the wind pressure excursions occurring as the pipe valve opens. Such behaviour differs in detail depending on how quickly the valve opens, and thus it offers the player some control over the starting transient if the action is sensitive enough. Comparable phenomena which occur as the valve closes were also discussed.
The reality of such phenomena makes it difficult to argue, as some do, that touch sensitivity on the organ does not exist. However the musical importance of the phenomena, and whether players actually exploit them, are another matter.
This article surveys the advantages and disadvantages of electronic (solid state or multiplex) transmission used in organs with electric action to communicate between the console and pipes. Such transmissions are mandatory in the relatively few cases where the console must be often moved or disconnected. But in this and other cases it is shown that the other potential advantages of relative cheapness and increased reliability (though not always realised) may be offset by a number of disadvantages peculiar to electronics. These include some examples of spectacular failures, obsolescence and difficulties caused by scanning delays. Also, musically speaking, the use of electronic transmission puts pipe organs into the same category as electronic organs as far as control by the performer is concerned. The article suggests that the traditional, non-electronic, approach to electric actions might be looked at more carefully particularly if an old action is being renovated, and some suggestions for refurbishing old electric actions are given.
Two articles elsewhere on this website describe the tonal structures of flute and principal stops in terms of certain characteristics of their sounds such as their frequency spectra. Because the dimensions of open metal flute pipes and principal pipes are so similar, it is remarkable that our aural perception mechanisms assign a quite distinct perceptual character to the two classes of tone. This article examines how these mechanisms might be operating on the information contained in the sound waves impinging on the ear using techniques borrowed from computer pattern recognition and artificial intelligence, and it is shown that a computer is also capable of discriminating between these types of tone.
These results might not be of mere academic interest. On the contrary, their implications could be profound. Because of the rate of advance in artificial intelligence research, the article goes on to suggest that machines will progressively encroach on many currently sacrosanct aspects of professional life over the next few decades. For example, in the musical field, the results here can be extrapolated to show that a machine would have little difficulty recognising not only various organ stops but other types of instrument as well. Such abilities would be necessary for a machine which would demonstrate greater powers, such as a critical musical analysis based on a live performance. Once such capabilities have been demonstrated, it would then be legitimate to ask questions such as whether machines could replace teaching staff in universities and music colleges as they already have done in banks etc. Because machines do not require salaries or pensions, it would be surprising if these institutions did not begin to ask such questions themselves in the relatively near future. At present artificial intelligence is a largely invisible and under-discussed topic, pushed beyond the public's event horizon by other media issues such as climate change, yet its implications will be profound in decades to come.
An earlier article on this website looked at the tonal structure of organ flutes. It is quite a long article, mainly because of the diversity of flute stops and their different characters. This article takes the analysis further to examine in a similar manner the variety of sounds obtained when the dimensions of open metal flute pipes are varied by relatively small amounts so that they become Principals. In fact, it is remarkable in itself that our ears and brain assign a quite different perceptual character to the two classes of tone when the pipes which give rise to them are not so very different in construction. As with flutes, the range of different principal tones which exist is explored by relating it to the harmonic structures of the pipes. Other factors are also investigated, including some of the fads and fashions which have come and gone in principal stops.
Swell boxes in pipe organs vary widely in their effectiveness but the best are seldom simulated properly in electronic organs. When a real swell box moves from an open to a closed state, the volume of sound is not merely attenuated as it is when you manipulate the volume control on your hi-fi system. The tone quality varies as well in that high frequencies are attenuated more rapidly than the lower ones. This effect is infrequently simulated, but even when it is it can still be identified as artificial if the tonal characteristics are incorrect. Many electronic organs also attenuate the sound far too much when the "box is closed", nor do they incorporate means to prevent the sound varying too quickly. In a pipe organ it is impossible to close or open a swell box arbitrarily quickly if the linkage is mechanical, simply because of the inertia of the heavy mechanism. If the linkage is electric, the shutters (shades) will still respond with their own time constant regardless of how quickly the pedal itself might be operated. Getting all these factors right in an electronic organ is difficult, and its pedigree as a mere simulation is often revealed when they are wrong.
This article discusses the problem in detail, including circuits and techniques suitable for electronic organs that I have developed over some twenty years.
All organ enthusiasts know about Robert Hope-Jones. All clock enthusiasts know about Frank, his brother. But that seems to be that - there seems to be little knowledge of the one beyond the horizon of the other, and little historical cross-referencing between the two of them seems to exist. This article does not purport to be anything other than an introduction to Frank and his work for those organ devotees who might be unaware of him, but hopefully it will be of some interest. It draws some fascinating parallels between the technologies invented by the two brothers and between their personalities, and it ponders on the remarkable fact that both were ground-breaking innovators within their respective spheres of activity. Both also seemed to have had an entrepreneurial appetite beyond the average. The names of both men continue to reverberate today and it is this which makes it worthwhile looking at them in this article.
Despite what some might claim, digital electronic organs are little different to the synthesisers used by pop musicians. All of these, together with other sound devices such as computer sound cards, use the same basic principles to generate sound. They are decidedly complex pieces of hardware and software, and they have attracted much attention in the professional literature dealing with digital signal processing and computer music. Unfortunately the majority of this is intended for the specialist who is familiar with topics such as digital filtering, interpolation and software synthesis. If you do not know what these terms mean, that merely proves the point. Even if you have met these terms, you might have been put off by the mathematical framework which so often accompanies them. Because so little information is available describing how a synthesiser works at a relatively simple level, this article attempts to fill the gap by explaining in simplified terms how synthesisers have evolved from their "Moog" ancestry in the 1960's to the present day. It comes with a promise that homomorphisms, finite difference calculus, z-transforms and cubic splines will not be mentioned! However the important but rather complicated subject of frequency shifting by interpolation and decimation is discussed, but as simply as possible.
The subject of tuning and temperament continues to provide a never ending source of interest and income for a constant stream of academics. Because it requires just that little extra effort to comprehend the necessary simple arithmetic (it is wrong to dignify it as mathematics), it is easy for those with the inclination to wrap up their work in a cloak of mystery and authority which is actually largely spurious. It disguises the fact that many of the claims made about the temperaments favoured by Bach, say, are completely unproveable. In reality, they fall into the same category as the story that he once found some coins in fish heads thrown out of the window of an inn, and they are about as useless.
This article shows that much recent work on temperament is unscholarly in that it projects today's understanding, values and culture several centuries backwards as though these things have never changed. Thus the authors of such material are merely wallowing, apparently unconsciously, in a sea of reverse anachronism. They are literally out of time. Some are also apparently unconscious of the errors in their work. By looking at the realities of musical life in the 17th and 18th centuries it is suggested that some if not many contemporary temperaments can be traced to the fact that stringed keyboard instruments had wood frames, with the consequential tuning instability this implies. Also the role possibly played by impure octaves in these temperaments is examined.
In the UK there is a grand total of around 400 people involved in building pipe organs, including those in supply houses and pipe makers. The largest firm only employs about 50, and at the other end of the scale some do not even operate from dedicated premises - not even from their garage ! It is probably untrue to say the craft is yet in terminal decline, but on the basis of statistics such as these it can hardly be disputed that it is little more than a cottage industry today. This would not matter but for the fact that it frequently compromises on quality in the scramble to cut costs and gain contracts. For example, we find casework by eminent builders and designers made from painted MDF. Despite grand utterances about the superiority of pipes many organ builders augment their instruments with electronic tone production, sometimes in cathedral organs. Some eminent organ advisers now advise on electronic installations. Of course, there is a widespread move away from organs of any sort on the part of customers and this is partly responsible for the situation outlined. So can we foresee a time when organs will be ordered so seldom, and at a time when electronic instruments have become so good, that the pipe organ with its roots in medieval history will cease to made?
Yet the pipe organ lives on, and for some good reasons. At present, few with any discernment would argue that any electronic organ could equal a good pipe organ, and therefore electronic instruments still have some way to go before this would become the case. This article justifies this statement by examining in detail the areas in which all electronic organs are still deficient, by definition. The possibilities for further technical improvements in these areas are then considered. If the improvements are either not cost-effective or impossible then we might conclude that the pipe organ has a long term future. But otherwise ..... ? And are there other factors to take into account?
There are several articles on this website dealing with how organ pipes speak, such as How the Flue Pipe Speaks, The Tonal Structure of Organ Flutes and Voicing Electronic Organs. All can be accessed from this page, and they all rely largely on the results of my own research into the physics of organ pipes and why they sound as they do. However none of them expose some of the details which will be discussed in this article, which provides more insight into the processes necessary to achieve a satisfactory understanding of these matters. The article explores the sound of a single Violone pedal string pipe as it comes onto stable speech over a second or so. Personally, I find that such knowledge enhances my admiration for the astonishing beauty of sounds such as these which emerge from nothing more than an enclosed column of air, and I hope that at least some readers will agree.
Manufacturers of digital organs base their tonal effects on electronic copies of real organ pipe sounds. In this way it is possible to make a complete electronic copy of a particular instrument if desired, and some custom built digital organs are occasionally ordered by customers who want this. The method is also widely used by amateur organ enthusiasts.
It is possible in principle to take this approach a step further to re-create the sounds of organs which no longer exist, or which have been so altered that their original sounds have been lost. Moreover, the flexibility of a digital approach means that several instruments could be readily simulated at the one console. Although the results could only ever be an approximation to the real thing, it is interesting to consider using this technique for educational purposes as well as for its own sake. Sitting at a console which one moment would "sound like" a Silbermann organ, say, and the next one by Hope-Jones could be much more interesting for students than any amount of lectures. In the former case they would be able to discover for themselves why mixtures and mutations were more sensible in the days when unequal temperaments were the norm. In the latter they could experiment with H-J's ideas to augment incomplete choruses both with multiple couplers and his characteristic Quintadenas. The approach seems no more academically disreputable than the speculative attempts to re-create the past which are accepted in other fields, such as experimental archaeology.
However, achieving reasonable success means that one has to go much further than simply making digital copies of existing organs. For example, while the copyist approach will reproduce an existing mixture stop, it will do nothing to explain why the mixture is constructed in the way it is. Therefore a valid attempt to reproduce the mixture work on a long-vanished 17th century organ means that one has to develop an independent understanding of these issues, and then simulate carefully the mixtures rank by rank when building up a digital version of these old instruments.
This article first outlines a digital organ system which can be configured easily to represent virtually any organ, indeed the configuration process is so simple that many players would be able to select the sounds they need from a library merely by creating the appropriate text file which the system then reads and interprets. It then goes on to describe the results of investigating various European schools of organ building in this manner from the late 17th century to the mid-20th, which surprised me more than I had anticipated in terms of the richness of the experience which was achieved. Some sound clips are included.
This article originally appeared in Organists' Review in 1993, and it is reprinted here because this historic and interesting instrument is one of those which has now been simulated digitally as one of the "vanished organs& |
