Organ Update
Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 5:21 pm
I really enjoy reading about everyone's projects, particularly the spin off blogs. My organ project has been finished for a few months now. I'm so pleased with the result that I wanted to share details of it with other forum members. Below are some photos of the finished result.
The base for the organ is an old Wyvern console which was originally an analogue instrument with masses and masses of heavy duty electronics. Once the original electronics had been stripped out, it was considerably lighter. The midi conversion was done using electronics provided by Jordan at midi boutique (highly recommended) using a hwcw and 4 * keymux64 to support the existing bus bar architecture on the swell, great, pedals and stop tabs. The conversion was fairly painless although quite time consuming.
I built a custom PC for use with the console which uses an Athlon 3700 processor which has 1MB on board cache. I plan to upgrade to an AMD multicore chip when these come down in price a bit. The case is an Antec Sonata II and is virtually silent with a low noise CPU fan. The PC currently has 2gb of high performance memory, which I may increase in the near future. The whole setup is headless since there is no need for a monitor/keyboard/mouse for day to day use of the machine.
From the outset I planned to use the Skinner organ samples from Milan Digital Audio, and I am blown away by the quality of these. I have converted the original three manual stop distribution to one that works with two manuals (in most cases moving choir stops to the swell). I am very much looking forward to the Skinner sample set for HW2, I have bought, but not yet run, HW2 in anticipation of these being released.
As you can see from the photos the organ is heard through headphones, we live in a small house so I'm sure the neighbours would appreciate an amplified sound. However lack of sound does cause a problem demonstrating the organ to family and friends. I recorded the following demos from the console so that they too could hear how good the Skinner organ sounds:
I bind unto myself today
Prelude on Anima Christi
Faith of Our Fathers
The only thing that remains to do on the organ is to either replace, or re-engrave, the stop tabs with the correct voicing for the Skinner. As you can see, on the left of the music stand I have a list of the stops for reference - although this is less than ideal, I'm getting quite use to it!
I am already thinking about my next organ build which will be likely a three manual instrument again built around the Skinner sample set. Originally I thought about using real drawstops, either home built or bought, but I am currently leaning towards a couple of touch screen monitors built into either side of the console.
Thanks for reading,
James
The base for the organ is an old Wyvern console which was originally an analogue instrument with masses and masses of heavy duty electronics. Once the original electronics had been stripped out, it was considerably lighter. The midi conversion was done using electronics provided by Jordan at midi boutique (highly recommended) using a hwcw and 4 * keymux64 to support the existing bus bar architecture on the swell, great, pedals and stop tabs. The conversion was fairly painless although quite time consuming.
I built a custom PC for use with the console which uses an Athlon 3700 processor which has 1MB on board cache. I plan to upgrade to an AMD multicore chip when these come down in price a bit. The case is an Antec Sonata II and is virtually silent with a low noise CPU fan. The PC currently has 2gb of high performance memory, which I may increase in the near future. The whole setup is headless since there is no need for a monitor/keyboard/mouse for day to day use of the machine.
From the outset I planned to use the Skinner organ samples from Milan Digital Audio, and I am blown away by the quality of these. I have converted the original three manual stop distribution to one that works with two manuals (in most cases moving choir stops to the swell). I am very much looking forward to the Skinner sample set for HW2, I have bought, but not yet run, HW2 in anticipation of these being released.
As you can see from the photos the organ is heard through headphones, we live in a small house so I'm sure the neighbours would appreciate an amplified sound. However lack of sound does cause a problem demonstrating the organ to family and friends. I recorded the following demos from the console so that they too could hear how good the Skinner organ sounds:
I bind unto myself today
Prelude on Anima Christi
Faith of Our Fathers
The only thing that remains to do on the organ is to either replace, or re-engrave, the stop tabs with the correct voicing for the Skinner. As you can see, on the left of the music stand I have a list of the stops for reference - although this is less than ideal, I'm getting quite use to it!
I am already thinking about my next organ build which will be likely a three manual instrument again built around the Skinner sample set. Originally I thought about using real drawstops, either home built or bought, but I am currently leaning towards a couple of touch screen monitors built into either side of the console.
Thanks for reading,
James