Is there any interest in "Yet Another Silbermann"?

[ReinerS]

Hello all,
as many of you know I am making HW sample sets out of the recorded samples by Peter Ewers. Two of them, the Madeleine and Laeken set, are available. (See also my special Christmas sale!). These two had previously be published for Gigastudio.
However, Peter had recorded yet another organ, the Silbermann organ of Großhartmannsdorf. This set has never been published for any sampler. Thie organ is (from the information I was able to gather) nearly completly in its original state and has as such survived all wars and organ movements. It has however been tuned to equal temperament. The stoplist of this organ follows the fairly common scheme and is nearly identical to OAMs Reinhardtsgrimma and MDAs St-George Silbermann sets.
In contrast to the other recordings Peter did this one is recorded truly note by note, and the samples, even though in 16bit/44kHz, are of outstanding quality. The acoustics is fairly dry, typical for the smaller size churches.
Before I take on the process to make a HW3 sample set out of this material, I was wondering if there was any interest at all in such a set (kind of to complete the Silbermann line).

ps: I might extract some little bits of musci/improvisations played while he recorded the samples to give you an impression of how this instrument (the real one) sounds.

Any comments on this are aprreciated
Best regards
Reiner

[James]

I think a very important consideration will be the price. I think that for many of us in the Hauptwerk community, the latest crop of samplesets are just priced beyond of our available resources .
James

[adri]

Besides price, I think whether this is a single sample instrument or a multiple sample instrument will make all the difference. It's probably a simple sample, and then you will have the choice of artificially introducing mutliples, but this is never as good as having done it in the building itself.

If the sound result is very similar to other HW1 sample sets of Silbermann organs, perhaps HW users will not be terribly interested in it. If it is offered as a HW2/3 set, then the tuning can be altered and restored.

Also, how authentic it sounds will be important. I think indeed you should post some recorder samples, and see how people react.

I hope you will get involved with recording organs the same way as most sample set producers are doing it now: truly at HW3 level, with multiple loops/samples/sophisticated processing, etc.

My 2 cents.

[Nate1693]

I agree with James. I would definitely be interested in an affordable Silbermann. Even if the quality is somewhere in the range of the Marcussen Moerdijk, which is single release and 16-bit but is still a great sample set. Multiple releases (while preferable) are not as essential to fairly dry baroque organs, as they are for wet symphonic organs, in my belief. I think it would be a shame for the sample set not to be produced. I suspect there would be more demand for an affordable Silbermann than some may think.

[www.orgeljournal.de]

@ Reiner

List of attributes for this question:

- fair price?
- native multi releases?
- practice quality (compass up to f3)?
- stilistic supplement for the sample set market (as for me: of historical organs)?
- try before buying?
- …

It can be assumed that we are right at the threshold of pain regarding the prices and quantity of redundant baroque organs.

May be that the Trost organ/Waltershausen is the first "real" Bach organ for the Hauptwerk community. (Important: Which compass this set will be have? Never again I would buy a set with a compass only up to d3. That's an enduring nuisance.)



http://www.contrebombarde.com/concertha ... hoch_1.mp3

Within the next few days I'll test the upgraded/updated Silbermann organ of sonusparadisi.cz (perhaps for a report). I suppose(!) it would be rather difficult to catch this technical standard and this price (with discounts!) using older samples without native multi releases.

Life punishes those who come too late. Take it easy!

Indeed: We need more practice organs with individual charme. For this reason the Haverhill OIC organ of LavenderAUDIO is the racer.


Best regards,
Matthias


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Hauptwerk-News for German readers
www.Orgeljournal.de
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[ReinerS]

Hi all,

thanks to your replies. Some good points to consider. I have put two short recordings of the real organ on my server (Peter Ewers just playing a little in between recording note by note).
Demo 1
Demo 2
Note the flaky wind supply ;-)

To answer some points:
Price is strongly depending on work put into it and expected demand (obviously), and I cannot make a statement regarding that yet.

Samples: As the recordings have been done a few years ago, there are no native multi-releases, so I'll probably add artificial ones like I did in the other sets. I know this is not ideal, but native multi-release would mean completely redoing the recordings, and that is not possible for me.

Extended compass: I might offer an extended compass ODF, this would actually not require much extra work. But, since this means a lot of extrapolating, you can't expect real quality sound out of the extended range.

Please keep your opinions coming
Reiner

[www.orgeljournal.de]

Please keep your opinions coming
Reiner

Hm, good playing (demo 1), nice clear-transparent sound, small reverb ...

http://www.kirche-grosshartmannsdorf.de ... orgel1.htm

If you give this organ a try it would be a good offering for a little group of users (with a small RAM PC/hunter-gatherer).

Otherwise: This set would also display a great business competition for the OrganART Media product "Reinhardtsgrimma" (single releases/395 €!/331,93€/+ Shipping 3/6€) with a very similar stop list.

There are questions upon questions ...


Best regards,
Matthias


__________________________________



Hauptwerk-News for German readers
www.Orgeljournal.de
__________________________________

[martinus]

Hello Reiner,

Nice sounding demos!
The cornet as solo voice in demo 1 sounds beautiful.
Is there a reed voice (trumpet)on the great?
Most organs from that time period have a 4 octave keyboard range.
It would be nice if you can extend that to f.

Best Regards,

Martinus

[ReinerS]

Dear all,

I have nearly finished this sample set now and can give you some more information. First demos (Midi and live) will follow in a few days.

The organ of Großhartmannsdorf is, as I have already mentioned, in nearly original condition. It has been tuned to equal temperament, but left at the higher pitch of a1=460 Hz. The recordings have been made in 16bit/44kHz, only the full reverb (about 1.5 seconds) has been recorded (back in 2001). I have added artificial staccato releases like in the Madeleine and Laeken sample sets, which really work well with this set.

There is one stop that had to be reconstructed from others though, since at the time of the recording it had been broken entirely, and that is the Oberwerk Octava2. Fortunately it could be replaced with other ranks very well. I am sure nobody would have noticed if I hadn't told you. Due to contractual restrictions we will have to put a restrictive licence on this set, permitting only private use.

The organ will have some special features also:
First there will be a switch to easily switch between the original pitch (a1=460Hz) and concert pitch (a1=440Hz), without loading a different temperament or using the HW tuning feature. This will make it very easy for you to switch between pitches, and you can do so in all tunings.

Second the compass is extended to reach up to f' in the pedal and g''' in the manuals, also the low C# has been added. For three ranks (Sufflet 1', Mixtuur and Cimbel) the rank repeats at c''' for the extended compass. The Mixtuur and Cimbel repeat at each 'c', so it appeared natural to let them also repeat at c'''. In the case of the Sufflet I also made it repeat, since all 1' stops I have ever seen would repeat for the highest octave. Since this changes the sample played on the c''' for these three stops, there will be another switch to change between original and extended compass, so that the original samples for c''' are also available for these stops.

Naturally there will also be a control to adjust the wind supply from as unstable as the original to stable, unfortunately this will not be of any use to people in the US. I do hope Brett can work out something with the patent holding organ company.

I hope to be able to post first (MIDI) demos of this beautiful organ tonight!

BTW, next in line: A Breil organ from 1928, also in original condition, a beautiful example of german late romantic organ building. It is a two manual organ, the entire organ enclosed in one swell box. Some info can be found here. This organ has been recorded in four channels, 24bit 48kHz, so I guess I can make a surround version of it.


Best regards
Reiner

[ReinerS]

Dear all,

here are some more information about this sampleset, please also have a look at this thread for the first live demos!

I expect to be able to start selling this set on 1st of January. Unfortunately, as already mentioned, the licence for this set will be restricting you to private use, no public performances, definitely no installation in churches. The set will be encrypted (basic encryption, no dongle update required), and there will be a fully functional (except for a small pause every minute) trial version. I hope to be able to make this available for download on my server, it will be about 2GB.

The full version will be available both as download and also as a DVD for those preferring a hard copy.

Here is a first screenshot. This set is optimised for practical use, so rather than displaying moving keyboards, which are nice to look at but totally useless for organ playing, I decided to make large stop tabs with large printed text.

There are several additions/enhancements beyond the original:
1) The compass is extended up to g''' in the manuals and f' in the pedal. There is a switch to go to original compass. This is mainly because some of the stops are repeating, and for the extended compass they break at c'''.
2) The tremulant can be switched to original, effecting the entire organ, and to only effect the OW, which I find much more useful.
3) The organ is tuned to a pitch of a1=460 Hz. I provided a switch to easily switch this to the standard pitch of a1=440Hz, without loading a different temperament file or using the HW tuning feature.
4) There are two settings for the wind model. One is as unstable as the original, the other is more stable. Naturally you can also adjust using the organ settings menu. (Unfortunately only non US customers can benefit from that).
5) I added some general combinations, which I find a tremendously useful feature to have.

The price for this sample set will be 285 Euros.

I will update my shop pages in the next few days to show more details about this sample set.

Best regards
Reiner

[Aristide]

I am not interested on such an organ.
Still looking for a beautiful big symphonic (concert hall?) organ with dry acoustic to use for live playing in church or concert halls.
No sample set producers think to sample such an instrument? Royal Albert Hall? Manchester? some Klais?

[micdev]

Aristide, what about PAB= Big concert hall, symphonic, dry (almost)...

[Aristide]

Yes, thank you for suggestion.
I played live that organ in a concert with orchestra, I remember nice stops disposition (by Lazlo Fassang), a perfect machine and a "ok, not so bad" sound.

[Anton Heger]

Still looking for a beautiful big symphonic (concert hall?) organ with dry acoustic to use for live playing in church or concert halls.

Probably the dry Litomysl fulfills your needs?
This sampleset has an excellent quality and a very low price.
And it has a great variety on stops!

[Aristide]

Yes, i have Litomysl! Not bad.. Nice mixtures..
But the recit is bad and small, only 2 soft reeds of 8.. And pedal section is also too much soft, miss powerful 16 fonds and a 32