What Size of an Organ for a Beginner to Sample.

I am considering becoming a sample set producer. I see a desire among North American Hauptwerk users for more Symphonic, Theatre, and American Classic organs, especially American classic organs. I see from the forums here, that the advice is to start small and work up to more substantual organs. I believe that this is the approach I will take if I decide to take this on. One of these small organs is a 5 rank Moller organ. This organ appeals to me for several reasons. It is in good working condition. I will have easy access to the pipe chamber, and the blower is remote to the pipe chamber hopefully meaning less noise. I think that an organ of 5 ranks would be good because of less recording time and much less processing time. There are also a few other organs that are larger that I am considering. There is a 7 rank wicks, probably more flexible as a sample set. There is also a 12 rank Schantz, seems a little dawnting for a first attempt to me. During the last few weeks I've been wondering if I shouldn't start with a larger organ, maybe 15 to 20 ranks. Although it seems like a massive task to under take, a larger organ would make a better quality sample set. The goal of this first sample set, for me, would be to learn the process and to turn out a quality set even if it were a small one. Any helpful advice at this point would be greatly appriciated. Thanks. Mike

I have no idea what goes into making a sample set so take what I say with a huge grain of salt... but I suspect it's like most things in life, best to start off small and work your way up. It's easier to fix a bunch of mistakes when there are fewer of them (say for example, you need to re-edit or re-record some of your wav files), get the feel of how it all works. If you start out small, the bigger organs will probably also give you a goal to work towards, something "fun" to help keep your eye on the ball. If you start out too large and bury yourself, it might mean you get so frustrated that you drop the whole idea.

Hi Mike,

You first need to look at your recording equipment. What mics do you have (or can borrow)? What is their Hz rating (i.e. can they do a good job of the lowest and the highest harmonics). Anyway, you want the frequency response to be as great as you possibly can afford, 20 to 20,000 Hz should be a considered ok if you intend to record 16 foot pipes. If you're going to do a wet sample set (with the reverb of the building) then you'll need omnidirectional mics. Read as much as you can on what others have posted in regard to recording organs, and also read up on Stereo positioning of the mics. The single most important part of creating a sample set is getting a decent recording of the pipes. You also need to record the pipes in as high a resolution as you can (preferably in 24-bit 96khz). Even if you release the sample set in 16-bit 48khz, recording the samples in a higher resolution allows you greater precision in the noise reduction step, and gives you more options for the final product. The biggest question when it comes to recording a pipe organ is how high the noise from the blower is... the least amount of noise reduction will create a better sounding sample set, so a quieter blower noise will result in less NR work needed.

The next most important step is the noise reduction. After those two, the creation of the loops and release markers, and the creation of the graphics and organ definition file are just steps in a process, and there are great tools that make those steps quite easy.

In order to get going, I would suggest that you start with a small organ, and plan to release it for free - so that you can get help and comments as you go through the process. There are people on this forum who would be willing to help you up the learning curve . Then once you've successfully created a sample set with a small organ, you will know what you need to do for a larger one. See the small one as your apprenticeship, and a larger one after that as your journeyman's graduation!

Nick Appleton's free Noise Reduction application (http://www.appletonaudio.com/software/noisereduce/) is great for reducing the blower noise from your recordings, but it is command line driven and has its own learning curve. I can help you with that. The free Stiehr Mockers (jeuxdorges2), Burea Church organ, and the Barton 3-7 sample set were all processed using Nick's application.

Lars Palo has released LoopAuditioneer (https://sourceforge.net/projects/loopauditioneer/), an opensource and free graphical app that will auto search for loops. SampleLooper from pipeloops (http://samplelooper.pipeloops.com/) also has a demo version that can be used for free sample sets (and only costs 40,00 EUR for the full version). Both do a fine job.

Hope this helps.

Kind regards,
GrahamG