Hauptwerk Virtual Pipe Organ

I'm currently setting up a HW installation in our church ( for our first post-covid service, this Sunday) but I'm having trouble with the pistons on the Johannus Opus 5 console we're using (what a machine..... ). When I look at the console's output on Midi Monitor, a press of a general piston outputs a list of the Johannus stops which are being called (basically a list of numbers - the stops are numbered 1-30 or whatever from left to right along the stop-rail ), but no other midi information that I can see.

Has anyone had success in getting these pistons to communicate with HW ? (the auto detect function isn't seeing them at all).

Unfortunately Johannus don't output MIDI from their pistons. Neither from the stops AFAIK.
A quick work around would be to use something like a Novation LaunchPad. If you were running on a PC, I would have suggested possibly borrowing a touch screen as Macs have t/s driver issues.

Where are you located?

Rgds,
Ed

Hi Ed,

Thanks for coming back to me - I'm already running a PC with a touch screen, but of course it's nice to have some 'physical' pistons as well, if possible. You have confirmed my suspicions ( that there is no usable output ), but having noted Martin mentioning improved support for Johannus consoles a few times, I thought I might have been missing something.

Oh well....

Hello Glenn,

I don't know whether it applies in your case, but some digital organs (certainly various Rodgers models) have a setting within their system settings menus for whether the pistons should behave in 'piston mode' (sending a unique MIDI message for each piston) or 'stop mode' (sending a list of all of the resulting digital organ stop states). If that's applicable on yours then you would need to set it to the 'piston mode' in order for the pistons to be usable for controlling Hauptwerk (or indeed anything else).

The 'Playing Hauptwerk live from a digital organ' section in the main Hauptwerk user guide covers that in more depth (pages 216-217 in the current v5.0.1 version).

Hi Martin,

Having done a little more reading, it seems that although there is no 'piston mode', the Johannus pistons can be programmed to effect stop changes on an external midi-module (whether a Johannus module or A.N. Other ). If this is the case, I should imagine that HW will be able to use these signals. I just need to figure out how to program it now... if I'm still in difficulty, I'd imagine that the chaps on the dutch PC-Orgel forum should be quite expert in all things Johannus.

Many thanks.

You may find pages 72 and 73 of https://www.johannussupport.com/data/manuals/previous/UM_universal_8000_EN.pdf useful.
You could try the Bome midi translator to convert the midi message into something more useful if necessary.
Iain.

I have a similar situation on my Content organ which I am using as a Hauptwerk console. Hauptwerk does not detect my pistons, but it does detect individual stops. What I did was set each piston to activate one unique stop on my Content console. I used the floating Solo division of my Content for this purpose. For example:

Content Piston 1 = 8' Harmonic Flute
Content Piston 2 = 4' Traverse Flute

8' Harmonic Flute = HW Piston 1
4' Traverse Flute = HW Piston 2

This has worked well for me, maybe it will work for you.

By way of experiment, I moved my midi cable from the 'out' or 'sequencer' plug on the organ to the 'mod' or 'Thru' plug. Pistons are now detecting and work fine ! - I just have to program all the pistons on the console to have 'midi on', but no stop activated. (when i was using the 'sequencer' output, the midi data stream was present whether the 'midi' stops were active or not)

Maybe this will benefit you also, Voet ?

Thanks for the suggestion, Glenn. However, since I don't use the Content stops with Hauptwerk and I have all of my sample sets programmed and working, I think I will leave things as they are, at least for now.

If you want to experiment, you can use one of the Alt Hauptwerk configurations (1, 2 or 3) without it making any changes to your main config.

Rgds,
Ed