On 20 Jul 2010 at 2:06, A-NO-NE Music wrote: > On 2010/07/18, at 17:43, David W. Fenton wrote: > > > Has anyone mucked about with using high-quality samples of pipe > > organs with relatively simple keyboards? > > > > My viol consort may need a rehearsal instrument while the pipe organ > > is being rebuilt, and I was wondering if perhaps there are proper 5- > > octave keyboards (i.e., F-to-F, not C-to-C) into which high-quality > > samples can be loaded. Since we're using it for continuo, we'd need > > only an 8' flute stop. > > > > Any ideas on this? > I don't think you will ever be satisfied as long as the sound comes > out of speaker(s) unless you spent a lot on something like Bose L1 > system for sound output. Can harpsichord not substitute for the time > being?
We have harpsichord problems that are just as bad as our organ problems in terms of needing repair (the only playable one is at 440 and has a cracked sounding board; we're switching permanently to 415 this year, and the 415 harpsichord is unplayable). And it doesn't substitute in terms of rehearsal at all -- if you practice with harpsichord, you have to perform with it, because it's a completely different animal for the continuo player. You can't play the same notes, you can't time them the same, everything is completely different between organ and harpsichord continuo playing, chiefly because of the decay of harpsichord. > On the other hand, I knew an organist who used to use a MIDI > controller with Roland SoundCanvas on live until he got his own > Positive. He had a good ear, and EQed using his own PA system to > blend with the Early music chamber ensemble. It is possible, but the > player has to know how to EQ depending on the venue/room. In any event, this is not for performance (we'd still do a rental for that, as we have in the past), but for rehearsals. Last year we rehearsed with a cheapo $100 Casio, and it was really not terribly helpful, though the organist brilliantly adapted for the two performances (the first time she had played an actual organ in our program). > In fact it's a consistent problem for us who use amplification. I, > too, do EQ my rig before the show every venue, trying to sound my > flute as seamless as possible. I am not the one pushing for this -- I think we should just get by in rehearsals with what we had last time. There is also something of a push to use an electronic instrument in performance (one-time expense of acquiring it ends the recurring expense of the rental), but I said I'd leave the group if that was contemplated as anything other than an emergency measure, since I don't see how an early music group can have any credibility at all if they are using electronic instruments. I have repeatedly made the case that the big problem with this is speakers and having to adjust for every room. For organ continuo, you basically want a nice compact sound source, but it still has to have certain characteristics. Here's a YouTube illustrating exactly the problem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-OznRBvU3E That is the Roland C-230, which miked up close sounds just great, but heard in a larger room like this, it sounds little better than a Hammond organ or any other primitive electronic organ from 40 years ago, before note-by-note sampling. Ultimately, the problem is that you can't substitute producing the sound from 61 pipes with producing the sound through a single speaker. I've been testing the Hauptwerk sounds and they are great, but they bring my computer to its knees, so it's obvious that even to hook up a keyboard and play through that (speakers aside), would require more computer than I have available (though I haven't tried my Win7 computer because it has less memory, though it's a better quality computer). I was hoping there were keyboards that the sound sample could be loaded into without need for an external computer. Do you know of anything like that? And does VSTI have anything to do with that? There are VSTI versions of the Hauptwerk sounds, so if there are keyboards that can play those, that would work. But I just don't know a damned thing about any of this any more. Everything I knew about this stuff would have fit in a thimble in 1999, and now even that tiny amount is completely out of date. I'm currently doing some investigation in organ-oriented forums, where there are likely others with the same needs. I'll report back on what I find. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
