This thread is for people who don't know anything about organs to find out how they work, what the jargon means and what all the fuss is about.
I hope some of the more experienced organists will chip in with explanations and answers to questions (and corrections, as I'm bound to make some mistakes here!) and anyone is welcome to ask anything about organs (including "could you say that again, but without the jargon?").
The only stupid question is one you don't ask.


So, getting started....

The bit of the organ that you sit at and do things to when you play is usually called the console (sometimes called the keydesk when talking about certain types of organs). The keyboards are called manuals. A typical church organ will have 2 or 3 manuals, and a typical cathedral 4 or 5, but you can find instruments with anything from 1 to 7.
Most organs have a pedalboard. This is a bit like an oversized keyboard, played with the feet.
Most have one or more expression pedals. For the time being, think of them as a variable volume control. They are large tilting pedals set just above the main pedalboard, somewhere near the middle of it. (edit: Usually! On some instruments they are set to the far right.)

Somewhere near the manuals, you'll find the stop controls. Drawstops are knobs that you pull out and are the most usual sort to find on a church instrument. Tab stops are sort of flat switch things that you flip downwards. Either sort will be labelled, most with a number and a name.
The most usual place to find drawstops is on the jambs either side of the manuals. But some organs have them just above the uppermost manual.
Just below the keys, you'll probably find a series of little buttons on the front edge of each manual. These are called thumb pistons.


Imagine a large box, full of pressurized air. Imagine it has 61 holes in it, in a row. Each hole is covered and has a simple pipe (a bit like an upside-down recorder without any finger holes) directly above it, each one slightly smaller than the one before it (so it will give a higher pitched note if air flows through it). The widget (let's call it a pallet) that covers each hole is connected to the corresponding key of a 5-octave keyboard. When you press the key, the pallet moves out of the way and air can flow into the pipe, so that the note sounds.

That's the basic idea of how an organ works.
Each set of 61 matching pipes is called a rank.

Different types of pipes make different sorts of sounds.
So, you'd like to have several different sounds available for each note, which means several sets (ranks) of pipes.

Do you remember the game Stay Alive, with marbles resting on top of two sets of sliders (at 90 degrees to each other)? Each slider had holes in various places, but a marble would fall though only when both sliders were set so that they had a hole underneath the marble?
Organs are like that - to make a pipe sound you need to open two things. A slider (controlled by a drawstop) and the pallet (controlled by a key). If you've got both open, air can move through into the pipe and make a sound.
Until you draw a sounding (or speaking) stop for the manual, you can press the keys as much as you like and you won't get any sound.

Several ranks of pipes, grouped together and intended to be controlled by one manual, are called a division.
Most organs have one division for each manual and one more for the pedals.
This means that each manual has it's own collection of available sounds, and you can play with contrasting sounds by using one hand on one manual and the other on a different one. Or you can change back and forth between different manuals as you play.
You can also change the sounds by selecting different stops (and you can do this while you're playing, but it takes a bit of practice).

On a two-manual organ, the divisions are normally called Great and Swell.

All the pipes of the Swell division are inside a box, with louvred shutters on the front. If you close the shutters, you've basically shut the entire division away inside a closed box. This muffles the sound and makes it seem quieter to the listener. If you open the shutters gradually, you get a crescendo.
You control the position of the shutters using the swell pedal (which is an expression pedal). This is the volume control I mentioned earlier. You're not really changing the volume of sound the pipes produce, but you're changing how much of the sound you allow out of the box.
On a three-manual, the extra one is usually called the Choir and may, like the Swell, be an enclosed division (i.e. be in a box, with a pedal to control the shutters). In this case, the Swell and Choir divisions will be in two /separate/ boxes, and the console will have two expression pedals.

Some organs have more divisions than they have manuals. When this happens, two divisions share a manual and there will be one or more drawstops to control which is active.

If you have 4 divisions, the 4th might be Solo or Positive. If you have 5, you'll get both of those.
I'm sticking with the English names here for the time being. Foreign organs not only have different names, but the character of the divisions may be different, so it's not just a case of translating the names.

Unlike the piano, you can't affect the volume by how hard you strike the keys.
You've got two ways to change volume - open and close the swell box, or add and subtract stops (ranks). The more pipes you use at the same time, the more noise you'll make.
Some ranks are much louder than others, so for a quiet hymn you'll choose different stops than for a loud one, and then you'll add/subtract from there to create a little bit of variety between (or during) verses.

You can also engage things called Couplers which allow you to control the pipes belonging to one manual from a different one. These have names like "Swell to Great" and "Great to Pedal". They are controlled by drawstops, much like sounding stops (ranks) are.

The choice of stops, manuals and couplers that you're going to use for a given piece of music (and you might use several different set-ups within one piece) is called registration.
All the fussing around that you do while playing, aside from actually playing the notes, is known as organ management. (Changing stops, changing pistons, changing the expression pedal(s), changing manuals, etc.)

Explanation of stops (types (flues (flutes & diapasons) and reeds), names, lengths, mutations, etc.) to follow another time, along with explanation of the different types of action and the question of how the box full of air (windchest) works.

Ask if anything isn't clear. Chip in with corrections and clarifications if you've got any (note: I've deliberately simplified a few things).

T.

I knew nothing about the organ until I started reading this forum. I tried to find out a bit more about it, by reading things like the Wikipedia article on organs. But this is fantastically clear and very useful to someone who needs it explained in 'ideas of one syllable' (a box with a row of holes each of which has an upside down no-finger-holed recorder on it that's a description I can understand)

I look forward to "diapasons" because it's an interesting word but whenever I've tried to read something to tell me what it means I just don't seem to understand (or if I do, it falls out of my head three seconds later!)

Very interesting - really enjoyed reading this

Teigr, as an organist familiar with what you have written, thats a darn good effort at trying to explain an organ in simple terms. Well done !

Thanks! :-)

Quick clarification to last night's offering...

Sliders.
Broadly speaking, you have a long, flat strip of wood with 61 holes in it, to match up with the 61 holes in the top of the windchest for a particular rank of pipes. Imagine that one end of it is connected to a little knob which sticks through a hole in the console, so an organist can reach it.
To start with, the holes in the slider are positioned so that they are in between the holes in the windchest. Press keys and nothing happens.
Pull the knob towards you and the slider moves along with it, bringing all the holes into alignment. Now, when you press a key, air can get into the relevent pipe, as the slider is set so that they are all available.
This is called "drawing a stop".

The actual mechanics are a little more complicated, to allow for the layout of the organ, but that's the general principle behind it.

Each rank of pipes has its own slider, which controls the availability of that rank.
Ranks are often referred to as stops.


I think one of the barriers to understanding the organ is that even if you can see the console (and that's a big if, as it could be in a loft, or tucked away behind a screen or behind the choir stalls), and can see what the organist is doing, there's no obvious connection between what he does and the sounds you hear.
You see someone playing what looks a bit like a mutant piano, with a whole bunch of knobs and buttons on it. He plays the piano-looking bits, but keeps jumping around from one to another, and he keeps messing around with all the widgets and the sound you hear, which is definitely nothing like a piano, changes. But the link between what he does and what you hear isn't easy to mae sense of.
With most other instruments, if you watch someone playing, you can see the whole instrument. With the organ, if you can see the console, you're really watching someone playing by remote control.



Action

Going to keep this /very/ simple for the time being.
There are two main types of action that are commonly found these days. Tracker (or mechanical) action is used to refer to an organ where there is a mechanical linkage between the keys and the pallets.
A tracker instrument has to have the console very close to the pipework and it gives a very immediate response.
Electro-pneumatic instruments are the organ version of "fly-by-wire". Then you press a key, you close an electrical connection, a signal zips along a cable, and that triggers the opening of a pallet. This means that the pipework can be in one part of the building and the console in a completely different part.

Generally speaking, an electro-pneumatic will have a smoother keyboard action than a tracker, because the keys aren't connected to a whole bunch of mechanical stuff. But, with a detached console (that's what you call it when the console is positioned away from the rest of the organ), you have a time delay between pressing the key and hearing the note. It's not a very long delay, but it takes a bit of getting used to.

I played an organ yesterday that had (mostly) electro-pneumatic action, but with the console set where you'd expect on a tracker. Best of both worlds - smooth /and/ responsive.

One bonus of a tracker is that you can vary the attack - the speed at which you depress the key affects the speed at which the pallet opens. It's not like changing the volume of a note on the piano by how fast you hit the key, but it does allow a little control over the start and end of a sound. You don't have any subtlety of attack with an e-p.


One important difference between playing the organ and playing a piano is the fact that an organ pipe will sound for as long as you keep the key depressed. The moment you release the key, the sound stops (there is no 'sustain' pedal), but while you hold the key down, the sound remains absolutely constant (there is no decay).
(There's a actually a very very quick crescendo at the start of a note and a very very quick diminuendo at the end, as the pallet opens and closes, but you can ignore that for most purposes - it's important for an organist to be aware of when they're trying to develop a really smooth legato touch. Those extrenely brief moments at the beginning and end of a note are what a tracker gives you more control over.)

T.

Nice posts Teigr!

It's worth noting that expression pedals are not always positioned where you describe. I have played some instruments where it is offset to the far right (mostly triggers: see below). Not very comfortable!

There are different kinds of expression pedals:

Balanced (you tilt the pedal up or down and it stays where it is)

Infinite gradation (you push the pedal up and it acts like the volume button on a TV remote, more more more more more, or push it down for less less less less) - only ever played one instrument with this (Liverpool Cathedral)

Trigger (the pedal isn't balanced and will always flop into an open or close position unless you hold it with a pivoted piece of ratcheted wood which you knock out of the way with your ankle and let it settle into position again) - this are good fun: NOT

As with most things, these different types are best experienced in the flesh so I would recommend anyone going to a church service or whatever to c0ck a snook at the organ and see what that instrument has. Be brave and talk to the organist about it too! They don't bite (mostly!)

Thanks Mr B! :-)

I've only come across ones where they're somewhere near the middle so far. This is why I'm relying on you and the other experienced organists to chip in on this thread.

I was already aware of the different types of expression pedals, but have only ever played with balanced ones. I can imagine plenty of scope for accidents happenning with the trigger type if you find yourself playing one and are used to balanced. (I know I'd forget, probably several times, resulting in sudden and unwelcome changes of volume and startling bangs of the shutters.)

Banging the shutters is the organ equivalent of slamming a door - it's considered bad form. So even when you want a very fast change, you try to finish it very carefully.
Mr B (or someone) - has anyone written anything that actually calls for the organist to bang the shutters for effect in a piece?

Even with balanced pedals, they vary a lot. How far they move, how easily they move, how much you need to move them to get the desired effect, how best to position your foot so your instep is over the fulcrum - all takes a bit of getting used to.

My most disconcerting experience with the swell pedal so far was the first time I played the Guilmant Duo Pastorale on the 3-manual tracker I have some of my lessons on. I'd worked on it with my other teacher (on an e-p) and had been practicing it on that instrument and another e-p. Played it to John just as a dry-run at playing it to someone else before the exam. Moved the swell pedal as normal and nothing happenned. It really threw me. Apparently there would be a noticable change in volume to anyone sitting in the nave, but at the console there was hardly any difference between having the box open and having it closed.

This is another thing that organists have to contend with. The sound can be very different in different parts of the building, and the console isn't always well placed to use the sound there as a guide to the sound elsewhere. So, if you play a particular organ, it can be useful to get someone else to play it sometime while you walk around the building.

T.

This is fascinating, thank you so much Teigr

I don't go to church so I don't get to listen to the organ very much, but when I heard Simon Lindley and mwl1 play it at Leeds Parish Church in the summer, I thought it was wonderful. I didn't know until then that you could get so much variety on the organ.

I'd like to ask a question which has always puzzled me but which I know is going to sound really really stupid, but I'll ask it anyway....

When I go to the Bridgewater Hall to listen to something like Saint-Saens' Organ Symphony, the organist plays from a console at the front of the stage. Is it connected in some way to the pipes at the back or is he playing a completely separate instrument?

You're welcome.

I don't know that particular instrument, but it's probably an electo-pneumatic with a detached console. (See post #5 for details).

T.

I think Bridgewater is tracker which means it is mechanically connected from the console to the pipes, unless this is a separate, moveable console which is probably solid-state (i.e. computer signals go down a thin wire to the computers at the back which then activate the organ mechanism)

*looks it up*

OK, the main console is mechanical, but there's a mobile console which is electric, connected by fibre-optic cable.

Anyone feeling up to explaining how you connect a remote console to a tracker?
(I don't!)

T.

p.s. Please don't just say "with a fibre-optic cable" - I want to know how it works. ;-)

Ah, I see, thank you for clearing up that mystery

You're welcome, but we seem to have uncovered a whole new mystery in the process... ;-)

T.

[
When I go to the Bridgewater Hall to listen to something like Saint-Saens' Organ Symphony, the organist plays from a console at the front of the stage. Is it connected in some way to the pipes at the back or is he playing a completely separate instrument? :ph34r:
[/quote]

Skylark reminds me of an Olivier Latry recital I attended some years ago at the Bridgwater Hall. I overheard a woman expressing amazement at '... getting such a HUGE sound out of such a TINY instrument!'

Fascinating posts, Teigr; many thanks!

Been playing the things 10 years and didn't know any of this in any detail (textbooks on the subject make my eyes glaze over and I've yet to have a single lesson).

I shall keep an eye on this thread for further enlightenment.

Mel

Do all take a look at the photos on the "My Organ" thread, which Skylark's just resurrected. You'll be able to see a lot of what's been described here.


Pedalboards:

These come in various types.
Radiating means the pedals sort of fan out a bit - they're closer together under the bench and a little wider apart at the business end.
Straight means the pedals are set parallel to one another.
Concave means that the pedals at the far ends are slightly raised compared to the ones in the middle, so everything is a little more even in distance from the organist.
Most of the organs I come across seem to have radiating pedalboads (concave or otherwise).


Keydesk:

The proper term for the console built into the front or side of a tracker instrument.
You'll find a lot of people just call it a console though.



Stuff you find on and around the console:

Organists collect stuff on the console. There will usually be several (mostly blunt) pencils. (Rather than sharpen them, people seem to just add a sharp one to the collection as necessary!) Post-it notes are commonplace. Organists seem to write a lot more on their sheet music than other instrumentalists because we need to mark in registration and changes. As every organ is different, when you play a different one (for a recital or depping at a different church or whatever), you need to work out your registration all over again - rather than mess with what you've got written for your usual instrument, you just little scraps of post-it note in with the revised markings. Cartoons - some consoles have organ and/or choir-related cartoons or jokes stuck to or near them. Instructions - one or more sheets of paper with information or instructions for the resident musos and/or visiting organists. Bits of music - one organ I play regularly has the "Amen" setting used at that church stuck to the console. Sheet music, hymnbooks and service sheets - these tend to reside on and around the console - there's often a small bookcase somewhere to hand, but you also find such things on the music rest, the little space to the side of the manuals, the top surface of the console - anywhere there's a surface for them to sit on really. Sweet wrappers, crumpled tissues, etc - these shouldn't be there, but I've seen them in a few places.
Mirrors/monitors - organists need to be able to see what's going on in the church, so they can pick up cues from the vicar/priest/whoever, keep an eye on the conductor is there is one, tell when a procession is finishing, etc. so most consoles have one or more mirrors set up to give a view of part of the chancel and/or nave. Some instruments that have really poor sight-lines are equiped with a little monitor screen linked to a CCTV camera which allows them to see what's going on.


T.

Yes - I thought so too ! well done too.

(Trigger (the pedal isn't balanced and will always flop into an open or close position unless you hold it with a pivoted piece of ratcheted wood which you knock out of the way with your ankle and let it settle into position again) - this are good fun: NOT - quote Mr B)

Ha - remember this thing from a couple I played in my teens. We used to refer to them as whizz-bangs.

Thanks! I'm going to try to tackle stops, pipes, combinations, mutations, pistons, etc. this evening, but I need to go do some practice first.



*rofl* Love it! :-)

T.

I am beyond understanding

A VERY good posting Teigr - well done!!

THIS type of organ would require a similar description but with significant differences!!

Very quickly...

diapason:
dia - through
pason - tones
Basically, a sound made up of lots of harmonics.

T.

Great post(s) Teigr - Very easy to understand.
I am now more knowlegable than I was 10 minutes ago! Cheers

Thanks! :-)



Feel free to post one!

I'm starting off with church pipe organs. Was going to say a little about theatre organs, reed organs, digital organs, harmoniums, etc. later on, but I don't know much about them in comparison, so I'm sure you'd do a much better job. :-)

And I've been sticking to the absolute basics so far. Explanations of things like backfall, cyphers, tubular pneumatic, breakback, extensions, haskelled pipes, kid-on extensions, etc. I'm saving up til everyone's happily using words like 'pallet' and 'nazard' as if they've always known them. Then it won't seem like weird organ jargon anymore.

T.

I like the idea of keycheeks. For some reason that always struck me as a very sweet term!

There's a useful guide here with pictures.

I just found this one too!

Thanks, I'll wait till later. I have no intention on intruding on YOUR excellent postings. Keep going!!

Here we go then, this is where it gets a little more complicated, so I hope some of the other organists will chip in with corrections when I make a mess of this...

Pipes.

There are two basic types - flues and reeds.
A flue pipe is similar to a recorder and produces sound the same way - the airstream hits a lip and the column of air inside the pipe vibrates. The pipes you usually see on display on the front/side of an organ are flues, but you also get one which taper and ones made of wood with a square cross section.

A reed pipe has a little flap of metal that works a bit like a clarinet reed or the reeds in a free-reed instrument (like a harmonica). The airflow past the reed makes it vibrate. Reed pipes look a bit weird, because you're not used to seeing them, so your mental image of what organ pipes look like doesn't include them. Very approximately, a typical reed pipe looks a bit like a long narrow conical pipe stuffed into the top of a shorter wider conical pipe, with a bit of bent wire sticking out the top of the bottom part.

There are two main types of flues - flutes and diapasons.

Flutes often have names which feature "flute" or "flote" (or something else obviously flute-related, like "piccolo"). The ones that you often find which don't have obviously flute-related name include Gedakt (or Gedekt, or Gedackt), Bourdon and (just to confuse people) Stopped Diapason.
They sound kind of flutey and give a nice clean sound.

Diapasons come in two main types - Diapasons proper (Principals) and Strings (which are softer and sound more string-like - they often have names that you'd recognise as stringy, like Violoncello, Viola, Cello, Gamba, etc. but you also find Dulciana, Salacional, Aeoline and others).

The Open Diapason is the sound you probably think of when you think about what an organ sounds like. When you see stops named after harmonics, without any other name, they're probably principals (octave, twelfth, fifteenth, etc.).


The reeds are very varied and often have names you'd associate with brass or (non-flute) woodwind instruments - clarinet, oboe, trumpet, tuba, etc (and their foreign and archaic equivalents).



If you look at the labels on drawstops, you'll see numbers as well as names.
Most of the numbers will be powers of 2 or will have fractions involved. These indicate the length of the C for that rank of pipes.
The "default" length is 8' - that gives you the same pitch you'd expect from the same note on a piano.
16' is an octave lower, and 32' an octave lower still.
Going the other way, 4' is an octave higher than 8', with 2' an octave higher still.
basically, if you double the length of the pipe, you get a sound an octave lower.
I'll explain the ones with fractions later.

Some have numbers like 12.17 - these sorts of numbers refer to intervals above the fundamental tone. More about this later.


If you find yourself having an opportunity to have a go on an organ and you have absolutely no idea which stops to draw, start with an 8' flute, dulciana or stopped diapason. That will give you a not-overpowering sound at the pitch you'd expect. There is usually a label by each bank of drawstops to tell you which division they belong to, but if there isn't, the swell is probably to your left and the great to your right. If you have two manuals, the top one is the Swell and the lower one is the Great. If in doubt, draw a suitable 8' stop for each division and pick a manual at random!


(Anyone care to clarify whether Stopped Diapason should be grouped with Flutes or with Diapasons? It's a diapason, but it sounds flutey and AMT lists it as a flute, but elsewhere I've seen it listed as a diapason.)


T.

I was taught that stopped diapason keeps company with flutes - but that was years ago so feel free to disagree!

I'm not fussed either way about organ music but I just had to say, what a great idea for a thread!

Very interesting - I am enlightened!!

You should get the mods to pin it.




Sounds about right *grin*





If you go to Durham at any point, I forget exactly where in the church but there's one spot where you can see wooden flues up close, and they're huge!!

edit:

finally finished reading it all - and now I really wish I had an organ handy to experiment with

Hey Teigr

Great thread and fantastic contributions from you. Bravo!

I can't wait for the masterclass on Mixtures and Mutations.

Best wishes

barry

Or for casting evil glances at the sopranos in the quire who are just itching to launch into descant parts on Christmas morning

Oh, and don't most organs have a collection of appropriate shoes around them? (although I recognise that this is a grand_chouer speciality. Talking of whom, has anyone seen him recently or should I start scanning the obits?).


Ooh, pretty! Is it yours? (although all the white paint suggests that mwl1 might have something to do with it!).

My very first post on this forum!

Easy! You have a mechanical (tracker) action, as described, with an electric solenoid (an electromagnet) also connected to each pallet. In this way the pallet can be opened using either the tracker or the solenoid.

Such arrangements of both tracker and electric consoles on one organ are certainly not uncommon.

I do not know whether this applies to the Bridgewater Hall organ, but it may be possible to play the organ using both consoles at the same time - to play a duet, for example.

A very good thread, Teigr, which may well encourage the uninitiated to take an interest in the organ. We could do with this in this country!

John

Wow, you must have patience to write all that. I think I'll try and take it all in gradually because there's a lot to read!!

I understand the term 'diapason' (Greek) means 'throughout the compass'. I believe that, on early organs, the Diapason was the only stop to speak across the whole of the compass of the instrument.

John

With the exception of some American-built instruments, you RARELY see a 4' Diapason actually named thus.
It's usually 4' Octave or Principal - on my instrument at home the 2' is an Octavin.

Anyone know why a "Salicional" is so named?

Sorry to butt in again, but most people would not group diapasons and strings together: flues = diapasons (or principals), flutes and strings.

Broadly speaking (and, I might add, there is a wealth of different sounds in each of the three types of flue), flutes have the least harmonic development and sound 'dull', strings have the most harmonics and sound much brighter, and diapasons fall squarely in the middle being the sound traditionally thought of as being 'organ tone'.

Flutes (unlike diapasons and strings) may be either 'open' or 'stopped'. Open flutes have an open top to the pipe - as you might expect - like the recorder. Stopped flutes have a 'tampon' (yes - really!) in the end (although I should explain it is, perhaps, not what you are thinking of but, usually, a wooden block). This makes the sound even duller (removes alternate harmonics) and also lowers the pitch by one octave, for any given pipe length. Thus, an 8' stopped flute is only 4' long.

The Stopped Diapason is actually a flute. I think the name comes from early organs where the Stopped Diapason was just an Open Diapason which had been cut in half and a stopper (tampon) inserted.

Hope this helps.

John

There was a time when I wasn't fussed about organ music either. But the more I understand about the instrument, its history, its repertoire, and so on, the more understand of what I'm listening to, and the more I understand it, the better I like it.
I heard a great recital yesterday. The music was all stuff I didn't know, and a few years back probably wouldn't have wanted to know. But I loved it - I enjoyed hearing the range of sounds that the organ could make (which is very extensive), and I thought a bit about what stops he might've been using to get them. And I related some of the music to other music I know by the same composers. And I understood the structure of some of it. The me of a few years ago would probably have been rather disinterested (but the me of a few years ago wouldn't have even been there).
Organ music can seem very unapproachable to people who don't know much about it. I found my way into it the same way many organists get started - by being a chorister. You're trapped in the choir stalls and have to listen to what the organist is producing, especially as some of it includes cues to your entries. And as you pay attention to it, you start to make some sense of it all. And you hear some really intruiging sounds and wonder how on earth he made it produce them. Then you hear a voluntary that you think is rather catchy and you find yourself humming or whistling bits of it days later. Doesn't take long before you want to be able to play the thing yourself, and then you're on the slippery slope... ;-)





Been there, done that! :-)
Those are some of the pipes belonging to the pedal division.
I was at music summer school and a couple of us who were organists skipped the final session (a piano recital, which was optional anyway) to go for a quick look round the cathedral (hadn't had a chance before that) before going to visit a nearby organ builder's workshop.
My friend tried to sound one of the pipes by blowing into the lip opening, but it didn't work. He's managed it at other cathedrals before though.




Thanks. Feel free to chip in with stuff yourself. :-)



Won't be much of a masterclass I'm afraid. I've had about a dozen lessons so far and only took AB g3 last term.
Plus, I'm trying to keep to the very basics, so that non-organists can make sense of it.
Hopefully, once I've covered the simple stuff, other people with more experience will elaborate on it later.

Most of what I know about the organ in general and registration in particular has come from reading, experimenting and talking to other organists, rather than from lessons.



If they're not going to respond to "don't you dare" looks from the conductor, they probably won't pay much attention to the organist either...
;-)



I've seen some with one or two pairs nearby, and also ones with robes hanging in the loft or next to the console.

T.

[/quote]

Anyone know why a "Salicional" is so named?
[/quote]

Yes. It derives from the Latin 'Salyx' (I think, without looking it up), which means 'willow'.

A Salicional (and you see all sorts of variant spellings - eg, Salicet, Solcional, etc) was originally, presumably, a flute made from the willow tree.

It is, nevertheless, a 'string' although not as thin-sounding as some such as Gamba and Viole.

John

My sketchy knowledge of botanical terms suggests it might be to do with a willow - but I have no idea if this is correct or not. Shall have a look in the big Sumner organ tome ...


(ed) I see you got in first John , although there must have been only a hair's breadth between !

(ed again) yes, W Sumner agrees with this, Salicional (Latin, salix, a willow) although he does not say why it is so called. Names given to 8ft and 16 ft open cylindrical metal stops of small scale with delicate, stringy intonation... Freqently the softest stop on the swell.

Cool! I love Durham Cathedral...

I have actually been exposed to a lot of organ music down the years - and even had a go once or twice. It's not that I dislike it, it's just.... there.... I don't especially like the diapason sound (which I didn't know was that till today - thanks!! ) it grates on me - a little like a musical and not as hideous version of fingers down a blackboard But I did grow up in a church with an organ, and was a regular visitor to the cathedral and my own college chapel when I was in Durham, so I do appreciate well played organ music. It just isn't what I would choose to listen to given the option, unless it was very good.

(Playing it myself??? thanks, but the piano is already more than enough for me without mutating it and giving it pedals and stops...)

John>

Thanks for joining in.

I'd left the details for later (was going to explain stopped pipes and how you build up a chorus with 8 OD, 4 Principal, etc. once I got into the stuff about the harmonic series and mutations), but it's good to clear up any bits that might be ambiguous to people who are new to the organ and can't see where this is heading. :-)

The 4' diapason, usually labelled Principal, is the baby brother of the 8' Open Diapason.
If you want to combine different size pipes, you'll often want to keep them in families (unless you're doing for another effect). So, if you started with an 8' OD and you want to add a 4', you'll probably add the 4' Principal.
If you started with the 8' Hohl Flute and you want to add a 4', you'll most likely add a 4' flute of some sort.


Thanks for the correction on the etymology of "diapason" - I was just going by the one given me by a friend and hadn't checked it in a book. He said it was because the diapasons have a lot of harmonics.

And thanks especially for the explanation of how you connect a detached console to a tracker instrument. :-)

T.


edit: ooops! Sorry diapason - I forgot it was you that pointed out that I'd been unclear about the naming of the diapasons and lumped that in with the points from John.

Sorry, Teigr. I hadn't realised that you were going on to explain this.

I shall certainly keep an eye on this thread, as it is right up my street. I should explain that I have been interested in the organ since a very early age (two, I think!) and have picked up lots of 'useless information'. The sad thing is that I have never taken the trouble to learn how to play, which is probably just as well since I don't think I am possessed of the necessary skills. Moreover, I am now very old indeed (55) and my brain is beginning to dysfunction!

John

As far as I was always told, the Salicional/String/Willow connection is that the small scale, thin pipes of the rank are representative of the thin branches of the willow tree.

I was always encouraged (as an organ student) to use string stops for Whitlock's "Salix".....which I still do whether on classical organ or theatre organ. One theatre instrument I play has 5 ranks of string including a beautiful celeste.....gorgeous!

string stops for Whitlock's "Salix".....

*sound of pennies dropping!*

although I saw the derivation earlier with the stop name, I'd never spotted it in connection with the Whitlock!

(silly !)

Nothing to be sorry for! I'm glad that people are chipping in. :-)
I was just explaining /why/ I'd omitted a lot so far.
But it's good when people point out stuff that shoudn't be skipped over - like diapason did with the naming of Principal. Those of us who know the bigger picture can see where it's all going and fill in any gaps for ourselves as we read, but quite a few people reading this thread are completely new to the organ. So it's important to clear up any ambiguities that might confuse them.

It's also important to get things clarified and corrected as we go along, like the derivation of 'diapason'. (Another reason why it's very valuable to have more knowledgable people around to keep an eye on it.)

And it's good to be able to get answers to miscellaneous questions that arise along the way - like the one about salacional and the one about how you control a tracker remotely.

This is exactly why I'm doing it in small chunks - so I can get corrections and clarifications on each one before moving on, and so that the non-organists have a chance to ask about anything that didn't make sense.



I hope you'll do more than keep an eye on it! I hope you'll continue to spot oversights and correct mistakes. I don't think I could try to do this without input from you guys with more experience - I'd be too worried about going off on the wrong track if there's things I've misunderstood myself.
And you don't need to wait for me to cover a topic - feel free to go right ahead and add chunks yourself, just make sure you explain them in very simple ways, so that people with no previous knowledge other than from reading this thread will be able to follow. Strip it down to the basics, so that the main concepts are clear, then elaborate on them later. For example, I've only talked about tracker and electro-pneumatic actions so far and I havn't gone into any detail about how they actually work. Other types and the intricate details can (and will) follow eventually - you or me or someone else will get to them at some point.

You should read John Holt's book "Never Too Late" about his experience of learning the 'cello as quite a mature adult. :-)
And at 55, you're heading toward retirement, which could be a great time to learn to play, as you'll have more time to practice then!
There's also an Adult Learners forum here - maybe you could wander in there sometime and see how many people are learning instruments as adult beginners (some of them a fair bit older than you are) and how much they're enjoying it.

I don't think it's necessary to play an instrument to understand a lot about it. My Grandad was an organ nut and was extremely knowledgable about everything organ-related, but didn't play himself.
I just don't want you to miss out on the fun of playing because you think it's too late to start. :-)

T.

If anybody would like to *see* all these things that Teigr is talking about and is in the Leeds area, you might like to know that Dr Simon Lindley, the Leeds City Organist, is holding two sessions called "Meet the Town Hall Organ". The first one is Saturday 20 October, 9.30-11.00, and the second one is Saturday 2 February, 10.00-11.00am.

The blurb says that the events are "specifically designed for the young (and young at heart) - parents and grandparents are warmly encouraged to bring their youngsters. The presentation lasts around an hour and the wide tonal range of the organ is fully explored and explained."

Some random bits and pieces...
(I can't face starting the harmonic series this late at night - I'd be up for hours working on it.)

As well as explain how the beastie works, I'm trying to give the non-organists following this a few glimpses into our little world - hence the asides about things like post-it notes, mirrors and banging the shutters.

Organists can sometimes seem a bit cliquey - like we think we belong to a special club or something. In a way, we do. It's not that the organ is the hardest instrument to play and playing it makes us special. (Though it is almost certainly one of the harder instruments and playing it quite possibly makes us crazy!)
It's that it's a much less accessible instrument than most. It's not offered as an instrument to learn in (most) schools and although you can buy a digital practice instrument for home (and a few people have small pipe organs at home!), most people practice in church. So you get far fewer people learning the organ than learning the piano or the flute or the violin and suchlike.

Even if you have an instrument at home, you still need to practice on the one you play "for real" because, as you'll have realised by now, every instrument is different. They have different numbers of manuals, differently arranged pedalboards, different stops, with different types of controls for them, different accessories (pistons, etc.), different layouts, etc.
Most other instrumentalists don't have to practice for hours in a cold, dark church. (There's a thread about some of scary things - real or imagined - that people have come across while practicing.)

And then there's the whole issue of playing for services, which most organists do at some point, even if they don't hold a church appointment. Vicars who change the hymns just before the start of the service, conductors who casually say "I'd like this chant in E flat instead of F", Sunday School leaders who hand you a copy of the song the kiddies are going to lead (complete with actions - unfortunately not complete with harmony, just a melody line and, if you're lucky, guitar chord symbols). Yes, other people deal with similar issues, but probably not on such a regular basis. And while some people like to have lots of time to get a piece up to performance standard, an organist (and remember that many church organists are volunteer amateurs) has to deliver a public performance once or twice a week (maybe even more!), every week, with several hymns, some music before the service, a voluntary at the end and quite possibly some other bits and pieces during it, and maybe some accompaniments for choir stuff too.

So, organists can get a bit clannish sometimes - it's nice to be able to share horror stories with other people who understand what it's all about and who've been through similar things.
But most organists are very enthusiastic about the instrument in general and "their" instrument in particular.
So if you want to have a look at the one in your local church, do ask the organist. Chances are that he'll be pleased that someone is taking an interest and he'll probably be very happy to show you the console, maybe let you have a little go on it, tell you more about it and, if you're very lucky, he might be able to show you some of the innards (that's not always possible because it can be quite inaccessible and there may be health & safety issues).

It can also be a bit off-putting to people that we seem to be speaking a different language sometimes. The organ is a complicated instrument, so it has lots of jargon. There's the names for all the different bits, and the names for all the different stops (I've got several books about the organ, including one that's just about stops!) and a whole bunch of other terminology that we use. We don't do it on purpose and we don't do it to exclude other people - it's just that those terms are everyday parlance for organists and help us to communicate between ourselves. But hopefully this thread is helping you crack the code.



"I saw the lesser spotted marsh Harrison&Harrison!"
Some of us can also get a bit geeky or anoraky - like the sterotypical trainspotter, only we want to drive the thing as well as ticking off the number. ;-)
We're not /completely/ barmy - we're just enthusiastic about organs in their almost infinite variety.
And that's something other instrumentalists can probably relate to to some extent. There's a thread on the Strings forum at the moment in which people are enthusing about violins they've seen. And really, to most people, one violin looks (and sounds) very much like another. Even someone with no knowledge of organs or music would be able to spot that organs come in a bewildering range of shapes and sizes.

T.


edit:
I've just seen the post that Skylark made while I was making this one.

I would highly recommend that event to anyone who can get along to it. I went to something similar at a cathedral once (after I'd developed an interest in organs and decided I wanted to learn, but before I'd actually started learning). It was absolutely fascinating.
The organist brought along some spare pipes of different types to show people (and sounded them by blowing into the end - you have to be careful when you do that because of the lead content, so you shouldn't put the pipe in your mouth to blow it, instead you grip around the end of the pipe and blow into your fist). Then he played some snippets of music to show the scope of the instrument. Then took everyone who wanted to go up into the organ loft (not the console loft, but the area where the pipework lives!). I got to sound a pipe by sticking my hand inside the organ and physically moving a pallet (we were told we could do that, carefully). There was also a chance for people to have a quick look in the console loft, though I didn't (I was quite shy and wasn't already an organist). He'd also got the mobile single manual positive console attached and I did get to have a little play on that.
I would guess that an event aimed primarily at children and with a large audience wouldn't include a visit to the innards, but it should still be a wonderful experience.

LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT

Man/woman/boy/girl? after my own heart Teigr. You are SO right - the organ is the most un-standard/unpredictable instrument of the lot. Layout, sound, response, comfort of playing, location dependancy - the environment in which the organ is placed will make it or break it. "The building is the best (or worst) stop on the instrument" said my oft quoted teacher who probably quoted someone else.

Organists ARE clannishy, cliquey, freaky, anoraky, geeky.............perm any 4 out of 5.......but some of us are straightforward normal everyday guys and gals who just enthuse over our instrument.

I am Secretary of a local organ society - mostly electronic organ as entertainment for "home enthusiasts". We have a professional or good amateur to play a two-hour concert for us each month. I, myself (hate that expression) am also "on the concert circuit"
Some of our society members think they know EVERYTHING that was ever written or said about the organ, yet talk the biggest load of gobbledygook to come from human mouths. Try and explain (patiently!) the difference between an electronic organ and the workings of a pipe organ.........they have NO idea. The art of regsitration may as well be written in some Star-Trek based lingo for all they know (or care).........and some of these people are my pupils.........H E A V E N H E L P M E...........you'd better believe it.

BUT............they love it!!!

Anyway, will get off your thread now.....and my soapbox.

Re:"Mixes and Muts"..........I have some unusual ones on my home digital classical instrument. It's a very well-endowed machine.

It's not my thread - it's for everyone! I just got it started and have been doing most of the initial explanations. I'm probaby not a bad person to do them because I'm still new enough to it all that I can remember what it was like to be on the 'outside' - not understanding most of the jargon, asking lots of what I thought were silly questions, etc. but when we get to the more advanced stuff and to other types of organs, I'm going to need a LOT of input from those of you with more experience. And even with the basics, I need people to keep an eye on what I'm writing and pick up on any mistakes and clarify anything that I've said that might confuse people.

I'm finding it quite good to do. They say that you don't really understand something until you can explain it to someone else, so it's making me think quite hard. And it's going to help me find the gaps in my understanding and get them filled. :-)

I definitely agree that the organ is an instrument that's very difficult for non-organists to make any sense of. With most instruments, the player is interacting much more directly with the sound-producing aparatus, so an onlooker can understand at least the general idea of how it works.
If you watch a harpist, you can see that plucking strings makes notes. And longer strings make lower notes. You might have a few questions about how the player navigates around all those strings (some are colour-coded to give waypoints) or what the pedals or the little lever things are for (getting sharps and flats), but the basic principles are clear enough.
Same with a clarinet - you can see that someone blows into one end and changes the length of the tube (by covering more or fewer holes) to produce different notes. There'll be a few questions about the reed, the keywork and changing registers (how come you've covered a load more holes but the sound is higher?), but the general concept is fairly obvious.
But with the organ, you see the player doing things to a keyboard-type-thing on one side of a building and trumpety sounds emerge from the other side of the building, emanating from a contraption that looks a little like a collection of giant tin-whistles. Huh???

Organ music looks very scary too. People who play a melody-line instrument often think that piano music looks bad - two staves, two clefs, lots of notes at the same time.
Organ music is usually written on three staves (there's an extra bass clef stave for the pedal part), and there are cryptic markings (giving advice/instructions about registration). And if it's been used, there'll be lots more pencil markings added (and quite possibly little bits of post-it note).
When I say cryptic, I mean things like -SP (disengage the swell to pedal coupler), +16OD (add the 16' open diapason), GR (French for Great and Swell together).
I once page turned for someone practising for a recital. I could recognise most of what was written - occasional bits of fingering, the odd sharp or flat marked, piston numbers (inside different shapes, to show which ones belonged to which organ) all over the place and other registration markings. But throughout the music were regular occurrences of "WA". I couldn't for the life of me work out what it meant and I didn't want to sound stupid by asking, but curiosity got the better of me, so after he was finished I asked about it. Turned out it meant "Westminster Abbey" and was flagging up registration changes for a recital he'd played there. I'd been thinking it was some organ term I hadn't come across before (or had come across but wasn't recognising the shorthand for).

One thing that I think might be helpful to point out is that, although they both have keyboards, are used to play polyphonic music (lots of notes at the same time) and have music written on more than one stave, piano and organ aren't really related instruments. Most organists learn piano (to some standard or other) before beginning the organ, and you do need keyboard facility to play either instrument. But the feel of the instrument is very different, as is the way you think about what you're doing.
The piano is a percussion instrument. When you press a key, a hammer strikes a taut string to produce a sound. You create lots of subtleties of volume, tone, etc by how you press the keys (in much the same way as a percussionist varies the way they strike a drum or a mallet instrument).
The organ is a wind instrument. Sound is produced by columns of air vibrating in pipes, or by air making a reed vibrate in a resonating pipe. So you shape your phrases in much the way that you would on a woodwind instrument or when singing. You need to let the instrument "breathe", or you get a solid wall of sound. You can't stress a note by hitting the key harder, so if you want a note to stand out, you have to create a little bit of space around it, by tweaking the duration of other notes.
My organ music tends to gets lots of little tick marks pencilled in, just like my flute music, and they indicate the same thing in both cases - where I'm going to take a breath.

T.

If anyone wonders why I started this thread, take a little look at:
http://forums.abrsm.org/index.php?showtopi...26&st=98895
That's a page from the CISD thread that includes a couple of posts where I tried to explain a little bit about stops. I'm going to try to make it less confusing this time around, though.

Hopefully the stuff on this thread so far has laid a good foundation for what's to come.
But I'm going to start by straying away from organs for a moment, and try to say a bit about the harmonic series.
The catch here is that I've got a physics/maths/eng background, so I tend to dive headlong into physics jargon. I'm going to try hard not to, but I might need some help with trying to get this into terms that anyone can understand no matter what their field is.


When you hear a sound, you're hearing vibrations in the air, which hit your eardrum, are transferred into your inner ear and are decoded by your brain automatically.

What makes those vibrations in the air is something else vibrating (and jogging the surrounding air), or something which makes the air itself vibrate in a controlled way.

String instruments are good to use as examples, because you can see what happens. If you pluck a string you can see it vibrate.
Look carefully and you'll see if moves the most in the middle, and less at the ends (because they're fixed to the instrument).

The obvious ways to change the pitch of a note on a stringed instrument is to vary the thickness or the length of a string. The thicker strings give lower notes. And if you shorten a string (by pressing down against the fingerboard), you get a higher note.
You can also get a higher note if you tighten a string - that's how you tune a violin or similar, by adjusting the tension in the strings.

But there's another trick you can use. Get a friend with a guitar to show you this, or borrow one and try it for yourself.
Find the 12th fret (strip of metal across the fingerboard) - count starting from the end where the machine heads (tuning pegs) are. This will give you the mid-point of the strings.
Pluck a string and listen to the note. Get the sound of it fixed in your head.
Then hold the string down so that it's touching the fretboard just behind the 12th fret (your finger should be to the side where the machine heads are). The active length of the string now goes from that fret to the bridge (the place where the strings attach to the body of the guitar). Pluck the string again, and you should hear a sound that's an octave higher than you got from the open string.
Now the clever bit. Touch the string very lightly with one finger, directly over the 12th fret (so if you pressed down, you'd touch the fret itself). But don't press down. Now pluck the string. You should again hear a sound an octave higher than the open string. (It can take a bit of practice to find the knack of making this work.)

What you've done here is, instead of halving the length of the string which can vibrate, you've halved the length of each standing wave (vibration) on the string. Instead of the string vibrating as one length, it's now vibrating in two separate sections. You should see that the bits that move the most are the middle of each half of the string, while the two ends and the bit where your finger rests are still.
So it's now behaving a bit like 2 separate strings, each half the length of the original.

If you try the same trick at the 5th fret, the fretted note will be a perfect 4th above the open string, but the note when you just touch the string very lightly should be 2 octaves above the open string.

When you halve the length of a string, the sound goes up by one octave.
The 5th fret is one quarter of the way along the string, so when you fret (press down just behind the fret) there, you're not going up a full octave, as 3/4 of the string is vibrating.
But when you do the thing with the light touch, you're encouraging the string to set up 4 equal length standing waves (one between your finger and the top of the string, the other three to match it, down the rest of the string). So it's behaving rather like 4 strings, each of which is a quarter the length of the original string.
Making a string a quarter of its original length with raise the pitch by 2 octaves, because you've halved it, then halved it again.


You've probably seen a tuning fork labelled A=440.
That means that it gives the note we call A, and the vibrations associated with it are 440Hz (hertz, or wiggles per second).
Anything vibrating at 440 Hz will sound like an A, but the A you get from a violin sounds very different from the one you get from an oboe.

This is because the sound the instruments produce aren't a pure vibration of 440 wiggles per second.
The main sound is that, but there are a whole bunch of other waves as well. You can't see them when you look at the string, because the main one is the biggest.

Quick tangent - pluck an open string very gently. You can see it vibrate, but the bit that moves the most isn't actually moving very far. It should sound fairly quiet.
Now pluck it harder. It should sound louder and the amount it wiggles by should be bigger.
The "width of the wiggle" is called amplitude.

Back on track - the 440Hz wave has the biggest amplitude. The smaller waves that are happenning along the string have much smaller amplitudes, so your eye can't see them. They're like the waves you set up when you touched the string very lightly and plucked it.
Your ear hears them though. But your brain doesn't tell you that you're picking up a bunch of shorter waves (which would be higher pitched notes if you heard them by themselves). Instead, it interprets them as part of the overall timbre (type of sound) of the main A440 note.

Different instruments produce different collections of those extra "invisible" high notes - called overtones or harmonics, and that's why they all sound different even when playing the same note.


Physics jargon that you'll find useful:

amplitude - the width of the wiggle.
wavelength - the length of the wiggle
frequency - wiggles per second

Big amplitude = loud sound. Small amplitude = quiet sound.

Wavelength and frequency are (inversely) related - the shorter the wiggles, the more times they wiggle per second, and vice versa. We describe the pitch of a note in terms of frequency. But we tend to change the frequency by messing around with the wavelength (shortening strings, covering finger holes, opening valves to lengthen tubes, etc).

There's some complicated-sounding stuff about sine waves and how the wave you see on a stopped string is actually half a complete wavelength. Ignore that for now - I'm mentioning it just to reassure the physics folk. I'll try to explain it in very easy terms later (it becomes relevent when you want to understand how stopped pipes work).


The overtones that you can get aren't random. They come in a predictable pattern, called the harmonic series. I'll go into that more later when I try to explain how all this stuff applies to organs (the basic idea is that different length pipes work like different length strings).
The organ's party trick is that you can manipulate which overtones you get from it, thus changing the sound of a note. There are special stops that are used to do that, and they're known as "mutation stops" because you use them to modify the sound of other stops.

I'm going to leave it there to give people a chance to make corrections and ask questions about the physics, before getting into how this applies to the organ.

T.

Well done, you explained something related to physics in a way I can totally understand consider me impressed...

*awaiting next installment*