The subject of home practice instruments often comes up on this forum, so following a pleasant chat with Barry Williams last night I thought it might be helpful to share this information around.

We are very fortunate that we have free access to the organ in our local church more or less any time that we want, but that is not always convenient, and practicing there during wintertime is often extremely cold and not at all pleasant.

We have looked at various electronic options including the Viscount and Makin models, but their consoles seemed much too big to fit into our home, and once a peddleboard is fitted they really need a room to themselves. One option was to dispose of the piano to make way for an organ, but the piano is a very nice instrument which has been in the family for many years, and we felt we should keep it for all sorts of reasons.

Anyhow, please forgive the preamble, but a well known music shop in Newcastle recently invited members of the Newcastle Organists' Association along to try a new Roland model (the C330), which is specifically designed as a home practice instrument. The main benefit of the Roland is its very shallow depth, although it retains two full sized manuals (weighted to feel like a Tracker) and a full sized peddleboard. Stops are of the illuminated pushbutton variety, but this saves size, weight and cost, and they work perfectly well. Better still, each stop can be adjusted for volume and voicing, and there are additional free stops which can be programmed as you wish.

Purists may be horrified by the idea, but the sound quality and voicing from the built in woofer with two satellite loudspeakers is very good to my ears, although larger external speakers would be needed if you wanted to take full advantage of the 32' reed stops!

To cut a long story short, after many hours of playing this instrument in the shop we have ordered one, and will have it delivered in the next few weeks just as soon as I have finished decorating the room!

I have added some photographs of the instrument (courtesy of the Roland website) and hope that these are not too big.

Further information can be found here.

SB


Roland C30




A full frontal image can be seen here, but is too large for the forum. (Opens in a new window.)

You may like to use this link http://www.roland.com/classic/ for their main classic machines stie (including the rather spangly C30 harpsichord)

I would quite like one of them but can't justify that sort of expense, and instead just use my digital piano at home.

A well known Newcastle music shop? I only know one - JG Windows.

Personally, I think instead of spending >GBP6500, I would rather just drive over to the church to practice

Thanks Vectistim.

I was indeed JG Windows, but I wasn't too sure about the rules for advertising that fact here.

SB

Board members may recall my previous postings about our house pipe organ:

http://npor.rcm.ac.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?...ec_index=K00071

When researching the possibility of a house pipe organ we considered many possibilities, including a very small extension instrument. Almost all the commercially produced extension organs are voiced for churches and the HNB 'Chester' organ was prohibitively expensive for two not very interesting ranks. However, it was apparent that a small instrument could be constructed quite easily, using suitable pipe work and a very small console. The art is to have suitable pipe work that will take an octave extension yet not be particularly loud in the house. It can be done and I have heard a couple of very successful examples. Upperwork is best avoided close up, as are mutations.

Pipe organs lack one advantage to be had from an electronic instrument: headphones.

House organs give an organist independence from churches. The postings on other threads about problems arising in churches seem more than sufficient to justify having something at home to practise on. Some churches charge up to ten pounds an hour for the use of the organ, so the cost of a second-hand electronic instrument at about three thousand pounds can be recovered in just three hundred hours of use. Most organist will do more than this in a year.

The most important aspect of a house organ is being able to get the odd few minutes practice without the need to pack music, change into outside clothes, borrow the church key, etc.

The Roland C330 console seems to be the neatest on the market. It is far smaller than anything else I have seen, other than some rather crude consoles built for the Hauptwerk system.

Barry Williams

Yes, I'd like one of these, but being retired I would hesitate to part company with ?6,500 (although that seems perfectly reasonable to me for what you get)) out of my hard earned savings. Also I should need to do a considerable amount of re-organising in my house to find room for it.

If I had one I would use it frequently so I agree fully with Barry regarding the ease of practise at home and the benefit of headphones. It is a right nuisance preparing for, and then getting oneself to, the Church and there is no need to remind me about cold Church buildings!

Now when is the next lottery draw scheduled for............

Ron Coates (Classic Organs of Boxhill) makes a very inexpensive pedal attachment that can be fitted up to a simple five octave keyboard. It would serve for straightforward note bashing and probably a lot more.

An alternative is a second-hand electronic instrument. Abinger Organs is always a good place to look. Peter Flatau, the proprietor, has huge experience and many contacts.

The Malkin Piano Pedal machines seem not to be used much these days. I remember seeing one at Addington Palace many years ago.

Barry Williams

GBP 6,500 is a lot of money, and the decision to invest this amount was not taken lightly. (I should add that we were able to negotiate a slightly more advantageous price than the figure given here.)

In mitigation, our son is a very keen organist, who hopes to study music at university in just over a year's time, so there is a very real need for him to be able to practice safely, comfortably, and with ease. I would also suggest that a keen youngster, who is learning rapidly, has much greater need of quality practice time than an older, more experienced organist.

To balance this we are within easy walking distance of our local church, which has a very nice two-manual pipe organ. We also have our own key, and do not have to pay to practice. However, it is a very old, large, cold and dark building, which many people feel uncomfortable being alone in during the day, never mind at night! I am more than happy to go along with SBJ in the evening, but that means I cannot be at home, and that isn't always convenient. Unfortunately, not all members of the family share our passion for organs and organ music!

It is possible to practice during open church hours or on a Friday when the flower ladies are arranging their displays, but they complain if the organ is played too loudly as they cannot hear themselves putting the world to rights!

As I mentioned above, we do have a good piano, but I'm sure I don't need to tell anyone here how restricting this can be when learning organ repertoire.

Space was a serious consideration, but the C300 is thankfully very compact, whilst retaining a full sized peddleboard and manuals.

Whilst expensive, we feel a home practice instrument is a good investment, and ultimately, well worth the money.

SB

Good solid reasons there SB, but I can't help but feel, looking at the pictures, that you don't get an awful lot for GBP6500. There's some wood, some plastic switches and keys and then a load of circuit boards inside and then the magic software used to produce the actual sounds. Where is the value? I think the markup on instruments like this must be large. OK, they are not volume instruments in terms of the numbers sold, but it still feels expensive to me. (This is a common issue amongst all digital organ manufacturers, not Roland or this model in particular.)

Much of that markup has to go in a) Storing/displaying the things b) Doing the sampling of all the different pipes that are simulated.

a) With a small demand for these things if a shop has one on display, or even sitting in a warehouse that is using up space that has to generate income

b)With sampling for a digital piano they can shove a decent grand in a studio for a day shove a load of microphones in it and bang away at the keys.
With a digital organ, I think they're an amalgam of pipes from different organs. Therefore they need to take recording equipment to different machines all over the place. Therefore those costs are more and need to be split over a smaller number of sales.

I agree. We have tried experimenting with Hauptwerk and a collection of Yamaha keyboards, but it is far from tidy, and there is a real danger that one spends far more time playing with it than on it!

However, much the same argument could be applied to many things that we buy today, especially where goods are not 'mass market' items. Even then, does it really cost twice as much to build an Apple Mac as a PC, or does Apple pay its production line staff in the far east twice as much as HP or Toshiba?

Ultimately, we have to choose whether we pay the asking price or go without.

SB

I was also invited to try the Roland by the local shop, but I prefer the sound of my Allen CF-2a (http://www.allenorgans.co.uk/index.php?page=church-organs), with which I am very pleased.

Only drawbacks:
The pedalboard is slightly smaller than standard - it's fine for practising on, but I wouldn't use it for teaching. I might have been better to have gone for the next model up.

I had divisional pistons fitted and I actually play it through my hi-fi system. I find it very satisfying to play.

I know next to nothing about the digital organ market, but I wonder whether the rate at which the technology has been progressing also puts a limit on the time you have available to recoup your recording costs before having to start again.

"I think the markup on instruments like this must be large. OK, they are not volume instruments in terms of the numbers sold, but it still feels expensive to me. (This is a common issue amongst all digital organ manufacturers, not Roland or this model in particular.)"

The mark-up can be huge. BF, BM & L and I bought a Johannus directly from Holland in the 1980s for just over two thousand pounds, new, including import duty. The price in this country was nearly six thousand pounds plus VAT. (This was before Makin Organs had the franchise.)

Many people have bought other makes of foreign instruments at similarly lower prices by rather obvious means. The mark-up in this country was really rather large in years gone by. I have no idea what it is now.

Barry Williams

Thomann don't have the Roland ones but they do have some Viscounts, which might give an indication of shop markup variation, but then there are the usual arguments about service levels that are included in that price mark-up.

I can imagine they are useful for co ordinating hands and feet but I think you really need to be in the building to check that the registration is suitable; I find what sounds right when I practice alone suddenly doesn't when the church is full.

It may just be a peculiarity of mine but I also need to practice pulling out the stops on the instrument I'm going to use; it always impresses me how someone can reach and grasp the right stops on an unfamiliar organ in the stress of a performance.

" ...it always impresses me how someone can reach and grasp the right stops on an unfamiliar organ in the stress of a performance."

And even more amazing when you see David Aprahamian Liddle doing it!

Barry Williams

They're great for learning the notes. I find that I have to be much more precise when practising on my Allen (unless I turn the reverb up and use headphones!) and that does me a lot of good. If I can play it at home, I can play it anywhere!

Oh yes! Such a talented chap - and a "real" composer as well as a formidible organist.


Same here with my Wyvern. The closeness and immediacy of the sound means that every little infelicity is cruelly exposed. The same would go for a home pipe organ, of course.


This is what worries me most about the Hauptwerk system. I have played a number of the "wet" samples (i.e. incorporating the reverberation of the church) and, while they are unparalleled for wallowing in the pretence that you are the organist of XYZ Cathedral (or wherever), I have yet to be convinced that they will do anything for your musicianship or technique. I remember Aix Cathedral feeling as if I were playing from a detached console halfway down the nave. Even if that is how it feels at the console (which I was told, but which I doubt), it is hardly a good learning envorinment. I have no experience of the "dry" samples, but suspect they are more suitable.

".... feeling as if I were playing from a detached console halfway down the nave."


The same thing happened to me when playing a friend's Hauptwerk. It seemed realistic in terms of the building, but I was playing the reverberation rather than the music.

Unfortunately, time did not permit a detailed inspection, but I suspect that if one were to set a Hauptwerk up to represent a small three manual House Organ, with the appropriate acoustic, it could be very effective indeed.

Whether this could be achieved as inexpensively as the Roland C300 I do not know. I would miss having proper stops; the computer screens just did not seem the same.

Stephen's comment about playing his electronic instrument through Hi Fi speakers is telling. So often good quality loud speakers improve an ordinary instrument beyond measure. If one can afford two speakers to each channel and have them facing in different directions, the improvment is significant. Even further improvements are possible with active cross-overs. So often, the suppliers of electronic instruments simply do not adjust or set them up to best advantage.

Incidently, if any Board Member wishes to see our House Organ, please send a PM. We are always happy to show it to friends, especially those who are thinking of acquiring their own practise organ.

Barry Williams

My friend who owns the Hauptwerk system that I played has seen my comments above and explained that the samples on his instrument are 'dry, that is they have no reverberation. The reverberation is controlled by a separate knob. He feels that playing without any reverberation at all would be rather wearing on the ear. This certainly accords with my experience of a Johannus. On the Johannus, putting the reverberation on and turning the length of the reverberation to nil gave an added richness of tone without the need to de-tune in any way.

My friend's Hauptwerk set-up is very impressive. The volume, sound, reverberation, etc., are all controlled by equipment from Alesis NanoVerb and Naim Audio. The console, despite having four keyboards, is quite neat and not overpowering in a small room. It dimensions are completely standard, with a full-size pedal board.

On our House Organ (pipe) considerations of the tone being wearing on the ear do not apply. I can play for hours on the same stops without getting bored in the slightest. The lack of reverberation seems not to be a problem with pipes. (There is a little 'bloom' in the music room as we have tiles on the floor.)

I hope that these comments will help those considering the purchase of a practise instrument. The Hauptwerk system is certainly worth exploring, if it can be obtained cheaper than the Roland C300 mentioned by Swell Box.

Barry Williams