Anyone in the vicinity of St. Louis should travel to Highland, IL (about 40
miles), and get a tour of the Wicks pipe organ factory there. I showed up
unannounced and talked my way into one. They had a 5 rank organ in a self
contained box with glass sides ready to go into a home, and I got to play a
30 rank 3 manual set up in a room with a 40 foot ceiling. The hand
craftsmanship is just amazing on everything from the console woodworking to
the guy sitting in a room by himself voicing pipes by ear. They make their
own pipes too from the raw sheet metal and wood.
Dave
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Schreiber [mailto:synth1@...]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 01, 2000 2:26 PM
> To: motm@onelist.com
> Subject: Re: [motm] Pipe organs and modulars
>
>
> From: "Paul Schreiber" <synth1@...>
>
> >
> > > but you can't argue with a pipe organ! Nor a huge modular.
> >
> > Heh heh! It's very cool playing some French impressionist like
> Langlais or
> > Dupre, or maybe a little Bach on a big pipe organ in an empty church in
> the
> > middle of the night.
>
> I used to sneak in the small Presbyterian church at school late
> at night to
> play
> their Rodgers organ. A "cheap" Allen organ, basically a sampler.
>
> There is a German company that sells a fully MIDI-ed, sampled
> pipe organ. A
> friend of mine in CA bought one. Costs like $25K. This company was smart
> about
> 7 years ago: they went to every famous cathedral in Europe and
> got ∗signed,
> exclusive contracts∗
> for sampling the organs/ambience!
>
> >
> > There's an old pipe organ record by Keith Jarrett called
> "Hymns, Spheres",
> > in which he uses it like a synthesizer. Very long pieces with
> basically no
> > melodies, just tone poems where the sound changes over several
> minutes by
> > gradually bringing pipe ranks in and out of the mix. Very trippy.
>
> He plays a "tracker" organ: one that is 100% mechanical action from key
> press to
> valve opening. Also, older organs (pre-solonoid) you can "half-stop" the
> voices by
> pulling the stop knobs out partially. This is used to great effect on this
> album.
> Highly recommended!!
>
> My father's business in Houston was across the street from Visser-Rowland
> PipeOrganBuilders
> (now I think they are VR Associates, lost track). They built the organ in
> the Bates Recital Hall
> on the campus of UT-Austin. 3rd largest tracker organ in the world. These
> guys were 100%
> "vertically integrated": wood and pipes came in Door #1, and pipe organs
> rolled out Door #2. They
> used custom NC lathes made from Commodore PETs! I would sit in there for
> hours and hours
> (if I promised to not get in the way) and just watch them work.
> Mind-boggling!
>
> Paul S.
>
>
>
>
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