MOTM

>
> > 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.