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By Colin Pykett · Posted
I wonder what the service life statistics of the action were designed to be in terms of MTBF (mean time between failures) and, indeed, total service life itself? And whether any precautions have been incorporated to limit the effect of damage due to nearby lightning discharges? -
Agreed with this. I'm no expert but Balint Karosi's comments that the pipes seemed to speak better with the proportional action enabled chimes with comments I've heard from organ builders / voicers who say they often need to change the voicing of pipes when moving them from tracker to electric key action? The system used by Rieger here seems quite an elaborate one, but I suspect simpler solutions might well be feasible. I recently had to dismantle and fix an ancient Yamaha Clavinova, and I found that the mechanism for detecting key pressure was surprisingly simple: there was one sensor that connected near the top of the key travel and another further down. The clavinova was simply timing how long it took to get from one sensor to the other to work out how loudly to output the note. I can't help but feel there must be three-position valves out there (closed, partial, open) to put under a pipe; the first position - near the top of the key-travel - would admit a little wind into the pipe and the other - near the bottom - would open the valve fully. This strikes me, purely theoretically of course, as perhaps a worthwhile but simple approximation of tracker action with the benefit of more natural pipe speech - and more naturally-varying pipe speech - and it might additionally alleviate one of my personal bug-bears of electric actions, that the pipe doesn't even start speaking until the key hits the key bed - way later than with tracker. Interested to hear perspectives from those with practical experience! SC -
There's an interesting question around the perception of 'out-of-tuneness'. I know the threshold where people* begin to describe two pitches as 'different notes' rather than out-of-tune versions of the same one is usually** cited as the syntonic comma (c21.5 cents, so less than half a 50-cent quarter-tone). But I'm not sure I'm really capable of spotting a perfectly in-tune vs out-of-tune quarter-tone in practice! I wish, when certain young children of my acquaintance were just starting out on woodwind instruments (with all the woes associated with reeds that entails), and would frequently play whole phrases so far out of tune that it wasn't possible to tell what notes they were trying to play and I wanted to scrape my own brain out from inside my cranium, that I'd had the presence of mind to whip out the tuning app on my phone to see just how far out they were! It might have been useful data... The only musical use of quarter-tones I'm aware of (outside of the squeaky-gate contemporary sphere) is Jacob Collier's arrangement of In the Bleak Midwinter (which is on youtube so I'm not off-topic, so there!). However he is justly tuning a series of jazzy chords which results in him modulating to G half sharp major. Now, not personally being afflicted with perfect pitch, I can confidently say I've sung in many choirs where we achieved similar feats, often using considerably simpler harmony and not necessarily singing all the right notes even then; the difference seems to be that Mr Collier [claims that he] is doing it deliberately which sounds like very hard work, whereas we seemed just*** to manage it effortlessly. SC * that is, westerners accustomed to 12-tone equal temperament ** ie I'm not aware of any formal definition but I'm sure I've read it in quite a few places! *** no pun intended
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By John Robinson · Posted
Fascinating instrument. So many possibilities, though I'm not sure how much of this would be used in normal playing. On the other hand, just think of the opportunities if you are playing along with a choir! 🤣
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