AJJ Posted May 27, 2009 Share Posted May 27, 2009 On David Briggs' website there is a link to a Youtube clip of a piece of his that he is playing on a rebuilt instrument in Germany. He refers in his 'blurb' to a laptop perched on the top of the console from where Manual and/or Pedal Divide, Sostenuto etc. can be accessed and presumably programmed. However - it is also indicated that Tierces, Nones, Septiémes, Neuviémes (or whatever iéme one could ever wish for singly or in combination) can be accessed from any rank of pipes playable wherever one chooses. The possibilities of this could either be amazingly exciting or hellishly ghastly - the thought of it clicking in accidentally during 'Shine, Jesus Shine' for instance...! I can imagine the possibilities that this offers to a serious and accomplished improvisor could be tremendous - also to players such as Jean Guillou whose artistic boundaries spread far further than many of the rest of us. However - what are people's thoughts (if any) - from a musical point of view - on the capacity to completely reprogramme the pitch of any stop and location of any stop on an instrument. I have a feeling that ND de Paris can do similar things for instance but has anyone here used this facility there or anywhere else? A Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidh Posted May 27, 2009 Share Posted May 27, 2009 It seems to be an interesting idea, but might have all of the failings of any extension organ. If pipes are to be played at other than normal pitch to create tierces, nones, etc, the connection of a key to another pitch cannot provide the differences in scaling and voicing which are necessary, and, more important, they will produce notes from the equal tempered scale rather than the acoustically correct harmonics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Henry Willis Posted May 27, 2009 Share Posted May 27, 2009 On David Briggs' website there is a link to a Youtube clip of a piece of his that he is playing on a rebuilt instrument in Germany. He refers in his 'blurb' to a laptop perched on the top of the console from where Manual and/or Pedal Divide, Sostenuto etc. can be accessed and presumably programmed. However - it is also indicated that Tierces, Nones, Septiémes, Neuviémes (or whatever iéme one could ever wish for singly or in combination) can be accessed from any rank of pipes playable wherever one chooses. The possibilities of this could either be amazingly exciting or hellishly ghastly - the thought of it clicking in accidentally during 'Shine, Jesus Shine' for instance...! I can imagine the possibilities that this offers to a serious and accomplished improvisor could be tremendous - also to players such as Jean Guillou whose artistic boundaries spread far further than many of the rest of us. However - what are people's thoughts (if any) - from a musical point of view - on the capacity to completely reprogramme the pitch of any stop and location of any stop on an instrument. I have a feeling that ND de Paris can do similar things for instance but has anyone here used this facility there or anywhere else? A This sounds exactly like the system at Notre Dame de Paris. ~DW Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clavecin Posted May 27, 2009 Share Posted May 27, 2009 Hmmm........ Just because technology makes something possible, that doesn't mean it's necessarily a good thing to do! Give me Meursault any day! DT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJJ Posted May 27, 2009 Author Share Posted May 27, 2009 Does anyone know what the instrument in question is like aside from the laptop gizmo? A Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kropf Posted May 27, 2009 Share Posted May 27, 2009 Does anyone know what the instrument in question is like aside from the laptop gizmo? A The Ratingen organ is a musical instrument even without that laptop stuff. The software is the SINUA project, a students (?) startup thing. It is one of three projects of Orgelwelten Ratingen (Ratingen Organ Worlds) and organist Ansgar Wallenhorst. Beside of his musical abilities, he is good at marketing. The second tech project, a virtual organ project, is much behind advanced commercial software, but is praised on the Ratingen website as very innovative. Technically interested organists in German have been waiting for the SINUA outcome for long time, to learn what features there are to change the future of organ music (something like that is said on the website, and even Olivier Latry is uses as witness). But if the individual access of cones (its a cone chest organ) and thus the possibility to bring any stop into an aliquot/mutation function (and what about the limit in the descant???) is the only achievement, it is just a bad remake of the extension organs (MM would now start to praise John Compton's art). Bad, because the pipework was not intended to be treated like that, regarding scaling and voicing, and, as said before, the temperament problem is knocking out. Maybe we will hear more fascinating news in future, but... See the German Website in question: http://www.orgelwelten-ratingen.de/orgelschule.php Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Bennett Posted May 28, 2009 Share Posted May 28, 2009 If the organ already has a tierce and a nazard/twelfth, one would be able to produce approximate septièmes at three different pitches, viz (if I have got my head round this correctly!) a 2' stop playing up a diminished seventh (or a 4' stop playing up an octave plus a diminished seventh, etc)a twelfth/nazard playing up a minor tentha tierce playing up a tritone(!) Anyone care to hazard a guess as to which is closest to the true septième? I think I know which it is, but I'm not sure I trust calculations carried out at this time of night! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Henry Willis Posted May 28, 2009 Share Posted May 28, 2009 If the organ already has a tierce and a nazard/twelfth, one would be able to produce approximate septièmes at three different pitches, viz (if I have got my head round this correctly!) a 2' stop playing up a diminished seventh (or a 4' stop playing up an octave plus a diminished seventh, etc)a twelfth/nazard playing up a minor tentha tierce playing up a tritone(!) Anyone care to hazard a guess as to which is closest to the true septième? I think I know which it is, but I'm not sure I trust calculations carried out at this time of night! Of course, this is only possible with 'stops' which are ALL on unit chests or on individual note chests of any kind - it can't be done on traditional slider soundboards (before anyone gets too excited!!). DW Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip J Wells Posted May 28, 2009 Share Posted May 28, 2009 Of course, this is only possible with 'stops' which are ALL on unit chests or on individual note chests of any kind - it can't be done on traditional slider soundboards (before anyone gets too excited!!). DW But I assume you could reprogramme the couplers so that Choir to Ped 8 could become Choir to Ped 4; Sw to Gt could be coupled at 5 1/3 or even Sw D coupled to Gt C if you wanted a none effect and the main pedal transmission to play everything up an octave so that it was all 32ft based (would the wind cope). If you want to do all these things then just leave behind the idea of a craftsman built pipe organ and buy a toaster where I'm sure it would fill in all the missing notes from such experiments. Yuk. PJW Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
contrabordun Posted May 28, 2009 Share Posted May 28, 2009 The possibilities of this could either be amazingly exciting or hellishly ghastly - the thought of it clicking in accidentally during 'Shine, Jesus Shine' for instance...! At the risk of stating the obvious and diverting from a serious discussion, the thought of any audible sound at all during 'Shine, Jesus Shine' is pretty ghastly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Bennett Posted May 29, 2009 Share Posted May 29, 2009 Hmmm .. no takers! Well my calculations show the following: True septieme - exactly 7 times the fundamental frequency "unison" rank up a minor seventh and enough octaves - 7.1272 times fundamental Quint up a minor third and an octave - 7.1352 times fundamental Tierce up an augmented fourth - 7.0711 times fundamental So they are all sharp of the true septieme, but the closest is a tierce transposed up by an augmented fourth. Bit of a surprise, that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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