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Linux PCs Drive 74-Channel Pipe Organ
cyberman11 writes "According to the EE Times, Marshall & Ogletree LLC have created an electronic simulation of a classic Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ in the Trinity Church situated, just 600 feet from ground zero near the World Trade Center site in New York. The system consists of 10 Linux PCs that drive 74 Carver amplifiers and 74 Definitive Technology speakers, for a total of 15,000 watts."
From a theoretical standpoint, analysing as a one-off then musical instruments are works of genius... but they were not created as one-offs with no history. You can blow air into bottles (or pan pipes) and have your own instrument... hook up some interaction and you have a keyboard. The human ear is very musical... it is pleasurable to hear harmonies etc so the instruments get tuned to a pleasurable key.
Give or take a few hundred or thousand years and you have something which is 'genius' if a one-off but really the result of generations of trial-and error, rather than genietic production.
The article raised more questions than it answered, for me. The part I don't understand is why so many channels are necessary - any loudspeaker will produce polyphony (when cell phones claim to have polyphonic ring tones, it has more to do with the tone generation circuit or software than with the speaker). Maybe someone who knows more about acoustics than I do can answer this one: what is meant by a "massive amount of polyphony"? More frequency content in the spectrum? And are the 74 Epiphany channels matched to 74 original pipes? Does each speaker play only one tone?
... but c'mon, my Helmut Walcha CD's don't sound THAT bad, do they?
Finally, does this also mean that recordings of organ music are poor substitutes for the real thing, since they will be played only on stereo speakers, which are presumably capable of "less" polyphony? I am sure that many organ zeolots have been saying all along that there is no substitute for live performance
eikimartinson.com
Actually, these kinds of applications can be greatly interesting to musicians. It may seem a funny concept to use a computer to play an organ, but one of the best applications me and my dad found for his old 450mhz system was installing a VST Organ synth on it so he can bring it along on gigs, and it sounds better than any hardware he ever bought. If I could've set that system up using Linux, I would've done it in an instant. It's these things I'd like to see implemented in Linux to make it usable for yet another great selection of potential users.
[Trojan.]
Thing is, what you're bringing up isn't about digital replacement -- it's about any replacement. Even if they build another pipe organ as closely as they can to the original, it won't "accurately recreate" the sound of the original.
It would be interesting to hear the opinions of people who have actually heard it and have better hearing than me 8^)
I use a java pipe-organ on my own computer (a Windows XP box) and it does very limited polyphony. Maybe 25 tones at once. I know, 10 fingers doesn't make 25 notes, but imagine how much more complex it is when you've got all those different stops, all of which must play for every single note. For the 'Grand Orgue' manual, for instance, there are 22 stops. If I enabled the whole thing, I would be able to play one note with all the stops. Start laying down fingers, and you start losing timbres. By the time I've played a Bach-esque chord using all ten fingers, I've got some odd honking and maybe a bourdon playing, while the rest of the stops have been lost.
On a real instrument, that single manual, with 61 keys and 22 stops, has 1,342-note polyphony. Every single pipe and reed can play with every other pipe and reed, all the time. If those 74 stops were coupled to the same 61-key manual, the 10 Linux boxen would need to have 4,514-note polyphony, or 450 notes each, to have the same versatility as the original instrument. Considering my computer, working with existing sounds rather than physical modelling, can only do 20 or 30 note polyphony, I'd say it's a damn good advert for Linux!
I *am* an organist... and I've played some very, very good electronic instruments, but none have exactly modeled the experience of a real instrument, and it's not because of any large lapse of sound quality or discrepency in the samples or production.
There are a combination of things that, added up, definitely detract from the unique experience of a well-built pipe organ. Often, the electronic instruments do not accurately model how a pipe speaks -- only the tone once a pipe is speaking. Also, there's a difference in the response/attack of reed pipes, flute pipes, principal pipes, etc. -- the electronic instrument often models the sound accurately, but doesn't capture the actual 'feel' of the sound, and the performer would overcompensate.
This makes it difficult both for the listener, who will notice a difference since the electronic instrument is probably not voiced in the same way as an acoustic instrument (which is specific to the room in which the instrument is built). Also, the performer may not be comfortable with playing his Bach on a non-mechincal (or electropneumatic) instrument, and this would contribute to the feeling of unnatural-ness. (Maybe we, as performers, just haven't found a good way to deal with the actual articulation/technique problems on electronic insturments.)
Whilst I don't dispute the advantages of a truly mechanical analogue control mechanism (DJ/vinyl junkie speaking!), all you really have to measure is the velocity of the key over time. MIDI keyboards have been doing that for years. The problem is not so much measuring what the musician is doing, but the fact that a piece of plastic attached to a hinge and a sensor just doesn't feel the same as a chunk of heavy wood coated in ivory tied to a mechanism attached to a hammer. It's more the feedback to the musician than the ability of the instrument to gauge the expression. Hence the best digital pianos (e.g. Yamaha Disklaviers) use a real grand piano, complete with all the traditional mechanisms, and just attach sensors to measure velocity & pressure. The result is far better if you're used to a piano keyboard. Of course, some of us learned to play on a synth, and can't play at all on a real piano, what with all those hammers and that darn key bounce!! :)
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"