Hi everybody, 

Thanks for all your input (no matter which wording you choose 😉). 

Of course we are already working on improvements for the next version of the Vienna Organ Player, so keep it coming!

Best,
Paul

@Paul said:

..so keep it coming!

As you wish 😇

The next thing I found was related to the sustain controller. OK, it's fair to ask why anyone should need sustain on an organ anyway. The reason is that I don't (yet!) have a pedalboard so I split my master keyboard 3 ways. The bottom octave and a bit is assigned to the Pedalwerk, which I have on MIDI channel 5. I also enabled the sustain pedal on that channel only so that I could at least play pedal points (Orgelpunkt). The problem I have is that all the manuals respond to the channel 5 sustain controller even though they are on different channels.

[Edit] Wondering if the new Organ Player is anywhere near to MPE functionality. If so it might help many users understand better and quicker what this Player will, won't, should and shouldn't do.

MPE is a valid subject, but perhaps that discussion would be better in a separate thread rather than discussing it here. I would rather concentrate on usability hits (and of course out-and-out bugs here).

And talking of which, given that I can't just use the player how I want to, I'm having to host several copies of it in my DAW (Cakewalk)...

So anyway, I finally have things exactly as I want them - I can have combinations that only affect the manuals I want (because each track is dedicated to one manual) and the sustain pedal only works on the Pedalwerk.

[Edit] Just looked into the Organ Player somewhat deeper and nope, it's nowhere near MPE functionality; it has its own ways and means, not all of which are immediately obvious or intuitive.

@Angelus said:

So anyway, I finally have things exactly as I want them

Well, no, not really because I realised I can't use the couplers in this setup without enabling stops in manuals other than the one that the player instance is dedicated to, and that then runs into the whole "combinations only set or clear stops" thing all over again. I was going to write a custom control surface for a Windows tablet that I have to handle the combinations for all the instances, so maybe I can put that between my keyboard and PC to handle the couplers as well. [EDIT] I now have limited coupler capability (so far: Hauptwerk to Pedal, Positiv to Pedal, Positiv to Hauptwerk, Schwellwerk to Hauptwerk and Schwellwerk to Positiv) via a small MIDI utility I wrote 😃

I found another very small issue, though, which is that there's some ugly "zipper noise" each time I stop the playback of a recording whilst a note is sounding. I don't get this on any of the other 50 or so VSTs that I have, including VI Pro. It happens even if all channel FX and IR reverb are disabled.

About the no-sound Positiv:

This is strange. As you can see from the standalone, if you have set channel 2 to Positiv, you should get sound from it, when you play a channel 2 note on message. However, there are several things that could be worth checking in your setup:

- If you are using multiple instances and you change your MIDI input settings in one of them, the other instances won't have those settings until you restart your host. We actually need to make that clearer in the settings.

- This is someting I ran into myself (In my case it was Logic Pro): When the MIDI channel you set up in your DAW is say channel 3 but you play your keyboard from channel 2, the host will only forward channel 3. So please double check if the player actually receives channel 2 messages. The way you could double check which chanel the player actually receives (I admit, it's clunky):

1. Set all your Werks to different channel inputs

2. Solo the track you have the Positiv on. Now enable/disable a stop on every Werk. The note you Werk you will hear corresponds to the MIDI input the player receives.

- The fact that the keyboard lights up isn't really surprising: It lights up no matter which note ons it gets... And when you play it it actually fires note ons for all channels

I hope this helps! If not, please contact our support in that regard.

@badibeat said:

Vienna Instruments Pro allows to activate key velocity

Glad to be of help. Konzerthaus Organ was the first instrument I bought vom VSL, and soon after that Vienna Instruments Pro, even before I was sure that it can give me key velocity.

However, I had to make a custom preset containing each register and change it there, manually. I'd be happy if presets were XML or JSON so I could edit them as text and diff them.

I am not entirely sure but I think the Vienna Organ Player already features a way of achieving that.

Please watch the attached video for more info

@Another User said:

Please watch the attached video for more info

Ahh - so VO can effectively have up to 12 velocity zones!

"I am not entirely sure but I think the Vienna Organ Player already features a way of achieving that.

Please watch the attached video for more info"

I am so glad you included this!

I'm all for historical realism, but I am sure many organists and composers would have loved organs to be velocity-sensitive, so the ability to now add that with a computer interface is wonderful. I made a matrix to do the same with the VSL harpsichord :-)

@Pyre said:

I'm all for historical realism, but I am sure many organists and composers would have loved organs to be velocity-sensitive, so the ability to now add that with a computer interface is wonderful.

I like sounds and techniques to be authentic too but there comes a point where it would just be silly to ignore the capabilities we have now. I only have the one keyboard and so, for example, I use velocity-switching to effectively layer different manuals.

How would I record registration changes? That is, while I'm playing, I add/remove stops. Might those not be recorded midi messages so when I play back it duplicates EVERYTHING I did while playing?

This feature looks great for auto-capturing your registration at the beginning of the piece. But what about adding/removing stops during the piece? (A very common thing for organists to do!)

Regarding velocity sensitive pipe organs:

I'm both a professional pianist and organist. I also put myself through music school as a piano technician, and I do the routine maintenance on the pipe organ at the church where I play. With that background, I have some thoughts for your consideration:

Let's think about the physics of the basic sound producing mechanisms of both the piano and organ. The pitch of the piano string is determined entirely by material (steel vs brass, etc.), length, diameter and tension. To be sure at high energy impulses into the string (high velocity) the pitch probably deviates from the norm for a few milliseconds, but for all musical purposes the strings speaks at the same pitch regardless of low or high energy/velocity impulse

Organ pipes are quite different. The technology by which the key is connected to the pipe doesn't matter (tracker, direct electric, whatever) -- even if you're using some newfangled flux-capacitor-quantum-microprocessor valve, it still boils down to how much air is going into the pipe (zero to whatever). Importantly, organ pipes vary in pitch depending on the wind pressure -- this is true for the flues (most of the pipes) and triply so for the reeds. Organ builders go to great lengths to regulate the air pressure, with mechanisms to manage sudden demand (big chord at full organ) so the pitch doesn't drop.

In short, the physics of a piano string (or strings in general) lends itself to velocity variations, but real world organ pipes do not.

Furthermore, the keyboards of pianos and organs are physically similar, but the issues of playing them and consequently effective technique for playing are quite different. For example, because there is no damper pedal on the organ, legato has to be accomplished by fingers alone. This results in a quite different approach to playing -- 3 passing over 4, 3 over 2, and 4 over 5 are common on organ and rare on piano, for example.

Finally -- it's worth mentioning latency. When I play a piano patch with latency much more than about 5 ms or so, it drives me crazy because that's not how real pianos behave. But with pipe organs it's common to deal with rather large latencies: sound travels approx 1 foot/ms (.3 meter/ms) so in a 20 meter room (not that large) with the console in the back and the pipes in the front your looking at 60ms (!) of latency. So large latencies with organ samples feel natural to me, but drive me absolutely crazy with piano samples. I've been in organ performance situations like this where I'm watching the conductor (speed of light), and I hear myself an 8th note behind what my fingers are doing. That's just part of learning to play pipe organs, and yet another way that pianos and organs are very different beasts!

So, if we're dealing with samples, there's no reason why you couldn't have a velocity sensitive organ sample.  (Load one up in Kontakt!) It would feel as weird to me personally as a non-velocity sensitive piano. But you'd venturing more into the realm of synthesizers than trying to reproduce real instruments. Which is fine, if that's what you want to do!

@wwzeitler said:

So, if we're dealing with samples, there's no reason why you couldn't have a velocity sensitive organ sample.  (Load one up in Kontakt!) It would feel as weird to me personally as a non-velocity sensitive piano. But you'd venturing more into the realm of synthesizers than trying to reproduce real instruments. Which is fine, if that's what you want to do!

Well, you can route key velocity to the swell function to make the organ player velocity sensitive after a fashion! But if it had been physical possible on real organs, they might have needed far fewer stops. Anyway, I'm perfectly happy with organs not being velocity sensitive, though as I've said, I sometimes do use velocity for combination switching.

@Konrad said:

I am not entirely sure but I think the Vienna Organ Player already features a way of achieving that.

The video shows how velocity can be used for key switching.

I however am interested at playing the sounds with velocity. The faster (or harder) I press a key, the louder.

@wwzeitler said:

Regarding velocity sensitive pipe organs:

.... So, if we're dealing with samples, there's no reason why you couldn't have a velocity sensitive organ sample.  (Load one up in Kontakt!) It would feel as weird to me personally as a non-velocity sensitive piano. But you'd venturing more into the realm of synthesizers than trying to reproduce real instruments. Which is fine, if that's what you want to do!

That's definitely the way I want to do - getting rid of some limitations of the real instrument and play it in a way I like.

I was listening to the Big Fugue in G Minor demo, and it made me sad that it sounds so static.

There's this project sponsored by Schweizer Nationalfonds where the organist and composer Daniel Glaus developed a mechanical Organ with mechanical controls per key. It features also some mechanical after touch. 

The linked document is only available in German, though, but deepl is your friend here (forget google translate):

Deutsch:  Quantensprung im Orgelbau - CORDIS Forschungsergebnisse der EU

Edit: Johann Sebastian Bach might have liked this. He also composed Das Wohltemperierte Clavier, for reasons. He was living in a time where instruments developed, and embraced the developments.

Hi, 

@wwzeitler said:

This feature looks great for auto-capturing your registration at the beginning of the piece. But what about adding/removing stops during the piece? (A very common thing for organists to do!)

Please give it a try, it should work just as I think you expect it. 

Best, 
Paul